Petrel pricing, helo2

[tbone1004]

most of us dive the petrels with regular old AA batteries. Changing them every 20-25 hours of use is a nonissue and since a lot of the backup lights these days take 3 AA's, it is a convenient use for the fourth one...

Definitely go DG03 over the Uwatec if you decide to stay in the lower end of the price spectrum, the fact that is has a gauge mode on top of being a multi gas computer just makes it that much more useful. You can run it as a true spare dive computer, or leave it in gauge mode, but it is also something that you can take with you if you go travel some place and don't want to take your petrel or other more expensive for whatever reason. My Nitek duo runs that duty

 

[victorzamora]

It seems like a stretch for this scenerio to really play out for me. I'm not exploring new caves in a South American jungle .

Seriously, though, it's not a matter of South American jungle.....it's practically anywhere in the world. Even in S.Fl it's hard to find SAF-T lithium cells. It's SUPER easy to find AAs, though. It's also a piece of cake to forget your spare SAF-Ts, or how dead the SAF-T in your Petrel is. That's why the AA is so nice. Not just the price, but the availability.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

In addition to the ability to use any AA battery vs. having to use the SAFT, the Petrel has a much better battery holder design. The Predator's tray with long wires is not a great design and can lead to problems with pulling the wires/getting them mashed inside the battery space wrong. The Petrel is a simple 'unscrew the cap, dump out the cell, put in the new cell, screw on the cap' design.

 

[kelemvor]

most of us dive the petrels with regular old AA batteries. Changing them every 20-25 hours of use is a nonissue and since a lot of the backup lights these days take 3 AA's, it is a convenient use for the fourth one...

Hmm that's not so bad. Maybe the ones that came with mine were just a little old. I got about 10 hours before the DC was reading low battery. I'll give them a shot again when the saft batts I recently installed give up the ghost.

 

[tbone1004]

right now I have about 15 hours of bottom time on the battery and it's just a the halfway ish mark. I might switch it over to eneloops, but had to get rid of a few regular AA's that were getting too old.

 

[doctormike]

Funny how these discussions about Petrels usually end up with people saying that it's wrong to spend extra money on a tech computer with features that you don't need as a rec diver. Several people have pointed out the advantages of a Petrel to a purely recreational diver (great user interface in terms of screen readability and organization, superb build, amazing customer support, very convenient battery options, etc..). But that's not what I find odd about these objections.

Obviously none of us have unlimited funds, but on the other hand we all are engaging in a fairly expensive first-world hobby. Yes, if you have your own compressor and live where you can shore dive, you can do it on the cheap, but I'm willing to bet that most people who dive regularly spend a lot more than $850 in the average year on travel, gear, boats, etc.. Not that the $500 difference between the Petrel and a bare bones computer is chicken feed, but it should be seen in some perspective.

I have seen a lot of people driving, for example, low end BMWs. Say a 320i. Hardly the kind of thing that would make you think of a hedge fund manager or an Internet billionaire, plenty of them being driven by ordinary folks. So that costs $40,000, and you can get a new Hyundai for about $15,000. Yet I never hear anyone loudly objecting to those cars, saying that they could have used that extra $25,000 for gas, or vacations, or whatever.

Maybe that's what they do on the car forums?

 

[tbone1004]

Mike, that's why my better half chose her Kia Optima.... Couldn't justify spending more money due to law of diminishing returns.
I can only see a petrel being justified for recreational use if they need/really want a big screen, or want something that is build like a tank. Comparison is buying a Beamer M5 if you have a less than 5 mile commute in city traffic. Sure you have a car that is very nice, but you're never going to use all of the features in it, you could spend 1/4 of the money and get a little Kia Rio for $14k that is perfectly suited to what you're doing at the time. Then should you then decide you want to take a bunch of long road trips, or your commute turns into a 60+ mile round trip, you can relegate the Kia to grocery getting, taking the dog to the park, or just a general backup because for $14k new, is it really worth selling to get $8k back out of it? Probably not.

