Swap 496 for Garmin 550/560 in panel?

[Unit74]

I have a 496 in the panel now. I have been thinking about swapping it for either a 550 or 560. It's fed by a 430W and should also get the GDL 89 TIS/ FIS info. Not to sure what the diff between the two are, but they are priced the same.


Is the upgrade worth the cost? I'm looking at around $1200 in parts and prolly 2 hours labor so let's round it all out to $1400 to be safe.

Also, what would the 496 be worth?

Thanks

 

[Stewartb]

I prefer the Aera touch screen to the older buttons. These days my Aera runs backup to my iPad. So my answer? Obviously at the time I thought it was worth it but wouldn't do it again now that the iPad has proven itself.

 

[FORANE]

Go look at an Aera in the sun and see if you will be happy with the screen; I surely was not happy when I removed a 396 for an Aera 560.

Go play with the user interface of the Aera and see if you will be happy with it; I surely am not.

Go see how you locate the nearest on the Aera and see if you find it intuitive.

The Aera does 1 thing the 496 cannot and that is display fis-b ads-b weather. If the 496 could display ads-b weather I would remove the Aera.

Check ebay, but last I looked the 496's were selling in the 600-800 range.

 

[Unit74]

My set up...


430w on the cdi page pretty much all the time, 496 on map page showing weather, ipad showing everything including traffic.

What I'd like to to do is have the new 560 showing map page with traffic only and take traffic off the iPad to declutter and show weather only on it.

I'm sure I'll tinker with it a bit, but that's my thought anyway. Plus the aero has much higher resolution. I don't plan on having XM because I have a bunch of music on the iPad and a simple mini jack into the panel and I'm rockin'.

Does the 560 call out altitudes and such in flight? The 496 functions as a bitchen Betty with altitudes and terrain.