Charles Hood puts the Mares Puck to the test |
The market leader of entry-level wrist-mounted dive computers is Suunto with its easy-to-use Gekko. Not far behind, especially in the USA, is Oceanic with the Veo 100NX. Both computers represent excellent value, with prices under the £150 mark. Now Mares has joined the fray with its latest computer, the Puck. Similarly priced and with roughly the same features as its aforementioned rivals, is it a serious contender?
The first noticeable feature about the Puck is that it only has one selection button. So how on earth do you set it up? It is quite obvious once you have used the Puck for just a few minutes. Mares has moved away from the traditional setup menu to a scrolling method, whereby all the options are simply given in sequence. To select, hold down the button and scroll through a sub-menu, continuing this process until you reach the desired setting. In practice, it works well: the only downside is that if you miss your required option, you have to scroll through all the others until it comes around again. But as this computer is aimed at the sports diver, once it is set up, the only options that will be changed are the time (when travelling abroad) and possibly the nitrox mixture.
In the water, the Mares-Wienke Reduced Gradient Bubbles Model (RGBM) algorithm is similar to that of a Suunto D9. Both computers are set to carry out deep stops and both consider the phenomenon of microbubbles by default in order to prevent their formation in the bloodstream. The Puck gives a slightly longer no-stop time at depth on the first dive of the day, but once saturated, the decompression obligations are virtually identical to the Suunto, if not slightly more conservative. One significant difference is that the Suunto deep stops were much deeper than the Puck’s, even though the Puck includes a safety stop as well.
The Puck’s display has large, easy- to-read digits and back lighting when required. Other features include a 20-second sampling rate, user-replaceable batteries, a 38-hour logbook and various alarms, of which the ascent rate warning is particularly sensitive. It’s missing a free-dive option and a stopwatch, but the lack of these shouldn’t affect the majority of sports divers. The Puck’s logbook information can be uploaded to a PC via an optional cable and software costing a hefty £79.95.
But on its own – at a similar price and sporting almost identical features to both the Gekko and Veo – the Puck is a credible alternative and is definitely worth consideration. It is also available in a console version.
VERDICT
Easy to use and read, with lots of features
Value 9 Performance 9
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