TheMadDane
Contributor
Let us know when you dive it and how it worked.
National Geographic Dive Master Watch
- Thread starter b1gcountry
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Benutzer
Registered
Will do, though the only thing I can really compare it to is my current backup which is a cheap old $20 Timex. If it turns itself on, it's bound to be better since I generally forget to check my watch anyway. 
I'll probably get it in the water in about a month when the quarries start warming up a touch.
I'll probably get it in the water in about a month when the quarries start warming up a touch.
Benutzer
Registered
Well, a friend headed over to Blue Springs in Indiana this past weekend just to camp and check the place out since last year's flood. He was kind enough to take the watch with him and tossed it in on a line for me to see if it worked underwater as well as on land.
According to the watch, on Sat May 2, 2009 at 1:52pm it came on automatically, and during 5 minutes and 53 seconds of immersion it got down to 18', where it was a balmy 52 Fahrenheit. It saved the record and still works.
Doesn't appear to be any need to return the watch at this time. It gave me enough info to work the tables and continue diving if my computer fails. That's worth the $60 to me.
I'll check it on a deeper dive hopefully in about 4-5 weeks (can't wait!).
According to the watch, on Sat May 2, 2009 at 1:52pm it came on automatically, and during 5 minutes and 53 seconds of immersion it got down to 18', where it was a balmy 52 Fahrenheit. It saved the record and still works.
Doesn't appear to be any need to return the watch at this time. It gave me enough info to work the tables and continue diving if my computer fails. That's worth the $60 to me.
I'll check it on a deeper dive hopefully in about 4-5 weeks (can't wait!).
OP
I'm trying to figure out something I can use to mount it to my wrist when I'm diving dry. The strap won't fit around a drysuit wrist as it is.
Tom
Tom
Goindrinkn
Contributor
My wife and I both have these (bought them off woot awhile back) and they keep right in step with my computer. No leaks so far. I was buying the Timex Helix Depth watches for a while. They are 20 bucks but tend to leak after a number of dives. sometimes 1 
But so far this watch seems to work well for us.
But so far this watch seems to work well for us.
OP
I just got a review from a friend who mentioned that his watch display faded to blank during a dive in 43* water. It logged the dive afterward, but was unreadable at depth. The battery showed full before the dive, but read low battery afterwards. He's going to have the battery replaced, and see what it does after that.
Tom
Tom
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It's the voltage dropping as the watch (and battery) chills.
OP
Understood, but it still made the watch useless on that dive. The voltage also should have returned to somewhat normal once it warmed up, but it didn't, so he is going to try a fresh battery. I'll test mine out this weekend on The Lakes.
Tom
Tom
OP
Well, I got the watch about a week ago, and just had the chance yesterday to take it for some dives. Here are my first impressions:
Out of Water:
It is a very large watch. It is heavy, and a little bit clunky. It also has a somewhat ugly band, and not a standard one, so you probably can't replace it. It works perfectly fine for keeping time, and has several alarms you can program. The stopwatch is somewhat clunky. The time display is a little annoying to me because the time is relatively small compared to the date, and other info. It also gives the date in teh annoying DD-MM format instead of the MM-DD format used in the US. It would have been nice if they let you choose which format to present it in. It gives the air temp on the watch display, which is fairly because your body temp skews the reading. You have to take it off for ~20 min to get an accurate reading. I dunked it into ice water for 20 min, and it read 31*f, so I would guess it is only about 1* off (at least at low temperatures.)
Another observation is that it has a rotating bezel on the face. This doesn't make sense to me as its a digital clock, and what's the point with a digital? The stopwatch mode is also pretty useless, for reasons below...
Dive Mode:
First off, the watch band is not a standard fitting, and you need two small flathead screwdrivers to even get it off. I haven't figured out a way of mounting the thing on my wrist when I'm in a drysuit. I suppose this won't be an issue for a warm water diver, but it's a big one for me.
The buttons are non- functional underwater, and the manual recommends not pressing them while submerged. It is a little hard because the buttons are VERY easy to press. They stick out pretty far, and don't take much force to depress.
