Bryan, Mares is known in the recreational market for the go to cost effective dive equipment and hence many dive shops use Mares for their rental equipment. Is the quality for the XR range at par or close to the others such as Hollis and Apeks? Specially the wings?
I have been using the XR line for over a year now, in multiple capacities. From overhead environments, haz-matic waters, cold water, and even in warm tropical waters. Testing the material on the single bladder system with multiple detergents, a must when you dive in sewers like I do, and all seem to not have any negative effect on the material. With the backing of HEAD, Mares has really spent a ton of money on the R&D side of manufacturing gear. Recently I snagged the bladder on my XR Single Bladder during a recent Public Safety Training Event, and had to remove my gear to get free. This included tugging and tugging to get it free, and thankfully I had no frays, or any signs of wear and tear on the wing. In my opinion, the quality is very high, and meets all others if not exceeds. Now all this being said, I will give you a little industry secret. 9 out of 10 times, most manufactures buy their material from the same place. Meaning, the material on the Mares XR gear, is quite possibly the same as Hollis, Zeagle, Halcyon, OMS, etc. Purely speculation on my part, especially with the manufacture names, but I will say, I have heard and seen things in the industry that leads me to believe this being the case, WINK, WINK. Hope this answers your question, with out me sounding one sided towards Mares.
Note: Mares in the past, unfortunately never had a MAP system for their dealers to follow, so dealers could sell the gear dirt cheap. This is part of the problem why divers thinking Mares is an inferior company. Even with some of the down falls they had like the original MRS weight system, the perception that the whole company is bad or inferior because of a bad design flaw is way off base. I've been very fortunate to dive and sell practically every gear manufacture on the market, at least all the big boys, and I love it all. And at some point in time, I could easily pick out a product from any line, and show flaws or down falls in that particular piece of gear. One bad apple doesn't make the whole tree bad. One bad piece of gear doesn't make the whole company bad. I will give you an example. Back in the day, I sold Sherwood, and when the SR1 first came out on the market, it was really talked up by Sherwood (Peter Skop Industries) as the greatest improvement in regulator designs. It was also Sherwood's first real high performing regulator. Unfortunately, they rushed it out on the market to compete with other companies like Aqua Lung, Zeagle, Atomic, etc. In return, it had so many down falls, is was pure junk. I personally owned 2 of them, and the first stage on both literally exploded as soon as I turned the tank on. Now to me, this was a very bad design and good for nothing more than a paper weight. But I still love Sherwood, and personally own 4 Sherwood regulators, all from the late 80's early 90's. To this day, my oldest daughter, who is 6, uses a Sherwood BCD, and a Sherwood Regulator from the 1980's (my first regulator).