My question is for those of you that have tried out both systems. Is the
496 REALLY worth .6 AMU's more than the 396?

I've only played with the 396 a little, and the 496 for about 15 hours
of actual, in-flight use, so my comments are limited.

One this is certain, however: If the 496's agonizingly slow screen
refresh rate is REALLY "exponentially better" than the 396's, I would
go absolutely nuts trying to use the 396 in-flight.

Here's what I mean: When you "slew" the cursor around the screen on
our 496, trying to (for example) get some METARs from airports ahead,
the whole damned screen disappears for a second, while it "re-draws".
(This, of course, would be entirely unnecessary if Garmin would only
produce a unit with a usably-sized, portrait-oriented screen. But
that's a dead horse.)

We have found that this kind of constant slewing is our regular motus
operandi while on long x-country flights (the 496 is on the co-pilot's
side, so that they have their heads down), and it's something you just
have to learn to live with. If you want to check the weather ahead,
it's going to be slew...wait...slew...wait. It's like running the
latest version of Flight Simulator on an old Pentium I....

We've tried "decluttering" the screen, and turning down the detail, to
no avail -- so perhaps it has something to do with the XM uplink?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"