Dive Computer Ramblings

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 5:10 AM, Davide DB <dbdavide at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In the end "The Brick" is out:

So I checked with my suunto connection, and I can apparently now talk
about it. I actually have an Eon Steel on my desk right now, although
with preproduction firmware. I've had it for a week, but no dives yet
- next week.

It's pretty big, but I've seen bigger. It's *heavy* though. You could
club a seal with it. It is really really solid.

Suunto has their manual up now:

  http://ns.suunto.com/Manuals/EONSteel/Userguides/Suunto_EONSteel_UserGuide_EN.pdf

for people who want to take a look.

Quite frankly, from what I can tell without having it on a dive, it's
a really nice dive computer. The customization is good, the USB
connector is the best I've seen (not like the old Suunto one at all -
it's sturdy and clicks into place with no confusion what-so-ever about
placement etc, and once connected it's solid). The screen looks good,
although I'll have to see how good the contrast is in bright light on
a dive.

It fixes my complaints with Suunto dive computers, having "negative
safety levels" for more aggressive diving, and the wireless air
integration is new (which means you also need a new sensor, the old
ones won't work with the Eon Steel). The deco and safety stop timers
call count down with seconds, the menu system is pretty
self-explanatory, and the whole thing just feels very quality. The
dive mode setting is *much* harder to put into gauge mode by mistake
(yes, you have to go into *settings* now, yay!).

It does leave the old bad temperature reading (slow and low
resolution), but that's not a huge issue.

The main worry I have is the heft of the thing. It's a complete
non-issue if you dive in a drysuit, but judging from how it feels on
my bare wrist, I think you need to have it really tight if you're
diving in warm water without any wetsuit at all. So it's not the
*size* per se, it's really the fact that it's so solid and heavy: you
can't have it sliding back and forth on your wrist.

The other downside is that it's a completely new download protocol,
and it looks complicated. We'll see. I only have one fake dive on it
(dropping it in a pool with a string), so not enough real data to make
any educated guesses about it, but hopefully more after next week.

                Linus