Dual Electronics XGPS190

First the good: Great size. easy setup (if you read carefully). Good battery performance so far. Traffic has been good. Tablet was already picking up its own GPS and WX. No noticeable improvement on those two things. Would be a world of difference for a tablet with no data plan. Rubber base worked well. Bluetooth connects within a minute with AHRS and GPS. No trouble. Can manually re-level so just place it on the dash and go fly. Then the bad: [ REVISED 01-29-2017 AFTER LEARNING HOW TO RE-CALIBRATE TO LEVEL. I mistakenly said "Does not auto-align AHRS" (see edit below).] Older style mini USB port so you can't just grab the micro USB cord off your phone. Rubber base covers the on/off switch but is so soft and flexible you have no trouble getting / working around that. EDIT: After reviewing the FAA "Advanced Avionics" book. I see that having a unit that does not auto align may be preferable in turbulence. If you have it mounted in such a way that is known level, it will not inadvertently self align with errors as you fly. I HAVE SINCE LEARNED HOW TO MANUALLY RE-LEVEL AND IT IS FANTASTIC! Tap the center of the attitude instrument to call up a menu on iFly GPS. For reference/perspective... CFI/II flying 5-10 lessons/wk instructing in club C172 and PA28-180 for my pre-solo students and IFR students in their own well appointed ships: Mooney TLS (steam gauges plus Sandel EHSI with backup attitude on it and an electric standby horizon besides) and he runs foreflight with a stratus so if we get lost in that plane it wasn't our day... RV 10 glass with 3-hole steam backups (A/S, A/H, ALT), and a cool little Sling running MGL glass with 3-hole steam backups. Running iFly GPS on my Samsung tablet. Was using internal GPS and data plan for WX. Main reason for buying was for AHRS and traffic. Secondary for backup on personal trips. When I bought the samsung, I thought foreflight and stratus would be available shortly thereafter but 3 years later... that stuff is still only for apple apparently. I have not linked it to my galaxy phone yet, just running on tablet. It is a little jerky compared to a vacuum attitude indicator but not really much different than panel mounted glass. May not be something you would solely rely on to begin an IFR flight, but to catch that insidiously slow vacuum failure and supplement your partial panel while declaring an emergency (or at least making a mandatory report of equip failure) getting turned towards best available weather... I would be thankful to have it. [I have done more flying in glass equipped machines since original post and am finding the differences to be nil] Have not used in actual IMC yet... (around here clouds have two seasons: ice or thunderstorms.) Have not tried to contact help/support. No need yet.

So I've had the XGPS 190 for a week now. Before this I owned the Dual GPS150 and GPS160....I fly everyday so I wanted a unit that would show traffic and work with my attitude indicator in my EFB.... IPAD with WingX..... Pros..... Unit works great at showing other aircraft ... Gps and ADS-B works great. Cons.... The rubber housing for the unit fits, but access holes are in the wrong place...can't access on/off switch...probably made for the gps170. The OFF/GPS/ADS-B selector does not distinguish between GPS and ADS-B.... When selecting GPS, the unit still displays ADS-B Traffic..... No app at the App Store for the XGPS 190.....so I downloaded and used the one for their Gps 170.... Now the worst offender- AHRS......it works perfect when I hold the unit in my hand .... I pitch down, my attitude indicator shows pitch down. Same for left and right banks. But it doesn't work in the plane. I can be climbing and the unit will show a descent ...it shows a turn in the opposite direction..... Totally useless and inaccurate..... I've tried resetting the attitude indicator, the unit and the app.... I've place the unit in different places. Nothing works. The AHRS is why I purchased the unit. An extra $400 when compared to the GPS170.... I'm convinced that Dual Customer Service Doesn't exist. Calls go straight to voicemail ... Leave a message and they won't call back. So I called the Vendor and they seem very helpful.... I'll probably exchange the unit for another..... So far the best part of this journey has been the help I have received from the seller...Sergio at Pacific Coast Avionics has been more than helpful and even made me laugh a couple of times. He's picked up the slack that Dual left. Standby for an update to this post.... Update ! Sorry for the wait....Unit 2 performed exactly like the first one. So I returned it. .....the XGPS 190 is not ready for prime time. So I'll wait for and update to this model.

I tried to get this unit to work with the Ipad app but it never would give a GPS position despite tracking 9 satellites. I drove around town for hours hoping it would figure out where it was, but it never did. I sent it back.

3 out of 4 features work when used with WingX pro7 on iPad mini: 1.traffic acquisition and I.d. is fine 2.GPS great 3.Weather updates good 4.AHRS (artificial horizon) is upside down when displayed on WingX pro. this has been a problem w/this product for sometime. If you fly below 18k feet and don't care about traffic at or above that altitude buy the dual xgps170. It does not have the 4th feature,but for vfr you don't need it. 30% cheaper too, if they still stock them.

I’ve had nothing but trouble with this unit. I continuously lose GPS satellite locks during flight meaning I have no GPS location. I’ve sent it back one to DUAL and the re installed the firmware. This seemed to work for a very short period. It works on the ground but often takes up to 20 minutes to lock onto satellites but will not work in the air at all even when the iPad internal GPS works fine as does a $99 Garmin Glo. The AHRS drifts so after a few hours of level flight it shows a 50 deg AOB. I’ve just returned it again and I’ve been told they will send me a completely New device.

Great product and works as advertised.

Problems staying connected. The GPS signal goes in and out. The xgps 160 is so much better.

AHRS does not work and is far from a "safe" attitude backup. Customer support is literally unreachable on day one. Day 2 Update: Customer service finally started corresponding (via email only). The email responses are taking about a 1-2 hours. They are working on a firmware fix to solve 2 issues that are causing AHRS to not work. They are hoping for something 2 weeks from now, but no specific info other than that. Latest and last update. No resolution and I'm annoyed that they are selling units even though they know the ARHS does not work. I've returned my unit and will look for a different brand.