Garmin aera 500 Color Touchscreen Aviation GPS (Americas)
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Garmin’s aera series of dual-duty GPS portables offer easy transition from flying to motoring – by combining the best in moving-map display features with intuitive, menu-driven touchscreen control. With aera, fingertip navigation has entered a whole new era: One that streamlines operation. Eliminates knobs and buttons. Simplifies the pilot/motorist interface. And lets you think in terms of door-to-door guidance, not just runway-to-runway.
Check Out the aera 500
There are four aera models in the Garmin lineup, offering a full range of cost/capability choices. The first and most affordable unit in the series is the aera 500. Featuring a crisp 4.3-inch QVGA wide-format touchscreen and pre-loaded graphical mapping, this versatile, feature-rich unit comes ready for takeoff, right out of the box.
Fly aera. Anywhera
In aviation mode, the aera 500’s detailed chart-style shaded mapping and extensive terrain and aviation databases help you visualize your flight path in relation to nearby navaids, terrain, SUAs, obstructions, and so on. To help keep pilots aware of special airspace activity, over 683 parachute drop zones are detailed in the Americas navigation database. Plus, the addition of private airports and heliports to the database affords even more navigation and emergency “nearest” options. A database-driven terrain advisory feature offers TAWS-like color coding and pop-up alerts when possible obstructions or ground proximity conflicts loom ahead.
Built to Fly. Born to Run
Once your aircraft returns to terra firma, the fun of aera navigation continues with full automotive GPS capability and preloaded City Navigator® NT street mapping. Operating much like Garmin’s popular nüvi® line of touchscreen auto navigators, your aera 500 offers voice-guided turn-by-turn directions with text-to-speech audio technology that calls out streets by name.
Features
- Easy-to-use touchscreen interface
- Bright 4.3″ diagonal, color display
- Lithium-ion battery – lasts up to five hours, depending on usage and settings
- Flight log: At least 30 most recent flights
- High-sensitivity GPS receiver with WAAS position accuracy for improved performance and reception
- Dimensions (W x H x L): 0 x 0 x 0 inches
- Weight: 0 pounds
Poorly Designed GPS
I’ve had this for over 6 months and still find it difficult to use. It’s not intuitive and seems designed by someone with little aviation background ie, must exit the map screen and press several buttons to make a waypoint and then fly to it. Garmin makes better GPS’s that are installed in the helicopters I fly than this one. In the Auto mode if you enter some place to go then discover you have to change a setting in tools DON’T hold down the BACK key too long as the Stop navigation button is right under the BACK key and you will have to reenter your destination if the BACK key is held down too long.
This GPS is better used by a passenger who has the time during a flight to use it rather than a pilot who has to fly the aircraft (the warning on the automotive side against use while driving should be on the aviation side as well). Battery life is poor. I agree with Timothy Lam on touchscreen problems but i also have problems dragging the map around in the auto mode – when i lift my finger the map scrolls some distance away on it’s own. The Bluetooth on my old ear piece from Motorola is better and easier to use (but not setup) than this Bluetooth. I’m disappointed and expected a lot better from Garmin. I would NOT recommend this GPS.
Nice inexpensive Aviation GPS
The adjustable back lighting is great. One of the brightest displays seen in full sun. Found it to be very easy and intuitive to use. Although there were some changes buried deep withing that were a surprise. Love the yoke mount and car mounts. Both worked great for me. Love the single power cord. Very clean setuup. The unit is packed with features and can manupulate many of the fuctions to your liking. The size is just about right for the way it will be used. Has a good decent manual. Super easy to unclip from the mounts so you can prevent theft. Bluetooth available for vehicle use (but not why flying).
This device uses the inferior resistive touchscreen technology with a too-large bezel that makes it impossible to touch anything near the sides of the screen. The effect is that the touchable area of the buttons that hug the right side of the screen in map view are significantly reduced. Even after a calibration, I would regularly miss these buttons. The cursor simply wouldn’t go as far to the right as my finger asked it to. Another problem related to the touch screen is with dragging the map in any direction. It was a frustrating experience, as the device would detect my finger at times and ignore it at other times. The touchscreen’s lack of sensitivity is frustrating when entering numbers, letters etc. I wish they would using capacitive touchscreen (like the iPhone). Using the flight planner for me was cumbersome. And it is difficult to enter your own waypoints accurately due to the small screen size and lack of terrian detail. But the task can be accomplished. Battery life is an issue, but that was known before hand. I always use the plug-in power. I think this product should come with a means to plug it into 110v for charging purposes. It is an after purchase option. The vehicle mode was a little disappointing. I really liked the idea to have dual GPS capabilities, flying and vehicle travel. But the sophistication level for driving just isn’t any better than whats been out there for years now. Two features I immediately found lacking were a nearest airport function in case of engine loss, and the ability to navigate to a point I touched on the map screen. To perform either function, you must exit the moving map and enter the Direct to menu.
Overall other than the unresponsive touchscreen, I am very pleased with what I mainly purchased this unit for: Flying. Haven’t had it long enough to comment on durability, but so far (Knock on wood), I haven’t had any issues with it at all after about 30 hours of flying with this unit.