National Geographic Dive Master Watch

[b1gcountry]

I still can't get it to work above or below water. I've tried tilting it every which-way, and the light never seems to go on. I have been strapping it to the ballast on my can light, so that might be messing up some magnetic sensor or something, I'm not sure. I still need to find a way to mount the watch over my drysuit. I haven't had too much time to mess with it.

BTW, I dove with the watch this week. Eight dives in Michigan and Huron down to about 44*, most of the wrecks were between 110-130'. It was the only set of guages I had that survived the week. I had another timex flood, and two Uwatecs had battery issues. Good thing for spares.

Tom

 

[Benutzer]

I finally dove mine and didn't get the auto-backlight to work either (it IS enabled), but I'm not sure if ambient light was just too bright to notice it or it wasn't doing it at all.

Wasn't intuitive, so I had to get out the instructions to change my setting from SEA to LAKE. Not sure how much difference it makes.

I have small wrists so mine fit over my 7m wetsuit but just barely, on the last 2-3 holes. A bigger band would definitely be better, and a necessity for most divers if you want to wear it on your wrist over a wetsuit.

That said, everything else worked perfectly. It logged date and time dive started, max depth, coldest water temp, elapsed time. Once out of the water for a couple of minutes, it saved the info, and was easy to retrieve (like, just look at your watch and press Mode a couple of times). Easier than my computer actually, so it was my goto for checking at the end of the dive, or when someone asked how cold it was, how deep, how long, etc.

And the fact that it started recording the dive by itself is still my favorite feature, since I always seem to forget to check the watch at some part of the dive, either before or after, or if I do check, I forget what time it was.

 

[Benutzer]

Hmmm... not that I'm recommending it at this price ($15 + shipping), but a quick search showed a Suunto watch band extender on ebay. Interesting. Probably worth it, but for 1/3 the price of what the watch itself cost... :-/

 

[b1gcountry]

Looks like you would have to cut down the strap too. The buckle on the Nat Geo watch wouldn't take an inch wide band.

 

[Kaliber35]

I just bought this after reading this post. I am a warm water diver and will try this out over my next few dives. I hope it does the job as an entry "computer".

 

[gsk3]

I ordered two of them some six weeks ago, $60 ea. from buy.com. They arrived, and I was happy. Very solid-seeming build, all the features you need in something like this. Read through the whole manual. Then started working with it. Both were broken. One had a button stuck that could not be wedged free (believe me, I tried). The other had a glitch in navigating through the menus that made it impossible to use. I suspect one of the buttons was being pressed in continuously, from the way it behaved. Given that these were not backups for us but were intended to be the primary depth gauge, we returned them for credit rather than replacement. Not worth risking junky equipment, even if we did get a good one on replacement.

 

[Kaliber35]

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...

You can still use it as an emergency compass. Let say you dont have your gauges and you do have this watch and you become lost. You can see the time digitally and imagine in your head where the hour hand would be if it were not digital. Depending on the time of day you could adjust the bezel (see link below) to show you north.

Using the Compass Ring on a Wristwatch

 

[Kaliber35]

I ordered two of them some six weeks ago, $60 ea. from buy.com. They arrived, and I was happy. Very solid-seeming build, all the features you need in something like this. Read through the whole manual. Then started working with it. Both were broken. One had a button stuck that could not be wedged free (believe me, I tried). The other had a glitch in navigating through the menus that made it impossible to use. I suspect one of the buttons was being pressed in continuously, from the way it behaved. Given that these were not backups for us but were intended to be the primary depth gauge, we returned them for credit rather than replacement. Not worth risking junky equipment, even if we did get a good one on replacement.

Pretty scary review now that mine is in shipment :shocked2:

 

[b1gcountry]

RE Compass...
It's not likely that I would ever be able to see the sun from underwater where I dive.

 

[Kaliber35]

RE Compass...
It's not likely that I would ever be able to see the sun from underwater where I dive.

I actually laughed at that one cause of how I missed something so obvious! lol