I've been diving the Freedom computer on my mCCR for years, it is vastly superior to the Shearwater IMO, though the Petrel 3 at least has vibrate now. The biggest thing is the Divesoft lets you manually disable cells if you know they are going bad vs. blindly following the voting algorithm.
It's his first CCR. How important is the ability to disable an individual cell to him? REALLY. No other unit that I know of can do that. Yet people are doing plenty of successful dives with other units...
You do very long cave dives with your unit. So, okay, that feature is important to you. Should it actually be any kind of priority to HIM? Your priorities are not the same as his. His priorities may never be the same as yours, but if he's looking for his first CCR, then it's likely years away before his priorities MIGHT even align with yours.
Personally, I would not buy a unit that used other than Shearwater electronics. So, the Divesoft would be off the list for me, just right there.
Also, my personal experience with my Divesoft trimix analyzer would also push me away from buying a CCR from them. They make design decisions that, umm, result in very inconvenient situations for me.
Examples:
I let a friend use my analyzer with the Divesoft Pro flow limiter. They accidentally let the bleed screw turn too far and it came out. That let a 5mm ball bearing fall out, which was, of course, not able to be found. And it turns out that the flow limiter won't work anymore without that ball bearing. Why would you design that part like that?!?! Make the ball bearing captured. Or even better, design the bleed screw so it seals pretty much any other way but via a tiny ball bearing!
Another time, the two parts of my flow limiter got a little loose - i.e. one unscrewed just a tiny bit from the other. That allowed the O-ring between them to extrude and was ruined. Well, guess what? That O-ring was very close in size to a DIN valve O-ring or a Yoke valve O-ring. I had both. Neither one would work?!? Who, in their right mind, designs a piece of dive gear that uses an O-ring of that approximate size, but makes it different from both, where neither a DIN nor a Yoke O-ring will work as a replacement?!?!
I can only imagine what similar frustrations one might experience in living with a Divesoft CCR.
Honestly though, IMO no one should be buying a brand new CCR right now unless you absolutely have to. The first one to come out with optical sensors from the factory is going to be so far ahead of everyone else in terms of safety of the units that it isn't even funny. Sure Poseidon has had them for a while but they've been prohibitively expensive, now you can get them for $400-$500 each and you not only have a legitimate financial ROI on the sensors but you also have an immense safety improvement. Wait if you can.
Was the first of any type of innovative product ever rock solid?
I am looking forward to solid state sensors. Someday. I would definitely not be holding out now to make the first one be my first CCR. They can be out for at least a couple of years, and hopefully from more than one manufacturer, before I'd consider jumping on that bandwagon.
I had a FB conversation recently with the guy (Arne) from Oxygen Scientific that is bringing out the new solid state sensors for $400 - 500. He finally admitted that he had absolutely no DATA to support any claim that those sensors will make CCR diving safer.
What data do you have to support the statement that they will give an "immense safety improvement"? That makes it sound like current CCRs have a large inherent factor of "unsafeness". I don't buy that. Any of the modern, mainstream units you can get are VERY safe. So, what is this immense safety improvement going to be? You're going to reduce a 10% chance of a failure that puts the diver at some kind of risk of harm to a 1% chance? Or are you going to reduce a 0.001% chance to a 0.0001% chance?
Those $400 - 500 solid state sensors still have to be replaced every 5 years. You need a minimum of 2, regardless, for redundancy.
And I have asked and not gotten answer on what happens if those cells get immersed in caustic. Do they survive reliably? Short out and die?
Don't get me wrong. I agree that solid state O2 sensors are the way of the future. But, I don't see any actual support for the claim that they will make CCR diving "immensely" safer.
I will be giving them time to become widely used outside of Oxygen Scientific's own testing, and see how they really stand up to the real world before I'll be jumping on that particular bandwagon.
If the OP is ready to get into CCR diving, I would definitely recommend buying something sooner, rather than later, that has a proven track record, good support from the factory in the area where he'll be using it, and has Shearwater electronics.
My personal opinion.
