Here are some preliminary observations on my BT:
The outside:
- the housing is solidly constructed, either out of metal or a dense plastic. Its solid cube and quite light despite its appearance.
- it comes with a strap, but is flimsy and you'll want to replace this with a bungee.
- not sure how scratch resistant the screen plastic is, or if it is replacement by the user. It definitely requires dismantling the housing.
- the buttons on either side are long and very easy to push. No risk of accidental inputs, however, because the buttons need to be pushed quite deeply in order to trigger an input.
The data port/recharger:
- the data/recharge slot ports firmly with the plug, very different from the flimsy connection I have with my HELO2.
- a big advantage: the plug itself is actually 3 parts: a plug that ports into the custom XDeep slot, a micro USB to USB cord, a wall plug. The USB cord is just a standard cord you can get in any computer shop and can plug into your laptop. It can also recharge from USB like a smartphone (see photo). And the wall plug is also standard; you can use one for an ipod, but I would avoid a powerful charger like 10W or 12W for the ipad.
Software/displays:
- as per the user manual, I connected to the support site and downloaded the latest version of firmware. The update is quite easy as the XDeep BT is recognised as a USB drive. To update, you simply do a file transfer to the relevant folder in the BT and then reboot the BT.
- menu navigation is simple and consistent: quick button presses for menu navigation and long button presses for selection. A big improvement over the Suunto computers.
- display is bright (see photo and compare with computer screen) with variations in font size and color. Important information stands out more (depth, timer) than other details (max depth, clock, battery power). This is better that other displays where too much information on the display makes it hard to pick out what you need. There are even 3 display modes that allow you to display as much or as little info as you need.
I hope to take it on a dive this weekend and will post more info then.