mosquitos and reliability, a user's experience

[fly]

I have spent a good while looking around the board and have read a fair cross section of thoughts on mosquito computers. I have one which i was very pleased with until about 3 months ago, when it started to reset itself whenever you pushed the bottom right button. Otherwise it worked fine. Its amazing but you actually don't really need that bottom right button. Anyway, i soldiered on with it until it reset itself for no reason towards the end of a dive. Its a bit worrying watching your NDL go from 20 minutes to 90 in a second, without changing depth.

Now I have a lot of friends who use a variety of suunto products and despite what you may have heard its about a fairly even distribution between stingers and mosquitos when it comes to failures (anyway, way too many from my point of view). I do think that the mosquito gets a fairly bum rap for reliablity compared to the stinger. They both are a little bit dodgy.

I decided it was time to contact suunto and find out what was up. A couple emails later with no reply i gave up. Suunto, bless them, seem to be long on flash and short on service on the web. Hence i decided to pull the little beast apart and see if there was anything i could do.

Turns out they are really easy to strip down. Inside there is a spring from the battery compartment to the watch itself. This spring had simply lost its tension. I have about 200 dives on the watch, over half of which are to 30m or more. So i think that the pressure has flatterned the inside of the watch. pushing the button simply moved the inside of the watch a little, it lost contact with the battery, and viola, a reset. By carefully bending the spring again, the watch is back in action again, no hassle, although i have't taken it deep yet.
Commonly mosquitos misread depth by a factor too. I wonder if this also has to do with the little springs from the sensors to the watch mechanism losing tension from lots of deep dives.

Overall with a lot of use i still think that the mosquito is as good a buy as the stinger, if not better value. I do wonder about materials though. My watch is a bit scratched up and the buttons are not the easiest to use. I also dive with a casio protrek watch as my timer, and although both watches have been on all my dives, the protrek still looks like new and has been problem free.
Anyway, thats just my thoughts and and opinions on the mosquito for those of you thinking of buying one, and an idea for fixing an ailing moquito.

 

[6Gill]

I have spent a good while looking around the board and have read a fair cross section of thoughts on mosquito computers. I have one which i was very pleased with until about 3 months ago, when it started to reset itself whenever you pushed the bottom right button. Otherwise it worked fine. Its amazing but you actually don't really need that bottom right button. Anyway, i soldiered on with it until it reset itself for no reason towards the end of a dive. Its a bit worrying watching your NDL go from 20 minutes to 90 in a second, without changing depth.

Now I have a lot of friends who use a variety of suunto products and despite what you may have heard its about a fairly even distribution between stingers and mosquitos when it comes to failures (anyway, way too many from my point of view). I do think that the mosquito gets a fairly bum rap for reliablity compared to the stinger. They both are a little bit dodgy.

I decided it was time to contact suunto and find out what was up. A couple emails later with no reply i gave up. Suunto, bless them, seem to be long on flash and short on service on the web. Hence i decided to pull the little beast apart and see if there was anything i could do.

Turns out they are really easy to strip down. Inside there is a spring from the battery compartment to the watch itself. This spring had simply lost its tension. I have about 200 dives on the watch, over half of which are to 30m or more. So i think that the pressure has flatterned the inside of the watch. pushing the button simply moved the inside of the watch a little, it lost contact with the battery, and viola, a reset. By carefully bending the spring again, the watch is back in action again, no hassle, although i have't taken it deep yet.
Commonly mosquitos misread depth by a factor too. I wonder if this also has to do with the little springs from the sensors to the watch mechanism losing tension from lots of deep dives.

Overall with a lot of use i still think that the mosquito is as good a buy as the stinger, if not better value. I do wonder about materials though. My watch is a bit scratched up and the buttons are not the easiest to use. I also dive with a casio protrek watch as my timer, and although both watches have been on all my dives, the protrek still looks like new and has been problem free.
Anyway, thats just my thoughts and and opinions on the mosquito for those of you thinking of buying one, and an idea for fixing an ailing moquito.

I also dive with a Mosquito and have had no problems with this one. The first one that I bought did go haywire. I didn't deal with Suunto directly though. Instead I took it back to my LDS (Where I bought it.) and they sent it in to US Divers/Aqualung, who sent a brand new one back. So far this one has been fine. I only use it as a B/U computer and have a Data plus pro a my primary. I think that dealing with the USA support through your point of purchase is the way to go!

 

[fly]

I'd hope that USA aqualung have pretty good service. Problem is I live and worlk a long way from those shores. The LDSs here mostly speak a language i don't, so local service is difficult at best, and often frustrating. Well actually, my LDS is great, but they are not the suunto agents here, so i need to deal with another shop, which i wouldn't dive with for love of money. Hence i'd rather try to deal with Suunto direct, by but that has been like pulling teeth. If you think about it, all they are going to do anyway is strip the watch down, clean it, maybe throw in a new battery and you are away, so why not do it yourself? So far so good, lets hope the O ring holds on a 40m dive!

 

[6Gill]

I'd hope that USA aqualung have pretty good service. Problem is I live and worlk a long way from those shores. The LDSs here mostly speak a language i don't, so local service is difficult at best, and often frustrating. Well actually, my LDS is great, but they are not the suunto agents here, so i need to deal with another shop, which i wouldn't dive with for love of money. Hence i'd rather try to deal with Suunto direct, by but that has been like pulling teeth. If you think about it, all they are going to do anyway is strip the watch down, clean it, maybe throw in a new battery and you are away, so why not do it yourself? So far so good, lets hope the O ring holds on a 40m dive!

Yes, I can see how you might have probems if you are not in the USA. Perhaps you should adjust your bio so it will indicate your Country, etc.