Over the weekend, I put the Teric through 5 dives. Below are my initial impressions:
1- Build quality: Outstanding. The craftsmanship is exceptional, the push buttons are solid with good feedback. The all black look is classy, I just hope the paint doesn’t chip off easily in rough conditions. The OEM strap looks great, it’s soft, secure and has a very nice feel even on bare skin.
2- User Interface: Very good and well thought out. You just have to initially orient yourself on where the functions are on the menu and you're good to go. The user customizable home screen is outstanding. You can set the home screen the way you want. Many of the past user feedback on the Perdix and Petrel were incorporated into the Teric. Shearwater listens to the users
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3- The new floating compass is amazing. No need to pull up the full compass and cover up other data. Set the Marker and you're good to go. Since the compass red magnetic N arrow and green marker dot floats around the circumference of the bezel, orientation and situational awareness is easy. I’m a heavy compass user and never parted with my mechanical compass even with the good Petrel compass. The Teric’s compass is making me change my old ways. I also like that you don't have to calibrate the compass each time you change location. Compass reading is accurate and fast, faster than a mechanical compass that needs to be held level with the compass card floating freely.
4- The new Deco Clear function is incredibly helpful. In Tec mode on an NDL dive, when you hit 6 meters it “Deco Clears” you and counts up. Previously on my Petrel 2 in Tec mode, I have to turn on the timer to track time spent on the last stop. Now, with the Deco Clear function, it automatically counts up when you ascend to 6 meters. Pauses if you drop down and resumes when you're back at 6 meters or shallower. If you pad your last deco stop for added conservatism or if you simply want to know how long you’ve been in your last stop after you’re cleared on Tec mode, you will love this feature.
5- Surface GF. Rec or Tec, this is a terrific safety feature as it will quantify your risk level relative to the Buhlmann M-Value. It gives you your surfacing GF as a % of the Buhlmann M-Value if you were to immediately surface. GF99 does not do that. Example, after completing the last Deco stop at 6 meters, GF99 may read 4% but SurfGF will read 65%. GFHi is = SurfGF. If you pad your last stop, SurfGF will drop to a lower level as you extend your stop.
6- The AMOLED is amazing. The Petrel's color display is impressive enough but the Teric blows it away with the AMOLED display.
7- AI connection and readout is good, stable and fast. Too bad there’s no RMV but I agree with SW that this will complicate the setup and could potentially lead to serious user error. But RMV calc should be available on the SW Cloud but it’s not.
8- Battery. Fast quick charge. Fully charged at 12am. Removed from charger. 2 dives in the morning. 1 dive in the afternoon. Each dive around 45 - 50 minutes. Used it as a watch outside the water with Light Setting set to OFF and button press to check time or SIT. Also downloaded dives to iPhone via BT. At 10pm (22 hours after a full charge), battery was at 66%. It looks like I could extend it to another day of diving but I'm not sure. I recharged it. I'm not sure if the discharge rate is linear or exponential as the voltage drops.
Issues:
A) The downloaded data from the Teric to Shearwater Cloud is incorrect or SW Cloud is not processing the transferred data correctly. Example, the Dive start time on the Teric is 12:26pm and the Sac T1 is 1.47 bar/min. The Downloaded data on Shearwater Cloud shows Dive Time start at 8:26pm. Sac T1 at 1.27 bar/min. I haven't verified the other data but it seems that there is a data issue on the Shearwater Cloud.
B) Sharing of dive data across devices is not working. When trying to log in to Shearwater Cloud, it will say password incorrect. Activated the forget password function. Receive email for PW change. Change PW. The login screen will still not accept the changed password. Tried several times. Is this a SW Cloud issue?
C) SW Cloud gives a nice display of your dive profile and pressing on the profile timeline will bring up a pop-up of the dive detail for that time period. Neat. The problem is you can't read it. The font size is too small and cannot be zoomed. This is on an iPhone 7. The Dive Log app seems to have better GUI and UI compared to SW Cloud.
The issues seems SW Cloud related. Overall my initial impression of the Teric is excellent. It’s expensive but if you simply want the best, it’s the Teric. Highly recommended. SW Cloud however needs a lot of work to make it a fitting partner of the Teric.
