ahem....Well, I sold you on the Ranger, so now I'll sell you on the ReAct.
(if I'm not careful, I might make you into a diving clone of myself! =-)
Genesis Computers (and many of the other hocky pucks) are made by PPG, Palaegic Pressure Group (Mario, check me on this). If you were to set several of the different brands side by side, you would see that many models are very similar to one another. Case in point, the ReAct and Resource computers by Genesis are very similar to the DataMax by Oceanic.
As far as the conservativeness of the NDL's, so far I have not been in a situation where the NDL's hampered my my dives. So far air consumption on my blue water dives has been the limiting factor to my bottom time. And comparison of "this computer gave us "X" time while Brand B gave "Y"" is not a true apples to apples comparison. There are too many considerations in the dive profile to accurately "match" the computers against each other. It's even been shown to me personally that two computers of the same brand will report different NDL's base soley on where they are mounted on the diver. In this case, one was on a retracter on the right hand shoulder harness and the other on the divers wrist. Since the wrist was sometimes 1 foot lower than the harness computer, after sufficient time, the wrist computer became the more conservative (displaying less NDL time).
I have 20 dives so far with my ReAct and am very happy with it. The two buttons make accessing the settings and dive information very easy. And the displays are very easy to read. The rh button will "light up" the display and when I was on my night dive at the Flower Gardens, I could see it just fine.
One reason I chose the ReAct over the ReSource was the simpler layout of information (espeically when doing nitrox and deco diving). The React only has one bar graph which shows N2 limits when on air and a combined N2 and O2 limits when on Nitrox. I find this to be much simpler than interpreting two graphs like the Resource and others. Also since I eventually plan to diving that will require deco stops, The right hand deco stop bargraph makes it simple to determine where my first stop is and according to the manual, the deco run time will be prominently displayed.
I also like the fact that if I desire, I can download dive information using the seperate accessory. Currently I don't have the accessory but it is on my list of future toy purchases.
You said something about a Suunto going into a lockout. If you are pricing the ReAct at the shop that I think you are pricing it at (the free nitrox class gave it away), then this is a sales pitch, and you should get more details as to what caused the lockout.
According to the ReAct's user manual, it will lock you out, but only for an immediate violation. To quote the manual:
- The ReACT enters Immediate Violation Mode when a situation totally exceding its capacity to predict an ascent procedure. These dives represent groce excursions into decompression that are beyon the boundaries and spirit of the ReACT design and the ReACT should not be used for these types of dives.
Essentially, you purposely entered into the realm of serious technical deco diving and the ReACT is not the computer for this type of diving. And the lock out is the computers way of telling you, "You got dangerous, are lucky to have ascended without geting a DCS hit, and are done diving for the day."
With that said, if you follow safe diving practices and "dive within the green" (keeping the NDL graph in the green zone), the you will have no worries.
Summary: The ReACT is a good choice for your basic air/nitrox computer and I recommend it highly.
Gear Buying Tip: Do what I did when I was evaulating which computer to purchase. I talked Harold at Sand & Sea Scuba into letting me borrow the user manuals for the computers that I was considering. This way I could see how they displayed dive information and what it took to change the settings or see additional info.
Oh, and about that free nitrox class....while this is a good selling point, I recommend that you wait until you get your 15th or so dive into your log book. You already have a lot to keep in mind on your next set of dives and you need to get these things down cold. Then you can add nitrox to your tool box.