Belzelbub
Contributor
I picked up a Garmin MK2s last month to use as an activity/smart watch as well as a backup to my Perdix AI. No complaints from an activity/smart watch perspective. Does everything I want it to and then some, but since this is a dive site, I’ll focus on the diving features.
So far I’ve done 9 dives with it. On eight of those dives I also wore my Perdix AI.
Usabilty: Menu and settings are not quite as intuitive as the Shearwater, but it’s easy enough to use. I think my initial hesitations were around too many options. It was easy enough to hide many of the widgets to make it more user friendly. The manual is not as thorough as the Perdix manuals. It tells you enough to use it, but doesn’t go into all the options available in each function.
Diving Setup: I was able to quickly set it up the way I wanted. GF at 40/85 which is what I use on my Perdix as well. Default setup has three dive screens that can be scrolled through by using a button, or tapping the screen. I made some changes right away. I reordered the three screens to move the compass screen to position 3, then started looking at the data. Depth and NDL is shown on each of the screens, which is good. What I didn’t care for was temp was shown on the main screen. I don’t really have a need to always know the temp, then I realized this field was configurable, so I started scrolling through what I could put here. I found it has SurfGF, which I’m a big fan of, so I set that and moved temperature to the secondary dive screen. I also disabled all audio alarms and kept some haptic alerts. I also turned off the lockout as I’m not a fan of that. I can make my own decisions based on the data I’m presented with.
Diving: I did one dive using just the Garmin. Data was easy to understand after the configuration changes I made. Next eight dives were done with my Perdix AI on my other wrist. I was checking both periodically to see how they tracked to each other. For the most part, they were spot on. NDLs agreed, depth sensors agreed, SurfGF agreed as well. I think I only saw at most a 1% difference at one point, but it was only at one point and they realigned shortly after. Definitely close enough for me. The only significant difference I noted was that the ascent rate alert seems real sensitive. I didn’t see any ascents in the red on my Perdix, but the Garmin buzzed a few times. That was my only real complaint. Post dive, my ascent rate averages were well below 30’/min. Seems like the Garmin may use a smaller timeframe to alert.
Post Dive: Surface Interval widget is nice. Tissue loading chart is a vertical bar chart instead of the horizontal one on the Perdix. Though the data was presented differently, they appeared to agree with each other.
Overall: Only the one minor complaint with the ascent rate alarm. Other than that, it does exactly what I wanted it to do. Battery life seems sufficient. On a typical week, I usually only need to charge once. Diving and other activities use more power, so heavy use will require more frequent charging, but it will still last several days.
So far I’ve done 9 dives with it. On eight of those dives I also wore my Perdix AI.
Usabilty: Menu and settings are not quite as intuitive as the Shearwater, but it’s easy enough to use. I think my initial hesitations were around too many options. It was easy enough to hide many of the widgets to make it more user friendly. The manual is not as thorough as the Perdix manuals. It tells you enough to use it, but doesn’t go into all the options available in each function.
Diving Setup: I was able to quickly set it up the way I wanted. GF at 40/85 which is what I use on my Perdix as well. Default setup has three dive screens that can be scrolled through by using a button, or tapping the screen. I made some changes right away. I reordered the three screens to move the compass screen to position 3, then started looking at the data. Depth and NDL is shown on each of the screens, which is good. What I didn’t care for was temp was shown on the main screen. I don’t really have a need to always know the temp, then I realized this field was configurable, so I started scrolling through what I could put here. I found it has SurfGF, which I’m a big fan of, so I set that and moved temperature to the secondary dive screen. I also disabled all audio alarms and kept some haptic alerts. I also turned off the lockout as I’m not a fan of that. I can make my own decisions based on the data I’m presented with.
Diving: I did one dive using just the Garmin. Data was easy to understand after the configuration changes I made. Next eight dives were done with my Perdix AI on my other wrist. I was checking both periodically to see how they tracked to each other. For the most part, they were spot on. NDLs agreed, depth sensors agreed, SurfGF agreed as well. I think I only saw at most a 1% difference at one point, but it was only at one point and they realigned shortly after. Definitely close enough for me. The only significant difference I noted was that the ascent rate alert seems real sensitive. I didn’t see any ascents in the red on my Perdix, but the Garmin buzzed a few times. That was my only real complaint. Post dive, my ascent rate averages were well below 30’/min. Seems like the Garmin may use a smaller timeframe to alert.
Post Dive: Surface Interval widget is nice. Tissue loading chart is a vertical bar chart instead of the horizontal one on the Perdix. Though the data was presented differently, they appeared to agree with each other.
Overall: Only the one minor complaint with the ascent rate alarm. Other than that, it does exactly what I wanted it to do. Battery life seems sufficient. On a typical week, I usually only need to charge once. Diving and other activities use more power, so heavy use will require more frequent charging, but it will still last several days.
