How many of you have had a dive computer fail?

[mikeycanuk]

Not tech divers but the 3 of us have all the same gear. My wife's Cobalt with 2 dives got replaced when a button failed. A Zoop died and was replaced ( ~50dives) Just got a brand new BUD in the mail the other day (got 23 dives on that one)

33% Failure rate?


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[scoobydrew]

8 years diving with a suunto vyper, 6 of those years diving professionally pretty much every day mutiple times, no problem still works perfectly

 

[Bert van den Berg]

Not tech divers but the 3 of us have all the same gear. My wife's Cobalt with 2 dives got replaced when a button failed. A Zoop died and was replaced ( ~50dives) Just got a brand new BUD in the mail the other day (got 23 dives on that one)

33% Failure rate?


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2 out of 3 looks like a 66.6% failure rate to me. Did the manufacturer take care of them under the warranty? Seems like 2 or 50 dives is not very good!

Regards,

Bert

 

[Locus]

Interesting thread. A few weeks back I was surprised to read that, "Dive computers are one of the least reliable of consumer electronics with failure rates as high as 10 percent or more." (Diver Magazine, Volume 38 #6, pg. 22)

Diver did not cite a source for this figure. It was placed in a feature on Liquivision founder Eric Fattah.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Had a few Oceanic computers replaced. No quibbles.. just replaced them. Now we have Uatecs. I had mine refuse to turn on while I was overseas but had my Oceanic as a backup so didn't bother me. It was a battery issue. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't get them to replace the battery before the trip since I figured it would be getting too low fairly soon. Apparently it wasn't low enough yet for them. I think the cold water diving was too much for it:doh: No failures during dives tho.

I did just have my Uatec checked after it logged a 119M dive in a 3M pool! Turned out to be a poor battery connection and the battery was getting low anyway so they replaced it. All ready for my next trip now

On dive trips we bring my Oceanic as a spare in case it is needed. When I am diving in North America I have both computers hooked up. That way I can monitor my computer in Metric which I am used to and I can indicate in Imperial to my buddy. I don't have to do the math (not my strong suit) and we are both looking at systems that make sense to us!

Around home I consider my buddy to have my redundant computer unless we are doing something more challenging than our normal relatively shallow OW dives.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Interesting thread. A few weeks back I was surprised to read that, "Dive computers are one of the least reliable of consumer electronics with failure rates as high as 10 percent or more." (Diver Magazine, Volume 38 #6, pg. 22)

Diver did not cite a source for this figure. It was placed in a feature on Liquivision founder Eric Fattah.

I would not be surprised to learn that X1s dropping like flies made up a major piece of that 10% or more.

 

[Searcaigh]

Suunto Companion, no issues over the 2 two years I used it, then replaced it with a Suunto Solution alpha, then replaced the Solution alpha with a Vyper 8 years later when I started Nitrox and no issues with that either 10 years on.

I have also been running a Vytec over the past 3 years with the Vyper for redundancy, no issues.

 

[mathauck0814]

I had a Tusa computer that would somehow end up with a weird connection problem deeper than 100 feet (the display would go black or flicker, but then come back). It seems the computer was running its algorithm but not displaying it as I would ascend and the data would come back to light.

My first Shearwater Predator (stand alone for open circuit) had the right button fail which made it impossible to do a gas switch on a dive. I ended up just doing my deco on back gas (thankfully it wasn't much of a dive) and then sent it in for repairs. Did not have a second SW on that dive, but did have timer/table cut in my wetnotes if things went completely TU.

Not sure you can pin it on the computer, but I've had my Shearwater Predator handset "fail" when the fischer cable connector stopped receiving data from my cells. Not a big deal as I run a backup PPO2 monitor and have a Petrel standalone "bailout" computer on the other arm. Computers are pretty solid...

 

[mikeycanuk]

2 out of 3 looks like a 66.6% failure rate to me. Did the manufacturer take care of them under the warranty? Seems like 2 or 50 dives is not very good!

Regards,

Bert

I look at the fact that since we have 3 of each computer and one of each failed to get the 33% rate. I do see how you got your figures though. Yes, all under warranty. I did have to pay to ship them down to the manufacturer. Nice thing about Atomic is they sent a brand new boxed Cobalt. The spare hose came in handy a few weeks back when the o ring blew on the QD at 60'. Changed hoses and was good to go.


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[johnfraser1]

I've had four computers fail. One was an old Diverite back in 1999; I forget the name. It stopped working during a dive. I sent it back and they fixed it.

Two were Suunto Mosquitoes which went into so-called "auto-dive mode" where the pressure transducer fails and the depth readout starts getting deeper. This is a well known phenomenon with Mosquitoes.

The fourth was a Suunto Vyper. I think it also went into auto-dive mode with a bad pressure transducer but I might not remember correctly.

Because of the above malfunctions, I always dive with two computers.

BTW, I still like Suuntos. I think they just go bad when they get old. Maybe other brands go bad too but, except for the Dive Rite, I've only used Suuntos.

Presently I have a Suunto Cobra 3 and love it.