Lowrance 600c: Preliminary Pirep

Pirep Lowrance 600c, initial impressions.

Since no one particularly discouraged me from getting one, I went ahead
and ordered a 600c on line. It seems Lowrance is effectively preventing
anyone from discounting it, so the price is the same all over the
country. I ordered it from Pilotshop.com, where shipping is included in
the $499 price.

It arrived five days after I placed the order. I won't repeat all of
Lowrance's propaganda on how much they give for the money, but I'll
just say that it really is complete. There's nothing left to buy.

The case is made out of injection-molded plastic, not a particularly
attractive type but nothing really wrong with it either, with a
rubberized polymer band to protect the edge. The battery compartment is
a little awkward to open and close. No worse than that on some other
equipment, but not the best design I've ever seen, either. I won't
be totally surprised if the latch breaks at some point.

After popping in the supplied AA batteries, it quickly locked onto some
satellites, far quicker than the Garmin hiker's model I'm replacing
ever did. I can't think of any real significance for this and have no
reason to extrapolate from this datum that it will or will not maintain
lock any better than the old unit.

With the backlighting on, the color screen is easily legible in all
lighting conditions. With it off, it's not even all that easy to read
in direct sunlight and pretty much impossible to read in dim lighting
conditions. The screen resolution is good. The maps are sharp and easy
to interpret. The screen size is a little on the small size, but
that's the price one pays for longer battery life. It came with a
current Jeppeson data base.

So far, so good.

It has a wealth of features. Again, I won't go through Lowrance's
propaganda on how powerful it is, but it can display more things than
one might imagine. And herein lies the rub: I can't imagine how
anyone would ever manage to use all that power while flying an
airplane. Maybe it isn't really a drawback. For single pilot
operation, one just doesn't use all the functions. I expect that the
way to use it will be to put in the destination on the ground, then go
to the split screen terrain and heading and then leave the controls
alone. It'll show the course and warn if one is about to fly into a
mountain. And that is really about all I want from it. It will also pop
up a visual alarm before entering controlled airspace.

Using the "nearest airport" function does require a bit too much
key pressing and menu scrolling for my taste. Given how few keys there
are available on a handheld GPS, I can't say as the user interface is
particularly awkward, but if the cockpit is filling with smoke or the
engine has decided it has worked hard enough and needs to retire, I'm
not entirely confident that I would get it to direct me to the best
spot. Pressing the "nearest airport" keys (it requires pressing two
simultaneously) doesn't immediately show the way to the nearest
airport. It takes one to a page where one of the nearest airports can
be selected. I suppose that is good, as the single nearest airport may
be an impossible choice, but it means some more key punching and
scrolling around is needed before it will show the way to the selected
airport.

All in all, my initial impressions are favorable. It is the best deal
out there on a color aviation GPS. It has its limitations and
compromises, but so do all others.