Single most important factor in choosing a recreational dive computer

Single most important factor in choosing a recreational dive computer

  • Air integration, yes or no

    Votes: 13 9.4%
  • Compass, yes or no

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • Decompression algorithm

    Votes: 32 23.2%
  • Download. cable or Bluetooth

    Votes: 2 1.4%
  • Gases, 1, 2 , or more

    Votes: 5 3.6%
  • Power, batteries or rechargable

    Votes: 6 4.3%
  • Price

    Votes: 16 11.6%
  • Screen, color or not

    Votes: 11 8.0%
  • Style, watch puck, console

    Votes: 9 6.5%
  • Other, designate below

    Votes: 43 31.2%

  • Total voters
    138

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scubadada

Diver
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There are many discussions on SB about choosing a dive computer. In your opinion, what is the single most important factor in choosing a recreational dive computer? Clearly, more than one variable may be important, or even determining, in your final choice of a computer.
 
single most important thing.
User interface

If you have to read the user manual every time you want to do something stupid like change the time or your nitrox mix, it's a bad design. I don't care if it has every bell and whistle in the world, if it is not intuitive to use, then it's a deal breaker
 
single most important thing.
User interface

If you have to read the user manual every time you want to do something stupid like change the time or your nitrox mix, it's a bad design. I don't care if it has every bell and whistle in the world, if it is not intuitive to use, then it's a deal breaker

And along with that you need to be able to read the screen
 
Ease of Use

A large percentage of recreational divers dive infrequently, often on one or two vacations in a year. They often have to relearn their computer on every such dive trip. I have seen cases of fairly experienced divers on trips who were totally baffled when trying to remember how to change the oxygen content for their nitrox mix.

I was once assigned to do a refresher class for a diver with over 150 lifetime dives. It had been a year since her last dive, and she was preparing for a trip. She had an expensive air integrated (via hose) computer. She was highly educated and highly intelligent. She put her gear together, and when she turned on her air, she looked at that computer and noted aloud that it had read the oxygen content of the tank at 32%. I had a devil of a time convincing her that her computer was not analyzing that gas, and she actually had air in that tank. She finally believed that at some point in the past, she had set it for 32%, and it was gong to continue to read 32% until she changed it herself.
 
single most important thing.
User interface

If you have to read the user manual every time you want to do something stupid like change the time or your nitrox mix, it's a bad design. I don't care if it has every bell and whistle in the world, if it is not intuitive to use, then it's a deal breaker
I'm with you on this. I was going to say "easily used and understood." You don't want to have to guess what that flashing number that suddenly appears means.
 
Other: that the computer is up front about what it is doing, and doesn't have unknown, not clearly documented 'safety factors' and lock-outs that it applies 'on your behalf' without informing the diver what it is doing, when the computer determines the diver's behaviour has violated secret rules. Just run the algorithm, thanks, computer, I'll decide how conservative I want to be.

(I mean, this is after assuming the computer is minimally competently constructed - doesn't weigh 50kg, doesn't instantly flood the first time it sees water, isn't massively radioactive, stuff like that, I guess those would be even quicker to disqualify a potential purchase.)
 
And along with that you need to be able to read the screen
This is by far the most important thing. If I cannot read the screen, what is actually computed and displayed is entirely irrelevant...
 
For me it's reliability of the computer and customer service. They should all be extremely reliable, but my Suunto Zoop Novo has locked up on me twice unprovoked, and Huish has not been great to deal with.
 

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