Review of the Cressi, Leonardo underwater dive computer.

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Asteve

Contributor
Messages
151
Reaction score
58
Location
Colorado, USA
# of dives
200 - 499
Review of the Cressi, Leonardo underwater dive computer.

Background - I bought this computer for my March 2015 trip to Cozumel.

The Leonardo Underwater Dive Computer was a match made in hell - So,you will know were I am coming from.

Let's get started with the manual. I think of the DC as life support equipment. So,no lawyer speak, thank you. If a company is not willing to pay for a good translation shame on them.

I will start with the Warnings -

Page 5 “WARNING: this instrument is designed to be a dive aid and does not replace the use of the dive tables.”

I have read that tables are being dropped from the OW curriculum, therefore, your training will not allow you to use this computer. If this DC is an aid for dive tables, I can not find any tables that are more conservative than this DC, so how is this DC going to aid me in following the tables, I would put this DC into 48 hours lock-out all the time. Why have it? Why would an aid disable itself?

Page 6 “WARNING: While diving, be equipped with a depth gauge, a manometer, a diving timer or watch and dive tables. Please always check your diving cylinders’ pressure to be fit to the planned dive and, while diving, often check the cylinders’ air capacity by means of your manometer.”

How many of you dive with a manometer? Poor translation.

Page 9: “WARNING: Currently, no validated scientific literature allows to dive more than twice a day for periods of one or more weeks without the risk of decompression sickness. For your own safety, it is important to avoid diving for more than two times a day. A rest of at least 2 hours between two subsequent dives is mandatory. The next/repetitive dive shall be shallower and its minimum duration shall be 15 minutes.”

How many of you do more then 2 dives a day when on a week long vacation? This should have been a deal breaker. Shame on me, I did not read the warnings before I bought it. I did read the manual. As life support equipment I should be willing to follow the rules, they have laid down for this device. I did not. Is this device teaching bad habits or I am I just a dangerous diver doing more then 2 dives a day and not following the warning?

Page 45 “DANGER: Surfacing too fast dramatically increases the risk of decompression sickness. Cressi recommends, at the end of each dive,a safety stop of 3 minutes at 10 ft– 20 ft., …........”

At 20 ft. the computer can put you into deco. I will expand on this later It should be 19 feet. Poor translation.

OK. Now how was it on dives? Background - I did 4 dives a day for 4 days and 5 dives on the 5th day (a night dive). This left 3 days before flying. I did 2 dives in the morning and back to the resort and catch the afternoon boat for 2 more dives. Normally about 2 plus hours Surface Interval between morning dives and afternoon dives.

First dive of the day, The computer did the dive at depth as other did. All 5 days.

Second dive of the day, It was rare to get more then 1 hour SI between 1st and 2nd dive. The same was true of the 3rd and 4th dive. Normally a 45 to 55 minutes dive. I would get about 2/3 of the way thru the dive before I needed to start following the deco time up. I would have to go to 19 feet before it would not put me in deco. At 20 feet it will continue to reduce the time to deco, move up to 19 feet and you would have 99 minutes (max display reading). I did not try it but if I had dove tables like the “Warning” said too, that allow me to stay down at 30 feet, I am guessing it would have gone into deco and if I did not do the deco stop it would locked me out for 48 hours.

Third dive of the day. About 50% of the time I could do the whole dive with the other diver, the other I would follow the deco time up.

The 3rd and 4thdive of the trip. I was the odd man out on the boat, all the rest were diving together. ( the only time I was with them.). It was agreed that we would do the 3rd dive ( at 55 to 60 feet)and move the boat 100 yards and do the 4th dive. (at 25 to 35 feet.). With only a 15 minutes SI, knowing the tables, I did not see this as a problem. Guess who did over half the dive at 19 feet. Even with longer SI, I never got more then half the 4thdive at the bottom where everyone else was.

Other things that were poor :

The depth reading updates were slow and only reads in whole feet. Trying to hold your depth at 15 feet using the gauge was hard. I had a watch that also had gauge mode that updates a lot faster and reads in tenths easy to hold depth using it. My next DC will read out in tenths and update quicker.

The DC back-light to read the gauge at night did not make it readable.

I could not hear the alarm, I have some high frequency hearing loss.

The scratch guard over the face of the gauge would make it hard to read the gauge on the surface, after a dive with water drops on the back side of scratch guard.

During the week I put the DC into deco twice. When I got home and downloaded the dives, the graph shows that I went into deco 5 times. I know that the DC did not show the other 3 decos when I was diving and when I got above 30 feet, I started to play with the DC and time to deco. I would be at 28 feet and watch the deco time go to 0. If you raised the depth above 28 ft. to say 26 ft before the display updated it would not show a deco stop was needed, but when DC was down loaded to the PC,when ever I hit 0 time to deco it show I needed a deco stop. In one case it showed me coming up without satisfying the deco obligation.Again I was never locked out from diving or had warning at the end of a dive on the DC.

