Aladin Prime and Suunto Vyper 2 dive computers

Folks,

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I need to purchase a new dive computer. My local dive shop suggested teh Aladin Prime but investigations on the net have shown there are problems with the IR port, battery life and build quality of the buttons. Are these problems still an issue?

I have also been recommended the Suunto Vyper 2 but this is double the price of the prime. Are the additional features worth the extra money?

Cheers,
Moolie

I have had a Prime for about a year.

I really can't speak much about the Vyper 2 but I did share a dive boat last week with a guy who had one. He quickly ran through the features of it. I particularly liked the electronic compass and the scrolling dive profile graph. It appeared to have more features than the Prime and an easier to read display. I don't know what he paid but it would not surprise me to hear it was much higher priced than the Prime.

On the other hand, I am purely a tropical, recreational diver, and the Prime has served me fine. I have not had an issue with the IR port and I have not yet replaced the battery after about 40 dives over 12 months nor has the battery life indicator budged at all. The IR port issue appears to be something from earlier builds of the Prime and it has been corrected with later builds. Besides, other threads indicate Uwatec is good about servicing it if it goes bad.

I have a used Prime I've had for about a year. It has over 120 dives (around 40 of them mine) and the battery is still sitting at 4 out of 5 bars. The buttons seem solid to me. I can't say anything about the Vyper 2.

As for the IR port I bought a cheap IR usb key and it not prove compatible. Honestly that is not much of a concern for me. I'm doing my logs by hand.

I have the Vyper 2, love the screen size, features are easy to use. It enables 2 mixes plus Air... so you can do deco stops if you wish. The only challenge with the Compass, is that it returns automatically to the dive-time feature after about 10-15 seconds. It doesn't stay on Compass for an extended period. Other than that, it's a great computer and provides a wealth of info to divelog software.

Thanks for your responses. Based on the quality issues of the Aladin documented on the net, for quality reasons, I ended up purchasing a Vyper 2. Now I can get back in the water )

Cheers...

Now that you have had your vyper 2 for a few weeks, how do you like it? I am vacillating between a vyper 2 and an archimedes 2.

Thx

moolie:

Folks,

I need to purchase a new dive computer. My local dive shop suggested teh Aladin Prime but investigations on the net have shown there are problems with the IR port, battery life and build quality of the buttons. Are these problems still an issue?

Cheers,
Moolie

Click to expand...

I've heard this story a long time ago but probably I don't
remeber all details.
I think the problems came from humidity. The IrDA component
did fine in preseries but unfortunately the component supplier
had a bad a broken batch, the component could not tolerate
even small increases in environmental humidity and the computer failled
after some months.

It's sad the computer got a bad reputation in the beginning of the launch
because it's a good computer.

The quality problems should all be history by now, this all happened
many years ago.

Niclas