Mares ICON HD Dive Computer: Now in color, still no games

Thursday, Dec. 3 2009 | Author: Jayvee

If you’ve ever tried diving, you should know that one of the more expensive pieces of equipment would be the dive computer. They don’t make these cheap nowadays and buying second hand is usually taken with a buyer beware warning (“Oh we pulled this one out of a diver who was floating down current”).

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As of late, the Mares ICON HD is the most advanced dive computer in the market. When we say “advanced” we’re looking at “relative to the industry standard” which really is a bit behind. It’s only in 2009 that they started to introduce color into dive computers.

For the uninitiated, a dive computer is that expensive piece of equipment that you wear when going underwater. It’s sorta like one of those Nike+ accelerometers that track your run distance, pace and time but for divers. Standard features include dive logs for average water temperature, length of dive, maximum depth, and air mixture. The ICON HD also comes with a compass.

The reason why the ICON HD is in color is because you can store colored photos and maps of dive sites you plan to explore so it’s actually quite useful for dive masters and instructors. You can actually download dive maps from Mares, which will “be improved day by day.” HAHA!

I wasn’t kidding about the “still no games.” Ask any diver, and they will tell you that it wouldn’t hurt if dive computers had something to help divers pass the time between safety or decompression stops. In the laws of underwater exploration, divers do need to keep decompression stops at certain depths when they’re exploring beyond 80 feet of depth. Technical diver decompression stops can last for 4 hours — enough to watch two movies!