Wil, I had a 100. Same problem with lighting. The unit was nearly useless to me because of it. I sold it after a few months and bought the 500. If you plug the 500 into aircraft power so you can keep the backlighting on all the time you will NEVER have a readability problem under ANY conditions. The new backlight technology is perfect. The 500 is a little less user friendly (extra steps required for some of the basic functions...very dumb!) but you get used to it. The backlighting more than makes up for the inconveneince. Buy it, you'll like it
I just received my Airmap 500 yesterday and was playing with it last night. I find what Dan said to be true. One thing I really like is how light it is and it is quite a bit smaller than the 100. Some of the screens have changed but I have found that a lot of the same information is there. The screen that Greg referenced has changed a bit, but some of the information is still there. They took the arrow off and put on the HSI screen. The track, crs, gs, distance, eta, and added longitude & latitude square are on that screen. I haven't flown with it yet. So I will post more later.
