Is there anybody alive who doesnt have a portable GPS moving map yet? Okay, so maybe youre a Ralph Kramden fan and youre waiting for the 3D model with accompanying decoder ring.
Garmin hasnt announced that model yet but we sometimes get the impression theyre about to. In the meantime, the company is finally shipping something that comes close: A portable moving map GPS with color that rivals Garmins GNS 430 panel mount.
At a glance, the GPSMAP 295 looks like an inflated version of the GPS III Pilot, another popular Garmin product. Like the Pilot, the 295s screen orientation is horizontal or landscape, the buttons are on the right and the antenna pokes up from the backside.
But apart from operating logic, thats the extent of the similarity. In our view, even if the 295 had no color, it would represent a step-up from Pilot and Garmins previous top seller, the 195. The 295 is easier to operate, has a faster processor and a land database capable of finding every flyspeck on the planet.
Wow, Color
Screen size is critical to how a moving map reads, and the 295s is generous. The screen is larger than the Pilot model and about the same size as the 195. The landscape or horizontal mode allows for better presentation and less clutter at low zoom scales, thus the screen is more map like. The color screen itself-eight colors-can be adjusted through the power button. Pressing the button once brings up a brightness and contrast menu, which you can adjust with the rocker keypad.
Another press enables night mode, which switches the basemap color from yellow to black. Another press circles back to day mode. This return-to-start control logic is followed throughout the GPS 295 and we found it worked well. And how about the color? Its vivid and crisp and bright enough for normal viewing, but it tends to wash flat in direct sunlight, although it remains viewable. Although the 295 doesnt seem noticeably dimmer than its big brother, the GNS 430, the 430s additional screen brightness blasts right through direct sunlight. Not so the 295. Even the 195 does better in sunlight but, on average, the 295s map details are easier to see.
But really, isn’t the color just another gimmick? Not really. Highways are in red, water blue, the background in yellow, making the map decidedly more readable than the 195 and delineating detail nicely. As you zoom in, more detail emerges, including airport runways with numbers in proper orientation, plus more information on ground detail, such as highways and the like.
Too much clutter? Press the enter key once to lose the highways and minor land detail, again to dump airspace depictions and minor geographic detail. A third press strips the map to just route waypoints and general geographic information, while the fourth press brings everything back.
Power Up
One nice feature of the 295 is the switch from external to battery power. While we like the fail-safe mode of the 195 when external power is lost, weve trashed the batteries more than once after having turned off the master but not the GPS while running on ships power.
The 295 fixes this shortcoming. When external power is lost, a message asks the user to punch any key to continue on battery power. If you don’t respond within 30 seconds, the unit shuts down automatically. And trust us, you will be using ships power. On battery alone, the screen automatically dims to conserve power and in daylight, you need all the brightness that you can get. The manual says six AAs will last about 2.5 hours. Our test model did better than that-about four hours.
Still, you’ll go through a sack of batteries in a day of flying if you don’t use aircraft volts. A big improvement over the 195 is the integrated battery compartment, which is easily accessible under a cover with a quarter-turn fastener.
Another improvement: The cigarette lighter adapter is now separate from the yoke mount, so no more surgery on the mount to remove it. Garmin also ships a data/PC cable for database and software upgrades standard with the 295 and as we went to press, version 2.01 of the software was already available on Garmins Web site.
During our week of trials with the 295, we didnt have an external antenna-the 195 external antenna cant be used-but had no problems using only the on-board stick antenna. The standard remote antenna is a patch-type active design, which sits on the glareshield or could be mounted externally, if desired.
Odd Little Piker
The 295 is smaller than the 195 in both length and width but not in depth. The 295s overall size and feel is a bit awkward, actually. It has a CG problem. Forget propping it on the co-pilots seat or on the glareshield. Even with a Velcrod bean bag, it wants to roll over on its back like a dead bug. You need heavy duty Velcro and a folded, wedged chart to make it work.
The yoke mount is standard and will be needed in most aircraft, we predict. Because of screen brightness limitations, viewing angle is somewhat limited and the yoke mount should help with that, too. Overall operability has been improved in the 295 and the 195 was no slouch to begin with. There’s a pair of zoom in/out buttons for map scale changes in place of the 195s single button, an improvement we applaud. The 195s go-to button has been replaced by the more useful route button. Pressing it brings up stored routes, which is friendlier than having to step through a menu.
In general, buttons are arranged in a more logical fashion than they are on the 195, with easier finger movements based on what you typically need to do. Once powered up and past the death-and-destruction liability page, the navigator finds itself, and we mean quickly. Thanks to a faster processing chip, its ready to play in less than a minute.
Pages
The 295 displays these pages: Sat Stat, Data, Map, HSI and Active Route, with the map page doing the heavy lifting. We typically use a mileage zoom of 12 to 20 miles on the 195 when threading the thicket around New York. But selecting the 5-mile scale on the 295 shows the equivalent detail and look ahead capability. Map refresh speed is quite fast, again due to the improved processor.
A noticeable improvement over the 195 is the use of small informational messages that tell exactly what you need to know about airspace alerts and so on, without having to toggle to another page.