Petrel $850, Hollis DG03 $250. Sure you can spend 3.5x on a Petrel, but if you aren't going to use all of the features, or you don't need the big screen, you aren't going to be missing out too much with a DG03, and it offers a lot of versatility for the price. Everything you need at a good price, no added features that you don't necessarily need. The unfortunate fact here is that there is really nothing in the middle worth looking at. The Nitek Q is $600 but doesn't give you any more features than the DG03 other than a rechargeable battery and the ability to easily download dives. It apparently is having issues, and if you're going to spend $600, you may as well fork up the extra $250 and get the Petrel, it's worth the extra there. The xDeep is in the same boat. $650 for nitrox computer, not really worth it, when for an extra $200 you can upgrade to a Petrel. All of the other recreational computers with nice screens are priced higher than the Petrel so those are out, and none of the other cheaper computers can compete with the DG03 for the price/features it has.

Exact same discussion we had last year with the car. The Kia Optima SX at $25k as we priced it out couldn't be touched for the value. Everything else was $10k more for comparable features, and if we got into the car that she really would have killed for, it would have been $45k minimum, likely closer to $60. Now obviously a car is orders of magnitude off in the realm of what we are talking about here, but there was nothing in the $30-40k range that made a good justification to not just get the $25k car until we could afford the $65k car, and the $45k range is just that much better, that if we had the money, it wouldn't be worth looking at anything in that $25-$45k range. It's a weird thing, but there isn't much middle ground in either of these circumstances.

 

[OMANDIVER]

Funny how these discussions about Petrels usually end up with people saying that it's wrong to spend extra money on a tech computer with features that you don't need as a rec diver. Several people have pointed out the advantages of a Petrel to a purely recreational diver (great user interface in terms of screen readability and organization, superb build, amazing customer support, very convenient battery options, etc..). But that's not what I find odd about these objections.

Obviously none of us have unlimited funds, but on the other hand we all are engaging in a fairly expensive first-world hobby. Yes, if you have your own compressor and live where you can shore dive, you can do it on the cheap, but I'm willing to bet that most people who dive regularly spend a lot more than $850 in the average year on travel, gear, boats, etc.. Not that the $500 difference between the Petrel and a bare bones computer is chicken feed, but it should be seen in some perspective.

I have seen a lot of people driving, for example, low end BMWs. Say a 320i. Hardly the kind of thing that would make you think of a hedge fund manager or an Internet billionaire, plenty of them being driven by ordinary folks. So that costs $40,000, and you can get a new Hyundai for about $15,000. Yet I never hear anyone loudly objecting to those cars, saying that they could have used that extra $25,000 for gas, or vacations, or whatever.

Maybe that's what they do on the car forums?

Your point is?

 

[jale]

Hi,
In a way you are right but unfortunately most of the new divers buying a computer think that more bells and whistles means more safety...

Funny how these discussions about Petrels usually end up with people saying that it's wrong to spend extra money on a tech computer with features that you don't need as a rec diver. Several people have pointed out the advantages of a Petrel to a purely recreational diver (great user interface in terms of screen readability and organization, superb build, amazing customer support, very convenient battery options, etc..). But that's not what I find odd about these objections.

Obviously none of us have unlimited funds, but on the other hand we all are engaging in a fairly expensive first-world hobby. Yes, if you have your own compressor and live where you can shore dive, you can do it on the cheap, but I'm willing to bet that most people who dive regularly spend a lot more than $850 in the average year on travel, gear, boats, etc.. Not that the $500 difference between the Petrel and a bare bones computer is chicken feed, but it should be seen in some perspective.

I have seen a lot of people driving, for example, low end BMWs. Say a 320i. Hardly the kind of thing that would make you think of a hedge fund manager or an Internet billionaire, plenty of them being driven by ordinary folks. So that costs $40,000, and you can get a new Hyundai for about $15,000. Yet I never hear anyone loudly objecting to those cars, saying that they could have used that extra $25,000 for gas, or vacations, or whatever.

Maybe that's what they do on the car forums?

 

[doctormike]

Your point is?

If my point wasn't clear with my first post, it probably wouldn't be clear if I restated it...

---------- Post added September 17th, 2014 at 10:01 AM ----------

Hi,
In a way you are right but unfortunately most of the new divers buying a computer think that more bells and whistles means more safety...

Yup, I agree.

But the Petrel really shines as a basic recreational dive computer, because it does really well those things that you want a dive computer to do - be readable in all sorts of visibility and ambient light levels, present information in an organized way, be reliable, have an easy battery to change. So those aren't bells and whistles, those are basic functionality.

Now if you really have to have wireless AI or a built in compass, then I guess it's not for you (topic for another thread). And actually, in the sense that readability and user interface may help a diver get the information provided more reliability, it may well mean more safety..!