Capt Jim Wyatt
Hanging at the 10 Foot Stop
Staff member
ScubaBoard Business Sponsor
Scuba Instructor
AI is cool. I just got a Perdix AI earlier this week. My first AI computer....
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
+1 As above, except my computer is also AI, SPG is clipped off as well.Some of us like the simplicity and reliability of a gauge even when cost isn't an issue. I use a wrist computer and a SPG that I clip off to a d-ring on my waist band. You only have to check it every 5 or 10 minutes, so it's not a big inconvenience.
My husband and I just passed our open water certification. I would like to get him a wrist dive computer for Christams. I understand that air integrated computers are more expensive, but won't it be nice to have everything he needs to check in one place?
All of that varies by agencies and individual instructor, and the thinking is rapidly changing.
My first computer (more than 20 years ago) was air integrated, but attached to the tank on a console. As a new diver, I liked having all the information in one place, even though I had to reach for it. What I especially liked about it was that I could see for myself how my air consumption changed due to changes in depth and the way I breathed. I therefore intuitively learned about my air consumption rate before I had a clue it was a thing.
Decades later, I am a tech instructor who uses two computers on his wrists, but neither one is air integrated. To check my air consumption, I have to refer to an old-fashioned analog gauge clipped off at my waist. That is slightly inconvenient, but that is a minor issue for me because, believe it or not, in most cases checking your air supply for advanced dives like that is less important than it is for basic recreational dives. That is because basic recreational dives end with the divers' tanks relatively close to empty. Because having enough gas is so important on a tech dive, we carry loads of it and plan to end the dive with plenty of gas in the tank. If all goes according to plan, we will end the dive with a lot of extra gas, so we only have to check every now and then to make sure everything is going according to plan.
The exception is with sidemounted divers, who have to switch back and forth between tanks. In that case, air integrated is really nice, and if I were diving sidemount more often than I do now, I would switch to AI computers.
For my tech students, I don't care which they use. I will work with whatever you bring to the dive site.
So, for a new OW diver, if you can afford AI computers, go for it.
I've had them, their cool, but thats it. Mine broke.....My husband and I just passed our open water certification. I would like to get him a wrist dive computer for Christams. I understand that air integrated computers are more expensive, but won't it be nice to have everything he needs to check in one place?
I'm going to go against the flow here, so it seems. I'm not a fan of AI.
Now Scubaboard is not representative of all divers, so the responses you'll get here are going to be more skewed towards buying into the AI idea (and Sherwood for that matter too), but on the 2 computers I've had with AI the novelty soon wore off (Hey I sac see what my SAC rate is....!!) and I came to the conclusion that it was an expensive, unnecessary novelty. But as I said at the top, I'll be swimming against the flow here on Scubaboard