Pre-dive plan numbers
Depth in Ft-----29----30------35-------39------40------49--50--58--60--68--70--78--80--88--90--97--100--107--110--117 --120--126--130
Leonardo-------99*---------------------99*--------------68-------49-------37--------28------21 ------17-----------14---------11-----------09
US Navy 2008 -------371-----232-------------163-----------92--------60------48--------39-------30--------25----------20 ---------15----------10
PADI 1987---------------------205 -------------140-----------80--------55------40--------30-------25--------20----------16----------13----------10
* max the DC will display

I like to do my diving at the 25 to 70 foot range, from the above you can see why this was a bad DC for me. At the 50 foot level I am giving up 12 to 24 minutes of bottom time.

Well now that I have gotten all that off my chest.

The good:
It comes in a lot of colors.
14.gif

The gauge was easy to read underwater.
The battery lasted the whole week.
The strap was long enough to fit over a wet suit.
The one button takes a little learning but no big deal.
The software and download worked well. The setup on a Windows 7 was easy. It is interesting to look at the dive profile and how much I moved around.
I did not get bent diving this computer.
 
I've used a leonardo on my last 150 dives, often multiple dives in a day, and other than a battery change at about the 100 dive mark, it has worked perfect, in air mode, in nitrox mode, multiple dives to over 100 ft, and has usually been very close to the NDL times of my dive buddies computer (maybe slightly more conservative) . It is easy to read at depth. For the money which is reasonable, it is more than adequate for a recreational dive computer!
 
...... The depth reading ..... only reads in whole feet. ...... My next DC will read out in tenths ......
I am not aware of any dive computer that shows depth in tenths of feet. That would be ~3 mBar ... a wave's ripple at the surface?
 
I am not aware of any dive computer that shows depth in tenths of feet. That would be ~3 mBar ... a wave's ripple at the surface?

I was looking at the Shearwater Petrel last night and noticed that it only did whole feet.
Thanks that will save me some time looking for one.

---------- Post added March 19th, 2015 at 12:29 PM ----------

I've used a leonardo on my last 150 dives, often multiple dives in a day, and other than a battery change at about the 100 dive mark, it has worked perfect, in air mode, in nitrox mode, multiple dives to over 100 ft, and has usually been very close to the NDL times of my dive buddies computer (maybe slightly more conservative) . It is easy to read at depth. For the money which is reasonable, it is more than adequate for a recreational dive computer!

I am glad you like yours. I had a DM on one of the dives in Cozumel I did and at the end of the dive, He asked what DC I was using, he said he had one and could not lead dives with it as he could not stay with the group. He said he ended up gaming it so he could lead groups until he could replace it.
 
You might want to read RonR's post in the "suunto algorithm question" thread.
 
Definitely don't get a Petrel.

It only comes in one color.
It has two buttons.
People have been bent while diving one.

If you do buy one, send it to me for your own safety.
 
You might want to read RonR's post in the "suunto algorithm question" thread.

I had read that earlier and left a thanks. I have reread it now and not sure what you are trying to saying.
I do not plan and do not think anyone should game a DC if that was it.
I did have another thought about my problem and that is get nitrox trained and then I could used the above DC and get the times I want with nitrox, But I would still have problems about more then 2 dive per days over a weeks time with this computer.
 
You do know you can adjust the leonardo to make it more or less conservative right? Not sure I get your multi dive, multi day question? I've used it like this countless times, with zero issues, and using nitrox is pretty straight forward , analyze your bottle, dial the percentage into the leonardo, and it gives the exact same mods as any other computer. I just dove Farnsworth bank on nitrox the same percentage as three other guys I was diving with all with different computers, and I was withing about 4 minutes on my deco to everyone else, not enough to sweat or care on a rec dive
 
I have reread it now and not sure what you are trying to saying.

Just a couple of things came to mind. One is his assertion that shallow repetitive dives are the kind where proprietary RGBM implementations tend to be noticeably "more conservative" then the alternatives. And that sometimes you can "game it" by just adding a minute to your SI -- e.g. be last off the boat. Or by turning on deep stop -- it seems the pro-DS results are from long shallow dives, too.

FWIW so far when we're the first up it's because my buddy's manometer said so, not because our Leonardos did. So I'm with jscan1 on this one.
 
Sorry but I think you confuse a lot of stuff and you are new to diving or at least you don't get it together

The Leonardo is a great computer for the money I used it for the last 127 dives and I dive a lot under 130 feet and get a lot in to deco and he handles it very well,

The manual says that the computer is not designed to do deco dives but he will handle it as good as he can.

And he does it well.

You don't need a petrel, and learn tables is not a bad thing.

And there is no 48 hr block for diving deco dives


About the ndl get mares or suntoo,
I get larger ndl times compared to buddy's with them (include the Aladin 2g)
 
Last edited:
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom