AV80R vs. Airbox Freedom Clarity GPS's

[C172Navigator]

I'm in the market for a new GPS and I am considering the above two GPS units - does anyone have exprience of either unit?

Most AV80R posts are a few months old and I've not seen any on the Airbox unit. I plan to visit HM's in Edinburgh but would appreciate any feedback from users before I do.

Thanks.

[AC-DC]

Today I played with the Airbox unit, It is too much money for what it does and I did not like the way it does it. Don't like the unit and don't think that I will buy one. The AV80r hasn't got the same screen quality but it also cost 1/3.

[lordhedges]

The Airbox Clarity is £599 which I think is pretty competitive with the AV8OR when you consider it's superior screen resolution and ability to display CAA/Jepp charts... That's hardly three times as expensive!

[Fitter2]

I think AC-DC must have been looking at the Airbox Foresight, whixh has a much larger screen (with corresponding price hike).

The question is really whether one wants display that shows the CAA VFR chart, in which case there is little competition for the Clarity.

The drawback is that text on a scanned chart grows or shrinks with the zoom scale, however when moving from a chart used as primary nav. to a GPS, the text is less used than the relationship to the depiction of airspace boundaries in familiar colours.

[lordhedges]

You're absolutely right about scanned map issues which is why Airbox is working on integrating a vector mapping option for the whole of Europe displaying alongside airspace boundaries, major roads, waterways, cities etc.

[rans6andrew]

one easily overlooked item you might want to consider before making your final decision is database update cost. I was a bit stunned to find that update costs of my trusty Skymap II was £100 a go. This struck me as a bit steep when compared with the Garmin update costs (about £25 I think, at the time). I heard that the Freedom Clarity costs are high and you need to buy them "by the country", ie France is not in the same database as the UK.

Rans6

[lordhedges]

Freedom Clarity update costs for UK ICAO 1:500,000 is £60/annum

[AC-DC]

Thanks Fitter2, you are correct. I waqs talking about the unit with the large screen that costs around £1500.