I have an Aera500 and an older GPSmap 296, which may be similar enough to a 495 to help.
The Aera is smaller, and touch screen instead of buttons, and I prefer the interface.
Both databases are up to date, but the Aera 500 seems to have loads more waypoints than the 296.
The GPSmap has the venerable Garmin proprietary USB interface, which is widely supported in many flight planning programs for track download, waypoint up/down load etc. The Aera has a usb port, but a PC sees it as an external disk drive, with a ".gpx" file. This does contain all the tracks, waypoints etc but buried within mind-numbing layers of XML. I don't know how well it is supported by flight planning programs (yet).
I still draw lines on charts, measure the lengths and tracks, and then cross compare with the GPS 'flight plan' to check. By cross-checking it this way, I feel perfectly safe entering the supposedly lethal user lat/lon waypoints, but with the Aera I seldom need to.
I prefer the Aera.
edited to mention the screen: Personally, I found the screen size fine for 'situational awareness', but then I haven't used a 695 yet!
Last edited by 24Carrot; 17th August 2010 at 14:44.