Suunto D4 or Mares Nemo Excel?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I'm not sure if this might be your problem but my LDS instructor was telling me that the IRIS system doesn't work with Vista.
 
Thanks to everyone for your helpful advice. My greatest concern with the Nemo Excel is that it lacks a display of surface time interval. Other than that one issue I like what I read about the unit.

In terms of the D4, it seems like a complete watch; however, the integrity of a plastic case and plastic buttons has me a bit concerned. The D6 seems to solve that issue, but I'm not so certain that I need to spend an additional $150 above the D4.

I did discover that my local dive shop is a Mares certified repair facility so it would be easy for me to have the battery replaced there. Unfortunately, they do not have the Nemo Excel in stock.

I would have to send the D4 back to Aqua Lung for battery replacement, as I do not have a Suunto dealer or repair facility any where close. Does anyone know what it costs to send a Suunto back to Aqua Lung to have a bettery replaced?

If the Nemo had that one feature (SI), my decison would be much easier. I've never heard of a dive watch not displaying SI.
 
I ended up going with the Nemo Excel myself. After reading an number of reviews on both, they both seemed pretty comparable. Ultimately price was the deciding factor, new to dive and spending lots of $$$ right now. I got the Nemo about $100 cheaper than the cheapest price I saw for the D4.

The Nemo is a nice watch, but I don't like not having the SI feature which from what I've read is pretty standard on most watches. From what I've read it may be a bit more challenging downloading the dive log via infrared as opposed to the direct connection which I believe the D4 has. It feel's like a pretty solid/durable watch though. However, still completing my OW and having only used it for my first two ocean dives, I'm not necessarily qualified either way to say how good/bad it is. I will say that my rental gear had a computer on the gauges (Suunto, but don't remember which one) and it matched up exactly for depth, but the Nemo was 2-4 degrees warmer for temp (perhaps body heat from being on wrist?). One thing I did like was the safety stop feature that showed min/sec and as I went down too far or up too far I could watch the seconds increment or decrease. On the Suunto gauge it only displayed the minutes.
 
You sure it doesn't show SI?

When my Fiancee was completing her OW, the instructor was using a Nemo Excel and when she asked for the SI for her log book, he just held down one of the buttons and read it off to her.

If it's anything like her Nemo Sport, it was the bottom right button.
 
I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I think you have to go to the log file, find you last dive, add the dive time to the entry time and subtract that time from your current time. Hopefully I'm wrong and doing it ass backwards and there I'm just missing a setting or something.
 
Apparently it does now work, with the new software and some driver updates. I just bought one and downloaded the software from the Mares Software site. They have a service bullet that deals with what to do on Vista.
 
Do you have a link for the software upgrade to show surface interval on the excel? I can't seem to find it on the mares support section or the mares software support site. Much appreciated!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom