Anyone with experience on the Mares XR BP/W?

[landphil]

It’s a BP/W, for a given wing size they will all pretty much all dive the same.

I thought the same thing- then I had my wife try out a BPW with a HOG backplate. She hated it. It just didn’t fit her shoulders right and was unstable. She couldn’t see how anyone could possibly dive it without a sternum strap. I put her on one of my Subgravity plates, which has the shoulder strap slots about 2” closer to each other than the HOG and she loved it.

And as a bonus, every time I suggest some gear change for her, she gets to dismiss it and bring up how wrong I was when I told her that all BPWs are the same.

 

[BZS]

I have the Mares XR 34 lb system for about 4ys/150+ dives. I purchased it with the original XR Alu backplate but later switched to the SS backplate (also Mares XR). So far no problems.
I like it very much for the same reasons pointed by Chavodel8en. Long and narrow profile, wouldn't stick out on sides, streamlined and no taco at all.
The integrated anti-roll bars do the job, but they a bit too short; attaching a tank in a rocking boat on a wavy sea may be somewhat tricky -- they are not sufficiently large to provide a good feel / support.
see the pic below.

To my opinion there is another design flaw when purchased and assembled with the XR plate without STA. See the pic below.

The plate reaches the red dashed line (behind the wing of course). Then, when the BP/W is mounted on a tank, the area between the yellow and red dashed lines gets PINCHED beween the tank and the metal backplate. This is bad - it reduces the available volume, and more severe - is may damage the bladder. The solution is simple: use STA as in the picture, so the tanke is slightly shifted away from the plate, just enough to free the pinched area of the wing.

I hope this helps...