UCFDiver85 once bubbled...
Another question....I'm a newly certified diver....would a wrist mount or console be a better investment. Also, is there anything that a console can do that a wrist mount can't? Any price differences?
To answer your first question, my old dive computer died last year and after shopping around, I replaced it with a Suunto Vyper, console mount. It should be within your price range if you shop around. FWIW, I wouldn't buy a UWATEC because they've done poorly with their product safety recalls IMO.
Insofar as your question of wrist-vs-console, I prefer console. There's a couple of reasons for this.
First, you're going to have a console anyway, unless you're going to go with a statistically less reliable and always more expensive hoseless AI computer. As such, the question then becomes "why not put everything in one spot?"
Some people will correctly point out that an "everything" console can get pretty huge. This is true, but you can also avoid this by keeping it in mind while shopping....and if you like the Suunto, consider the air-integrated Cobra, which makes for a smaller console package (BTW, Suunto offers a console-integrated compass...it goes together well).
Now some wrist advocates will claim they like wrist better for various reasons, with one of the more common ones being the IMO lame "dragging console" excuse. Well, if you have a console for your SPG anyway, yoiu're going to have the "draggy problem" that needs solving anyway, and figuring out how to best clip up a console isn't hard or expensive.
Insofar as things that "a console can do that a wrist can't", the simple answer is that there's really not much of a difference. IMO, I like the consolidation of information organization to one location, because what I've found with a console is that whenever I think about checking one of my gages, the presence of the rest of them means that I end up checking them all, and IMO that's a good thing.
Wrist mounts can also get in the way if you bug hunt and need to reach into holes without getting your hand jambed. But what personally bothers me the most about wrist mounts is that they are one more loose piece of gear topside that I need to not accidentally misplace or lose...or get mixed up with my buddy who has the same make/model.
Its really what I've seen happen to wristmount dive computers over the years that makes me reluctant to change:
1) An unsecured wristmount that leaped to the deck when the diveboat started to roll, and it skiddered for the transom, to try to make a solo dive to the bottom (fortunately, we grabbed it in time).
2) "Same model" confusion: two divers accidentally put on each other's wristmount computer and almost start their second dive with each others' residual nitrogen profiles. The only reason that the problem was detected before the dive was because of a break in the wrist strap that the one diver said "Hey, what's this?"
3) "It was there when I went in the water!" broken wriststrap (complete loss).
4) Any time the diver's wearing thermal protection, the wristmout dive computer has to be put on after the top's been put on...you can't put it on early and then expect to stick your arm through a (non-zippered) wetsuit sleeve, or through a drysuit seal. This restriction constrains the order in which you prepare for your dive and it is one more workload task that can only be done at "the last minute", and needs to be weighed against putting your suit on too early and overheating. The less rushed you are in your gear setups, the less likely you are to make a mistake, so I say "Wrist Mount? No thanks!"
But its your choice.
-hh
