We think the marketing conference rooms of most big companies ought to be like Level 4 Biohazard labs. The idea is to maintain just enough negative pressure so that the good ideas have to fight their way out and the profoundly ridiculous ones never make it outside to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting public. Garmin seems to have figured this out, especially with regard to product cycles and the delicate task of pricing things just a buck or two short of way the hell too much.
The just-released Garmin GPSmap 496 could make a Wharton Business School case study of this phenomenon. At first blush, $2995 or $2795 on the street-yes, thats right-seems like an insanely high price for a portable, but when you examine the 496s added features over its progenitor, the GPSMap396, you soon slip into the three stages of MasterCard surrender: Stage One: Thats stupid expensive. Stage Two: Well, on second thought, maybe its not that bad. Stage Three: Hey, this is a deal; Id better buy it before they raise the price. Just be warned that Garmin knows how this mind game works.
Well bottom line it for you: The GPSmap 496 upstages a very good product-the GPSMap 396-that has only a year of market history. It costs about $600 more than the recently discounted 396 and, in our view, its improved features deliver about that much more value. And that aint no accident. As we said, Garmin didnt get to be a billion dollar company by not understanding this.
New, ImprovedWhen we reviewed the GPSMap 396 a year ago, we more or less drooled all over it. It was and is a great product, combining terrific GPS navigation capability with both XM Radio-based datalink weather from WxWorx, XM entertainment radio, an impressive flight panel page and terrain warning features little shy of a full-up TAWs system. We had no significant complaints about it, other than a couple of minor lock-ups. The GPSmap 496 had a lock-up, too, by the way, also insignificant.
Some buyers complained about the powerful magnet Garmin placed in the base of the XM antenna shipped with the 396 a year ago, which would disturb a magnetic compass if placed too close to it. All right, fine, if you want to buy a $2300 GPS and still wring your hands over a wet compass, the magnet is a bad thing. Conceded. Garmin conceded it, too, and the 496 package has no magnet in the base. Acolytes of pre-Columbian navigation the world over may now rejoice.
So, then, what justifies the higher price of the GPSmap 496? Incrementally better performance, mainly, thanks to an improved GPS refresh rate (5 Hz versus 1 Hz) and a high-resolution 256-color display at 480 by 320 pixels. Side-by-side with the 396, this results in a noticeable, if not dramatic, improvement in screen response and refresh rate, especially on the flight panel page. In our trials, the 496 screen appeared noticeably brighter, too, but Garmin says its not really. The higher terrain resolution just makes it look that way.
The 496 sports far more data than the 396 has, specifically AOPAs Airport Directory information-if not every bit of it, most of it-and terrain resolution thats three times greater than the 396. That means when the screen draws terrain detail, the usual low-res blockiness is replaced by an image that looks more like a photograph. Zooming in on the detail does result in some pixilation, but overall, the terrain picture is smoother, crisper and easier to interpret.
The AOPA directory material is accessible under its own information tab for any selected airport. It contains the usual stuff, such as runway information, approaches, frequencies, fuel availability, services and so on. If you wanted to leave the big paper directory at home instead of schlepping it around in your flightbag, the 496 will fill in. We did find, however, that the smallish text for the AOPA data can be difficult to read and there appears to be no way to adjust the text size.