The depth display was a little small to read as depth. Add this to the fact that I mounted the light onto my can light lighthead, and it was a little annoying. If I was using it as my primary, it would probably become second nature before too long, but I wound up looking at it a lot longer than I'd like to 'get a reading'. The depth sensor seemed to be pretty well calibrated. It read about 1.5' shallower than my Uwatec Guages. Depth was given where Date is when in watch mode.
The Time is given in the largest digits on the lowest part of the screen (where time would be displayed in time mode). It was a lot easier to read than the depth, and read in MM'SS". It took a little getting used to as well since I'm not used to seeing seconds, but that's one of the reasons I got this, so I could more accurately guage deco stops.
Max Depth and water temp were also given on the dive display where day of the week, and temp/year are normally given in clock mode.
The watch was supposed to have an auto backlight based on the wrist movement while underwater. I wasn't able to activate it. I'm not sure if I was doing it right or not. I'll try again later.
The best feature is that the timer starts automatically once you descend below about 5 feet. Very helpful if you are like me, and don't remember to start the watch until you are almost to the bottom.
All in all, it was an acceptable BT/digital guage. It is a little small for primary use, but might work well in a tropical setting where there is plenty of ambient light, and good vis, and where it could fit on your wrist. The watch held up to cold temperature, and depths up to 100' so far.
Dive Review:
Another nice feature is the dive review mode of the watch. I didn't have much time to play around with this, but it gives time, max depth, Dive # and Min Temp for the last 10 dives. It also is supposed to give date and time on an alternate display, but I didn't get a chance to see this because the dives got erased before I checked it out.
Which brings me back to the stopwatch feature...apparently, when you reset the stopwatch back to zero, it erases all your saved dive log info. This makes the stopwatch an unusable feature for me. Other than this, it seems to give you all the info you could ask for of a low cost dive watch.
Summary:
It has a lot of neat features, but not all of them are really implemented well. I would like to figure out how to work the auto backlight, and if I can, then I think I'll be happy with this as a set of backup guages. We will see how it works at greater depths.
The watch is really unique, and is somewhat closer to being a Suunto Mosquito style computer in guage mode than a watch. It's size makes it either a very large watch, or a very compact guages. I did get the impression that the thing was marketed to something in between a real diver, and someone who just wanted a cool watch with a nat geo logo on it. There are a lot of features you really don't need for what it is, and I would have preferred it if they had just made it simpler to use for a diver vs. trying to make it a full featured watch as well. For example, there is:
a watch mode
Alarm mode with 3 different alarms, and ability to set an hourly chime.
Stopwatch mode
Countdown/countup timer mode
Dive Log Mode
A simple alarm could be useful, but I don't like the other junk. I would also have liked some sort of SI display that gave you your SI with the current time of day. All in all, it felt like they made a lot of compromises between a watch you'd wear everyday, and a watch for diving. It really is too large to wear everyday anyway.
I could see using this as a primary set of guages if you went on a vacation somewhere like Bonaire. It would also work as a backup for more aggressive dives if you can find a way to mount it that isn't too annoying. The case is very solid, and if the buttons hold, it seems like this could be a very durable guage down to 200'. I'll let you know how durable it proves at deeper depths. All in all, for the price, it is a very interesting piece of equipment for anyone who prefers to dive tables.
Hope this helps,
Tom
Out of Water:
It is a very large watch. It is heavy, and a little bit clunky. It also has a somewhat ugly band, and not a standard one, so you probably can't replace it. It works perfectly fine for keeping time, and has several alarms you can program. The stopwatch is somewhat clunky. The time display is a little annoying to me because the time is relatively small compared to the date, and other info. It also gives the date in teh annoying DD-MM format instead of the MM-DD format used in the US. It would have been nice if they let you choose which format to present it in. It gives the air temp on the watch display, which is fairly because your body temp skews the reading. You have to take it off for ~20 min to get an accurate reading. I dunked it into ice water for 20 min, and it read 31*f, so I would guess it is only about 1* off (at least at low temperatures.)
