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Late 2019 I went from one dive computer to having three. Not necessarily at the same time, but it was still one too many. I originally had a Mares Puck Pro. Nifty little computer the size of a dinner plate sitting on your wrist. I’ve been wanting to switch it out for several reasons, primarily because the strap broke and I wanted something newer. Enter the Deepblu Cosmiq+. It has bluetooth, a big screen, a nato strap. Enough to keep it on my wrist, upload data into the cloud, and still see my diving details when in the water. Yet here I am, start of 2020, wearing a Suunto D5 instead. So what exactly happened that forced me to switch from a Deepblu Cosmiq+ to a Suunto D5?

The Impetus

For years I have been diving with a Mares Puck Pro. It’s big, it wears easy on a wetsuit or on skin, and did I mention that it’s big? It works great until it doesn’t, which usually meant that I had to change the battery on it. Given the years I had it, this was a frequent occurrence. Either that or I bought some absolute dingers for batteries and they lose charge if you so much as look at them funny.

I liked this stupid dive computer. Even if I could not upload my dive data to the cloud because they don’t come with the USB cable. If you intend to buy the cable you’ll find that the price is quite dear. That said, all proprietary cables by dive companies cost an arm and a leg anyway. Suunto’s D4i USB cable is even more expensive, and I cry a little whenever I think about the time I broke my wife’s D4i Novo USB cable.

But I digress. My Mares Puck Pro’s strap was borked, broken in pieces. It would continue to fall apart even more when I took it to Raja Ampat (ever wondered how to get to Raja Ampat?). I could keep it in a pocket with me when I dive. But I liked the idea of a new dive computer better.

Enter the COSMIQ+

Deepblu announced the 5th generation of their dive computer around the same time I broke my dive computer’s strap. The ability to log 200 dives compared to the previous iteration’s paltry 25 was quite handy. The fact that the COSMIQ+ has bluetooth and an app to go with it was a plus. I ordered that son of a mother immediately, direct from Taiwan.

It’s a beautiful piece of kit. Felt sturdy, likely could take a beating. The NATO strap was a huge plus as I felt that won’t break as easily as a rubber strap. Honestly I still very much like the design, but several issues really made it either annoying or impossible to use.

The annoying bits

The biggest problem I had with my COSMIQ+ was the fact that it was not recording my dives properly. In the example above, it logs my dives as occurring on the 4th and 5th of August 2019. Each dive goes on for 8 minutes only, and I have surface intervals of 3, and 20 hours. Barring the depth measurements, everything else is wrong. The dives were done on the 7th of December 2019, with each dive lasting around an hour. It did not make any sense how it recorded the dives as occurring in August when the dive computer only came out in November.

With the COSMIQ+ giving me incorrect readings for the length of dives and my surface interval, it was useless to me. I could not rely on it to give me accurate information regarding my tissue saturation or my no-fly time. A dive computer that cannot give me reliable information is by definition, unreliable.

Thankfully all this came to light within the warranty period, so it was a lot of back and forth with Deepblu’s support team. I have nothing but praise for the team that was dealing with me. They were prompt in their response to try and resolve the issue with my dive computer. Which made it all the more unfortunate that it could not be resolved in time for my trip to Raja Ampat. By Christmas the watch was on its way back to Deepblu, and I got a refund.

Belated Christmas gift to myself

So once again without a dive computer that I can strap on my wrist, and I had about a week before I fly off to R4. I made the executive decision to buy a Suunto D5. Instead of ordering it online, I walked into my LDS to get it. Safe in the knowledge that should this bastard go tits up too, I can at least drop it off in the shop and get an immediate replacement. Nearly got myself an AI transmitter too while at it.

And so that’s how I made the switch from a Deepblu COSMIQ+ to a Suunto D5. It isn’t due to some great love for Suunto as a brand, even though my household currently has three of their watches. It was out of necessity because I bought a lemon while trying to replace an aging computer. I can tell you that the Fused RGBM 2 algorithm it runs lets me stay down longer than the D4i’s RGBM model. It also gives me a smaller no-fly time, which I found interesting. Otherwise the 11 hour dive time between charges can feel a bit restrictive, even if it really isn’t. Would I recommend though? Absolutely. It’s stylish, and most importantly, fucking works.