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Scubapro is now shipping to its US dealers the Aladin Tec computer in a console. Today I purchased a Tec in a wrist mount. In order to do this the dealer took a wrist mount that came with a Prime and transferred the Tec computer module it.
It looks just like the Prime that you have seen in Rodales and Diver except that the bezel is silver instead of black. Ite came with a plastic screen guard.
Although reviews of the Prime by Rodales and Diver have beenn somewhat cirtical of the use of two buttons to operate the meter instead of three, I found that I was able to quickly master navigation of the many functions. A long press on the right button is effectively the third button. I believe the reviewers' observations in this regard are a case of editorial excess rather than reality.
I have not looked at the printed instruction manual. The print is a lot larger in the PDF that I downloaded from Scubapro Uwatec web site. Both Rodales and Diver have been critical of the manual when reviewing the Prime as Scubapro decided to produce only one manual for both the full featured Tec and the "just the essentials" Prime, this problem does not apply if you have a Tec Functions on the Prime are pretty much a subset of the Tec.
Base values in the dive planner seem very conservative at 46 minutes for 60 feet and 15 minutes for 100 feet. Judging from the graphs in Rodales test of the Prime, I suspect the Tec to usually allow longer bottom times than the very popular Vyper. Note that the Vyper's manual lists no stop times that are considerably more generous. In this regard the Tec probably follows the Smart line of computers, that when tested by Rodales 2 years ago allowed a bit less bottom time than the Suunto's on the first dive of the day, and comfortably more on subsequent dives.
Of course Rodales graphs are produced in a lab where ascents are going to be perfect. In the ocean things can be quite different the Tec lacks the "mandatory" safety stop feature of the Vyper and its relatives. As far as I can tell the Tec also lacks the rounding up of FO2 when calculating maximum operating depth. For me, the most important feature of the Tec as ompared to the Prime is the ability to set the maximum PO2 to something other than 1.4.
Numbers are large and easy to read, the strap is very long.
I will get to dive this gem next week and will compare it side by side with my 7 year old Aladin Pro Nitrox.
It looks just like the Prime that you have seen in Rodales and Diver except that the bezel is silver instead of black. Ite came with a plastic screen guard.
Although reviews of the Prime by Rodales and Diver have beenn somewhat cirtical of the use of two buttons to operate the meter instead of three, I found that I was able to quickly master navigation of the many functions. A long press on the right button is effectively the third button. I believe the reviewers' observations in this regard are a case of editorial excess rather than reality.
I have not looked at the printed instruction manual. The print is a lot larger in the PDF that I downloaded from Scubapro Uwatec web site. Both Rodales and Diver have been critical of the manual when reviewing the Prime as Scubapro decided to produce only one manual for both the full featured Tec and the "just the essentials" Prime, this problem does not apply if you have a Tec Functions on the Prime are pretty much a subset of the Tec.
Base values in the dive planner seem very conservative at 46 minutes for 60 feet and 15 minutes for 100 feet. Judging from the graphs in Rodales test of the Prime, I suspect the Tec to usually allow longer bottom times than the very popular Vyper. Note that the Vyper's manual lists no stop times that are considerably more generous. In this regard the Tec probably follows the Smart line of computers, that when tested by Rodales 2 years ago allowed a bit less bottom time than the Suunto's on the first dive of the day, and comfortably more on subsequent dives.
Of course Rodales graphs are produced in a lab where ascents are going to be perfect. In the ocean things can be quite different the Tec lacks the "mandatory" safety stop feature of the Vyper and its relatives. As far as I can tell the Tec also lacks the rounding up of FO2 when calculating maximum operating depth. For me, the most important feature of the Tec as ompared to the Prime is the ability to set the maximum PO2 to something other than 1.4.
Numbers are large and easy to read, the strap is very long.
I will get to dive this gem next week and will compare it side by side with my 7 year old Aladin Pro Nitrox.