In Reply to: Re: Recommendations for Dive Computer? posted by Chris on October 10, 2010 at 15:24:38:

I dove an aeris for many years, selected basically because I liked the display, the important numbers were big and simple. It was air integrated. It began to fog and I asked aeris to service it. They said they no longer did and it eventually failed, so I lost a lot of respect for aeris. Yeah, not all the gaskets are simple orings, but come on, keep plenty of softgood kits around to service your stuff, please.

At the same time I picked up a suunto wristwatch and wore it in parallel with the aeris. It was shocking. A few days on vacation with repetitive no deco resort dives, and my aeris was very happy, and my suunto was throwing me 17 min safety stops. I'd try to clear them, but by day 4 it would get ridiculous. it would throw me some monster stop when the aeris was clear and go into gauge mode when I missed the stop.

On the one hand, it was pretty striking how much diving the suunto was cheating me out of. On the other hand, it was scary how long of a stop it was giving me and I was basically ignoring. Really long. 10-20 min. The only thing that gave me confidence to ignore it was that I had hundreds of dives and hundreds of hours, even deco, on the aeris.

So when the aeris died, I did very careful research into what to get next. I borrowed all the computers I could. I regularly dove with at least 2, often 3. I did not want a computer like the suunto keeping me out of the water. For some, obviously, this is a great feature. For me, based on my experience, it was very much not want.

So: you milage may vary, but I found that aeris, oceanic, and genesis all let you stay in the water for a long time, but I only trust them when shallow, no deco, etc. I bought an oceanic and after 3-4 days of heavy resort diving (5-6 hours a day in the water, no deco) it typically loses its mind and throws me like a 50 min stop at 2 feet or a stop at 80 feet, deeper than I've been, or something completely insane. I don't dive with it anymore. I've dove a genesis a bit and know people that have done a *lot* of diving with them, that will probably be my next computer for no deco warm water simple diving.

for more demanding diving, deep, deep repetitive, or deco, definitely uwatec. On the first dive and shallow stuff, it can be as conservative as the suunto. On the second dive or deeper stuff, it gives you more time. The first issue is what keeps it from being my only computer. I don't have many many hours on mine yet, but it has yet to let me down, crash, give me a crazy stop, etc, and I certainly have seen many hours put on them.