Another observation is that it has a rotating bezel on the face. This doesn't make sense to me as its a digital clock, and what's the point with a digital? The stopwatch mode is also pretty useless, for reasons below...
Dive Mode:
First off, the watch band is not a standard fitting, and you need two small flathead screwdrivers to even get it off. I haven't figured out a way of mounting the thing on my wrist when I'm in a drysuit. I suppose this won't be an issue for a warm water diver, but it's a big one for me.
The buttons are non- functional underwater, and the manual recommends not pressing them while submerged. It is a little hard because the buttons are VERY easy to press. They stick out pretty far, and don't take much force to depress.
The depth display was a little small to read as depth. Add this to the fact that I mounted the light onto my can light lighthead, and it was a little annoying. If I was using it as my primary, it would probably become second nature before too long, but I wound up looking at it a lot longer than I'd like to 'get a reading'. The depth sensor seemed to be pretty well calibrated. It read about 1.5' shallower than my Uwatec Guages. Depth was given where Date is when in watch mode.
The Time is given in the largest digits on the lowest part of the screen (where time would be displayed in time mode). It was a lot easier to read than the depth, and read in MM'SS". It took a little getting used to as well since I'm not used to seeing seconds, but that's one of the reasons I got this, so I could more accurately guage deco stops.
Max Depth and water temp were also given on the dive display where day of the week, and temp/year are normally given in clock mode.
The watch was supposed to have an auto backlight based on the wrist movement while underwater. I wasn't able to activate it. I'm not sure if I was doing it right or not. I'll try again later.
The best feature is that the timer starts automatically once you descend below about 5 feet. Very helpful if you are like me, and don't remember to start the watch until you are almost to the bottom.
All in all, it was an acceptable BT/digital guage. It is a little small for primary use, but might work well in a tropical setting where there is plenty of ambient light, and good vis, and where it could fit on your wrist. The watch held up to cold temperature, and depths up to 100' so far.
Dive Review:
Another nice feature is the dive review mode of the watch. I didn't have much time to play around with this, but it gives time, max depth, Dive # and Min Temp for the last 10 dives. It also is supposed to give date and time on an alternate display, but I didn't get a chance to see this because the dives got erased before I checked it out.
Which brings me back to the stopwatch feature...apparently, when you reset the stopwatch back to zero, it erases all your saved dive log info. This makes the stopwatch an unusable feature for me. Other than this, it seems to give you all the info you could ask for of a low cost dive watch.
Summary:
It has a lot of neat features, but not all of them are really implemented well. I would like to figure out how to work the auto backlight, and if I can, then I think I'll be happy with this as a set of backup guages. We will see how it works at greater depths.
The watch is really unique, and is somewhat closer to being a Suunto Mosquito style computer in guage mode than a watch. It's size makes it either a very large watch, or a very compact guages. I did get the impression that the thing was marketed to something in between a real diver, and someone who just wanted a cool watch with a nat geo logo on it. There are a lot of features you really don't need for what it is, and I would have preferred it if they had just made it simpler to use for a diver vs. trying to make it a full featured watch as well. For example, there is:
a watch mode
Alarm mode with 3 different alarms, and ability to set an hourly chime.
Stopwatch mode
Countdown/countup timer mode
Dive Log Mode
A simple alarm could be useful, but I don't like the other junk. I would also have liked some sort of SI display that gave you your SI with the current time of day. All in all, it felt like they made a lot of compromises between a watch you'd wear everyday, and a watch for diving. It really is too large to wear everyday anyway.
I could see using this as a primary set of guages if you went on a vacation somewhere like Bonaire. It would also work as a backup for more aggressive dives if you can find a way to mount it that isn't too annoying. The case is very solid, and if the buttons hold, it seems like this could be a very durable guage down to 200'. I'll let you know how durable it proves at deeper depths. All in all, for the price, it is a very interesting piece of equipment for anyone who prefers to dive tables.
Hope this helps,
Tom
Schizlor
Registered
Here is the manual for the watch, it's the NG705 Series Manual:
Natl Geo Watches
Page 14 shows how to turn on the auto-backlight.
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