CHOOSING A DIVE COMPUTER

Before splashing out on a dive computer, it’s a good idea to take stock of your current diving profile and review and analyse what form your diving is likely to take in the coming years.

Even without recourse to a crystal ball, it’s easy to know where your interests lie and how your diving is likely to develop, and this will go a long way to helping you make the best choice.

Ask yourself a few questions: are you likely to progress to nitrox use, engage in decompression, try gas switching, trimix or rebreather diving?

Do you require air integration to monitor gas use and remaining dive time? Do you prefer wrist or console-mounted units? Is the ability to download your dive profile to a Mac or PC important to you?

Thinking ahead and choosing a computer that possibly has more features than you may initially require will offer the chance for the device to grow alongside your diving experience while also making a considerable financial saving in the long term.

Display

Displays should be clear, concise and uncluttered, with the most important information of depth and remaining bottom time easily identifiable.

If you’re a spectacles wearer, make sure the display is large enough to read and also consider how screen technology can be of benefit. With most computer screens featuring a black on grey display, a selectable backlight for night diving and low-light conditions is of obvious advantage, or perhaps one of the colourful new generation OLED displays (see right) may fit the bill.

Console or wrist?

This is entirely a matter of personal choice, although both console-mounted and wrist computers do benefit from larger, clearer displays than their smaller watch-sized counterparts.

Alarm

Audible alarms can be a useful tool and can be programmed to give many different alerts, including maximum depth, dive time and ascent rate, leaving you free to concentrate on enjoying the dive and not a slave to your computer screen.

Extras

User-changeable batteries are an obvious advantage, while the option to download your dives to a PC can allow step-by-step analysis of your profile in graph format, allow your history to be stored in digital format or printed out in the form of a traditional logbook.

Many computers also have the benefit of an electronic compass to aid navigation and some feature upgradeable software options to allow more advanced diving to be undertaken if and when required.

Changing the settings on your computer menu should be easy and intuitive at the surface and below it.

If you’re continually referring to your user manual then your computer is possibly too complicated for your immediate needs.

Gas mixes