Reasons to buy the Peregrine:
- resale value if you decide to stop diving
- MUCH easier to read than the Aladin
- arguably, actually simpler to use than the Aladin
- no o-ring to mess up because no battery to change
Feedback on recent two-tank and dive limits
- Thread starter lizzzzz
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old frogman
Contributor
Most persons entering recreational scuba diving are young and do not have a lot of disposable income so the Aladin 1 or similar is a great option.
Aladin 1 is simple to use.
Aladin 1 is easy to read. If visually challenged, you can purchase a bifocal mask, then you can read any instrument, dive computer, contents gauge and compass, underwater notes, etc.
Resale value of any diving equipment is not really a persuasive argument. Diving equipment depreciates very quickly so if you buy a Peregrine, you will lose more money that if you buy an Aladin or equivalent.
Replaceable battery is logistically more resilient in the field where an AC power point may not be available for the charger or the voltage in a particular country may not be compatible with the charger.
You do not need Ferrari for your daily commuter. Do more with less and keep it simple.
Blackcrusader
Contributor
I've met people with Apple watches and Garmins who do not dive. Should I tell them to buy a simpler device and do more with less? $500 nowadays is disposable income.
It's not up to you what DC use as a diver. Many people starting diving don't even own a DC they just rent whatever the dive op has. A lot of the time that is the Suunto Vyper. Of course for newer divers who are not doing deep dives all they need is some grey matter, knowledge of tables, and do some calculations. AS for KISS Keep It Shallow Stupid seems to work.
To keep it simple I tell them to buy my Sharewater DC. Batteries not required and very cheap.
Because the Peregrine is a better computer. It is easier to read. It carries a lot more information. The TX version does AI.
I dove a Leonardo for a few years when I got back in diving. Cheap. Does Nitrox. Those backlit monochrome watch-type are hard to read unless in perfect conditions. When I got tired of that, I used my Apple Watch. Colour, bright. Easy to use. I upgraded to a Peregrine TX because I wanted something that gave me all the info I wanted on a single screen. And I wanted AI.
I mean, I used to dive with a dive watch, depth gauge, tables. Single second stage and J-valve. Maybe we should just go back to that.
David Carron
Contributor
Let's unpack that a little bit. I presume that you're not making any sort of value judgement on the underlying decompression model when you describe a peregrin as better but are more commenting on the direct usability of the computer.
A peregrine certainly does display a lot more information but, at the end of the day, it's actually displaying more information than is useful for or even usable to a standard "rec" diver who really only cares about depth, total dive time and remaining NDL. I believe that @old frogman's point is very much that this extra, not useful information is actively harmful.
Air-integration may or may not be actually useful. In my experience of "rec" divers, running out of NDL happens well before running out of gas and in any case, checking air on a separate pressure gauge is really scuba-101.
It might very well be that a big, bright screen or air integration is shiny enough in the eyes of a "rec" diver to warrant the extra expense and potential information overload, but it may also be that we've all been marketed into believing that we need stuff that we actually don't.
Belzelbub
Contributor
That's a fair point. If the diver can't afford a Peregrine or something along those lines, then looking at less expensive options is fine. And probably a good idea. Buy something cheap to get by, then look at where the diver wants to go and what can help get them there.
The Shearwaters are ridiculously easy to use. There is a very good manual, and even that is not fully required to use out of the box. The UI is quite intuitive. I've handed my Perdix to a friend with no instruction other than how to turn it on so he could see how easy it was to navigate. He wanted to see about changing mix and had that figured out in under a minute. He bought a Perdix 2 a little while back.
Not as easy to read/see as the full color Peregrine.
That sounds like something an Aladin 1 user would say. Resale value of an Aladin probably doesn't hold up too well. The Shearwaters seem to hold value well, and are in demand, so they usually don't last too long.
Probably moot. The Peregrine battery holds a charge well. Might be an issue if diving in real remote areas, but for the "vast majority of divers" this isn't going to be a problem.
Belzelbub
Contributor
The Tech display in Shearwaters is quite a but busier, but not available in the Peregrine. The pic below was posted earlier and shows what is displayed on a Peregrine.
The two sections to the right of Air on the bottom line are user configurable. It can be anything you want, or nothing if that's all that you want. If using a TX, then the pressure is likely good to display there.
David Carron
Contributor
That actually seems like quite a simple display, but it seems likely that losing the entire bottom row would simplify things for your average "rec" diver (for whom this is basically all irrelevant) without removing anything really important.
In addition, there is a distinct cost associated with these large colorful displays which is inherent in the display technology itself. A typical seven-segment-style LCD display's power consumption can be rounded up to around 1mA, whereas a good blanview-type display - as used in shearwaters for example - is between two and three orders of magnitude greater and represents the lion's share of the battery usage, changing "might need to change the battery next year. or maybe the year after" to "always need to at least consider the battery before diving"
Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that there are situations where all of this, and more, is potentially relevant. I'm really just trying to summarise what I think is @old frogman's position.
"Important" is relative. I have a TX, my first column is info related to my dive time. Pressure, TTS and GTR. Second is just info, interesting but not vital. Water temp, MOD and SAC.
At medium brightness, which is quite bright, a Peregrine TX will last 30 hours. For most rec divers that's 30 dives. For your typical week, that's 5 dives a day. Likely more on days 1-5 because most of us stop mid day n day 6 to accommodate the 18-24 hour surface interval. The induction charger is USB. WHo of us does not travel with a few USB chargers?
David Carron
Contributor
This is really very interesting to me and, again, don't get me wrong: I'm just trying to summarise my understanding of @old frogman's position.
Realistically, the TTS for a "rec" diver is between one and three (all cases round to two, realistically) minutes of ascent plus the safety stop duration: you might just as well display only the safety stop duration instead of displaying both. I've already covered GTR (which I assume is gas time remaining) as in the overwhelming majority of cases rec divers will run out of NDL well before running out of gas, and in any case "surface when you hit reserve" is at least a good a rule as "try to get down to the last few bars in the tank". Water temp, well, it doesn't do any harm except perhaps begin unnecessary, but it also doesn't do any good: it's not like you can do anything about it or - unless you know better than your computer - somehow integrate it into your own parallel deco calculations.
I'm sure that peregrines do a splendid job of optimising power consumption but the datasheets and experience should be telling you those bright displays result in a machine for which battery life becomes a thing which must be taken into account as opposed to a typical black-on-grey display for which it simply isn't. A killer thing? probably not. Just a thing which you're either willing to live with given the (marketed or real) advantages or you're not.
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