A perdix is ridiculous for beginners...
You can just leave it in recreational mode. From what I've seen of it, it's pretty easy to use in that mode and you don't HAVE to use all the mixed gas and deco features. I assume the OP is a responsible adult and will do the sane thing with it at his current level of training and experience. At the very least, his wife is a responsible adult and will make sure of that (from my personal experience, this is more likely the case
).
Having said the above, everything below is gonna point towards not getting a Shearwater right now. They are most certainly worth lusting after (I certainly do) but consider what's below.
Especially if you're buying twice.
Dear lord, yes. +1000. Even used, a Shearwater is going to be close to the same cost of the entire rest of the setup and that can be hard to justify when you're spending as much money as you will at the start.
Get some cheap equivalent to a Zoop novo and pay yourself a dive trip with the money saved on those expensive computers.
I would agree. Regardless of Suunto or not, get one that does nitrox and just go diving. Used Zoops are aplenty on used gear sites and, from what I've seen, are still quite popular with vacation divers. You can always resell it if/when you decide to upgrade.
It's not ridiculous if you're going to end up buying one eventually anyway.
That's a big "if", right? I'm all for future proofing and "buy once, cry once" but this is a fair bit of money we're talking about here for something you don't even know you'll need.
Any computer with that kind of bright color screen is going to be WAY more readable in low viz, compared to a Zoop.
I've used a Zoop on a few night dives and never had an issue with it. It doesn't even have a backlight, just the luminescent dial and all I had to do was point my light at it for a couple of seconds and it was super easy to read.
@jgaryclark Computer decisions aside, here's some of my views on the rest of your gear you've listed.
- I think the Aqualung package at your shop is a bit pricey for what you're getting. I am a huge fan of used gear but not everyone is comfortable going that route. Are you committed to buying from your shop? The online options others have listed (DGX, DSS, Scubatoys) are worth a hard look.
- I had an Aqualung ABS octo and could not, for the life of me, get it to not freeflow during the dives. I took it to the shop and had it looked at twice to no avail. I heard the same thing from 2 other divers as well as one LDS, so my sample size is n=4.
- Regarding BP/W vs jacket BC, it's really hard to know whether you'll like one vs the other. Jackets are more familiar and feel "safer" due to it but BP/W is really easy to get used to. My wife and I switched to that when we had ~15 dives and with no training or mentoring on how to adjust the harness, were comfortable diving them in a couple of days. The other thing you sometimes hear is that if you're going to vacation locations primarily you'll mostly see jacket BCs and that's what the shops/guides/DMs are used to. I have never had issues with BP/W and even longhose on trips I've taken, even when they were changing out tanks, setting up for us, etc. Dive ops now are very familiar with this setup and many (most?) DM's I've seen dive some variation of it.
Mark, DRIS is my local shop, too. We've got mutual friends, although I'm not sure we've actually met yet.
