We knew it had to be coming, we just didnt know when. The “it,” of course, is the long-awaited follow-on product to Garmins hugely successful GNS430/530 series navigators, of which there are some 120,000-plus in the field. The new boxes are called the GTN650 and 750 and Garmin took the wraps off these at the Aircraft Electronics Show in Reno in late March. It gave us an advance view and flight trial ahead of the show. First impression? These products will evolutionize the market with a short list of advanced features, they will likely ignite an intense secondary market in used GNS430/530 products and as the world moves smartly toward self- contained EFIS, these may very we’ll be the last products of their kind. The GTN series could be described as a hybrid of everything Garmin has learned from developing related products, including the yet-to-be-released G3000/5000 series, the aera portables and the stripped-down operating logic the company has adhered to since it launched its first GPS 21 years ago. The new navigators are heavily touchscreen and menu driven, they have larger improved displays, theyll interface with anything, they will eventually include voice recognition capability and pricewise, they actually come into the market a bit cheaper than their predecessors did, when indexed to inflation. The smaller GTN650 retails for $11,495 while the GTN750 retails for $16,995. Following the trend in consumer electronics, they do quite a bit more at the same or a slightly lower price. They do not, however, represent the great leap forward that the original GNS430 did, but rather a large incremental advance.
The Hardware
In the 13 years since the GNS430 appeared-yes, 13 years-display, processor and GPS technology has all but reinvented itself and the new GTN boxes integrate those advances. They use a variant of the 5 Hz WAAS chip Garmin developed for the GNS430W/530W, but both the GTN650 and 750 have new, faster processors with more video capability. The displays remain the TFT technology thats now industry standard, but the resolution is higher. On the 650, its 600 by 266 pixels while the 750 has 600 by 708 pixels. Thats about a five-fold increase in pixel density. Both screens have 250,000-plus colors, the net effect of which is to render details such as terrain and weather in near-VGA crispness. Where the GNS530 goes blocky at the mid-range scales, the GTNs don’t, although they do exhibit some refresh delay. Both of the new products support Garmins 9-arc second terrain capability. Side-by-side with the G600 EFIS, theyre not quite as photo-realistic, but the difference is subtle. Speaking of which, the G600 supports synthetic vision and we asked if the GTN 750 could. Garmins Jim Alpiser says thats unknown, so we’ll take that as a maybe. Our impression is that it has a lot of hooks