Descent Mk2 owners - How dependable is it after daily surface use?

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JXT71

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Messages
56
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48
Location
California
# of dives
200 - 499
I've had one of the Garmin Tactix watches for a few years now. I really like it. It does all the fancy stuff it's advertised to - like telling the time (AND date!). The GPS in particular is very useful for my job around forest fires where pathfinding, navigation, and relaying of coordinates and area calculations is important. Having an extra compass and altimeter built along with that is just icing on the cake.
More impressive to me is that it does all this after I've subjected it to dirt, gravel, mud, volcanic dust, tree sap, physical trauma, blood, hot ash, fire, and even a shallow dive or two. It still tells me the time (AND date!) and can cough up a perfectly usable GPS location. I have not been kind to the sapphire screen, and that thing looks as pristine as the day I took it out of the box.

So now the important question: Would you Mk2 owners trust your watch and the information it gives you as a primary computer on a technical dive after daily use and repeated exposure as described above?

As I start to eyeball technical diving again, I need a backup computer that can at least go into gauge mode - and ideally give me workable info if my Perdix AI decides to not play anymore while underwater. If I was able to shove a depth gauge into my Tactix watch and use that, I would. Unfortunately Garmin seems to be pursuing the tacti-cool route with the line, so now I'm taking a second look at the Descent. I plan to use it as a backup computer for technical diving in addition to a daily-use smartwatch that does everything my current one does... but it needs to be able to endure what i typically subject my Tactix to.

Edit: I'm aware of @Hoag posting an eerily similar question earlier today, but I think mine is just different enough to keep it as its own thread.
 
I think you could be a little overthinking. I am wearing dive computer watch in daily use since the early days of they were available. I never had any problems but I heard from some others who uses them only for diving having problems. Weak spots for most modern DC are the battery, depth sensor and the buttons. If you use your Descent daily, chances are that you may wear out one of the buttons over time or your battery may wear out. Most of the modern DC are just consumer electronics with expiry date on them. So, I rather have one that I use everyday and get my moneys worth until it will quit on me and there is no way I can predict when that could be.
 
Mine has been used for many months of rock climbs scraping and bouncing along the walls as I climb..and as I fall. It has hit metal carts in my shop and I have hit many walls with it being carless walking. It has gone on many days rides on atvs where it is rattling for hours and it went with me off an atv and smacked the ground as I rolled. It has fell of my desk on to porcelain tile and out of my car on to pavement. It has been on somewhere nearing 50 days of snowboarding with many falls that hurt my body but not the watch. It has had hours upon hours of pool use and somewhere around 150 dives.

It looks a little worn and as my daily wear and the sapphire glass has a small scratch and the bezel that I have to try hard to notice. It also has some dings but it still works great and functions as expected.

But you could get one and it could break on the first drop, electronics are so random.
 
I've used my Mk2i as a daily wearer doing a lot of stuff: cycling, hiking, backpacking, timing cooks in my insanely hot pizza oven. I can't say that I beat it up, but it doesn't have a life quietly sitting in a corner either. Through all of these things, it has been incredibly reliable both above the water and below. I'm honestly more worried about wearing out the strap than I am about breaking the watch.

The Descents really are brilliant adventure watches. I used mine as my primary GPS on a backpacking trip last summer, and it performed brilliantly. I had a reliable location on a great map, timeline projections to help me estimate my travel time, awesome health metrics to track my performance, and a reassuring integration with my inReach in case of emergency. I even regretted bringing along my Oregon GPS just because it added unnecessary weight. I still find it both remarkable and weird that my dive computer of all things could be so insanely versatile, but I'm not complaining.

Since that trip, I've probably done 40-50 dives without it missing a beat.
 
Have had my mk2i for 6 months. Use it daily. Tracks cycling, swimming, running, and gym workouts. Aside from a small scratch on the bezel from a wreck dive, no damage that I can see. Has been perfectly fine on every dive. It really is an incredible piece of technology. It's insanely expensive, but it is awesome.
 
Ive used many versions garmin products over the years. Ive had my MK2i for about a year and use it for all adventures, But, im starting to lean away from it for diving.. For me, the screen is just a touch too small for diving and the overall size is just a touch too big for the outdoor stiff. I'll probably end up switching to shearwater for diving and the 945 for outdoor watch.
 
I wear my Mk2i Daily and it is my primary dive computer. It has several hundred pool/instruction dives and 140 open water dives. Never had any issue with the computer at all. I did have a transmitter that needed a firmware update and it would intermittently stop reading tank pressure. I knew the updated was needed but in the pool I didn't much care, once the update was complete it has functioned flawlessly again.

I dive dark water consistently and I can read my wifes and kids tanks from well over the advertised 30' distance. At one point I lost my wife at 90 feet and did a quick buddy search and surfaced. She was a couple minutes behind in noticing that we were split. I was reading her tank pressure from the surface while she was still 90' under me and about 30' west based on her bubbles.
 
I have the Descent MK2i and like others wear it as my daily watch as well. I am a diver as well as a hiker/Mountaineer and this watch replaced my Casio watch/altimeter and I haven't looked back. Its rugged and dependable and has so many functions which just make daily workouts better and tracking of them all. Its a rockstar on dives and I am so happy to have given my old ProPlus 4.0 to my daughter. Highly recommend as it works flawlessly at depth, at elevation and at a desk. For dives, I have an attachment which goes over the Bezel (found on amazon for like 10 bucks) to keep it looking new.

Can't say enough good things about the Descent MK2i.
 
I've been wearing mine pretty much 24 hours a day since I bought it more than a year ago. Among other non-diving activities (hiking, skiing, golf, etc), I use it during my daily 15 mile mountain bike ride. This ride subjects the watch to some serious vibrations. The vibration makes my hands go numb but the watch has worked flawlessly. It's a fantastic fitness tracker that also happens to be a great dive computer. Or is it the other way around?

I wouldn't hesitate to use it as a backup to your Perdix AI. I'm not a "technical" diver so I can't say if I'd use it as a primary for those dives.
 

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