1- Build quality: Outstanding. The craftsmanship is exceptional, the push buttons are solid with good feedback. The all black look is classy, I just hope the paint doesn’t chip off easily in rough conditions. The OEM strap looks great, it’s soft, secure and has a very nice feel even on bare skin.
2- User Interface: Very good and well thought out. You just have to initially orient yourself on where the functions are on the menu and you're good to go. The user customizable home screen is outstanding. You can set the home screen the way you want. Many of the past user feedback on the Perdix and Petrel were incorporated into the Teric. Shearwater listens to the users
. 3- The new floating compass is amazing. No need to pull up the full compass and cover up other data. Set the Marker and you're good to go. Since the compass red magnetic N arrow and green marker dot floats around the circumference of the bezel, orientation and situational awareness is easy. I’m a heavy compass user and never parted with my mechanical compass even with the good Petrel compass. The Teric’s compass is making me change my old ways. I also like that you don't have to calibrate the compass each time you change location. Compass reading is accurate and fast, faster than a mechanical compass that needs to be held level with the compass card floating freely.
4- The new Deco Clear function is incredibly helpful. In Tec mode on an NDL dive, when you hit 6 meters it “Deco Clears” you and counts up. Previously on my Petrel 2 in Tec mode, I have to turn on the timer to track time spent on the last stop. Now, with the Deco Clear function, it automatically counts up when you ascend to 6 meters. Pauses if you drop down and resumes when you're back at 6 meters or shallower. If you pad your last deco stop for added conservatism or if you simply want to know how long you’ve been in your last stop after you’re cleared on Tec mode, you will love this feature.
5- Surface GF. Rec or Tec, this is a terrific safety feature as it will quantify your risk level relative to the Buhlmann M-Value. It gives you your surfacing GF as a % of the Buhlmann M-Value if you were to immediately surface. GF99 does not do that. Example, after completing the last Deco stop at 6 meters, GF99 may read 4% but SurfGF will read 65%. GFHi is = SurfGF. If you pad your last stop, SurfGF will drop to a lower level as you extend your stop.
6- The AMOLED is amazing. The Petrel's color display is impressive enough but the Teric blows it away with the AMOLED display.
7- AI connection and readout is good, stable and fast. Too bad there’s no RMV but I agree with SW that this will complicate the setup and could potentially lead to serious user error. But RMV calc should be available on the SW Cloud but it’s not.
8- Battery. Fast quick charge. Fully charged at 12am. Removed from charger. 2 dives in the morning. 1 dive in the afternoon. Each dive around 45 - 50 minutes. Used it as a watch outside the water with Light Setting set to OFF and button press to check time or SIT. Also downloaded dives to iPhone via BT. At 10pm (22 hours after a full charge), battery was at 66%. It looks like I could extend it to another day of diving but I'm not sure. I recharged it. I'm not sure if the discharge rate is linear or exponential as the voltage drops.
Issues:
A) The downloaded data from the Teric to Shearwater Cloud is incorrect or SW Cloud is not processing the transferred data correctly. Example, the Dive start time on the Teric is 12:26pm and the Sac T1 is 1.47 bar/min. The Downloaded data on Shearwater Cloud shows Dive Time start at 8:26pm. Sac T1 at 1.27 bar/min. I haven't verified the other data but it seems that there is a data issue on the Shearwater Cloud.
B) Sharing of dive data across devices is not working. When trying to log in to Shearwater Cloud, it will say password incorrect. Activated the forget password function. Receive email for PW change. Change PW. The login screen will still not accept the changed password. Tried several times. Is this a SW Cloud issue?
C) SW Cloud gives a nice display of your dive profile and pressing on the profile timeline will bring up a pop-up of the dive detail for that time period. Neat. The problem is you can't read it. The font size is too small and cannot be zoomed. This is on an iPhone 7. The Dive Log app seems to have better GUI and UI compared to SW Cloud.
The issues seems SW Cloud related. Overall my initial impression of the Teric is excellent. It’s expensive but if you simply want the best, it’s the Teric. Highly recommended. SW Cloud however needs a lot of work to make it a fitting partner of the Teric.
