Any Suunto D4 reviews to report?

[osusim]

Only one way to make Suunto comps cheap is to move all production to Chine and outsource of R&D to India. Else we pay to thousands of corrupted bureaucrats and support socialism in Europe
D9 3 years ago have got the same cost that D6 + cable now. I guess it's just euro inflation and not the Suunto marketing policy.

Anyway I'm still interesting in D4 but do not have any plans to downgrade to this one from my D9/Mosquito set.

[hyeparis]

2 ADR.
Thank you for clarifying what "whinging" means. I, like everyone else, am entitled to express my position on issues as well as to elaborate on that position as long as I avoid offensive language. If that annoys you, than don't read my posts.

[Erik]

Ease up boys- we're all pals here! I think we can all agree that it's a shitload of $$
>8^(
I will be looking for alternatives.... might go back to a depth guage and a timer again haha.

[Pastor]

Originally Posted by Erik

Ease up boys- we're all pals here! I think we can all agree that it's a shitload of $$
>8^(
I will be looking for alternatives.... might go back to a depth guage and a timer again haha.

It never was too successful that timer of yours Erik, when you set it at the surface it was OK but as soon as you dived the sand stopped flowing through the vile

[Erik]

Originally Posted by Pastor

vile

Vile, as in your episodes of painting walls after food poisoning, or vial as in what I buy my crack cocaine in?

[Erik]

And I always wondered why my eggs would be overcooked when I went diving too.....

[Pastor]

In that cold water you dive in? Never happen! I know my 2 eggs wouldn't have a chance

[Pastor]

Originally Posted by Erik

or vial as in what I buy my crack cocaine in?

Yeah that one Sorry my dyslexia kicking in

[ADR]

Originally Posted by sunfish

.
As a whingeing pom I would like to point out that the verb "to whinge" has an e on the end of it and "whingeing" is spelt with an e after the g. Thought you ought to know this Andy.

while my posts often have typos and speling errers Whinging can be spelt with or without the 'e' .

Collins Australian Dictionary - Whinging
Collins Concise (London) - Whingeing

Therefore if you are a "whinging pom", a phrase about poms coined by aussies it is probably more correct to spell it without the 'e'. Also, if we are concerned about accuracy you should have referred to Pohm rather than Pom given that it stands for Prisoner Of Her Majesty......but perhaps we are off topic

btw - the Cressi Edy gives D3 type functionality at previous D3 pricing for those that are not happy with the D4 move by Suunto. The only real draw back is the button pushes required to go to log mode to review the most recent dive info. It shows dive time on the main display when you surface but not the depth (max depth for session is shown instead) I for one will pay the extra for the D4 and hope that Suunto considers my suggestion for flexible code/functionality on each of their hardware platforms so that I can buy the D9 with 3times a second sampling and a freedive mode.

[Mullins]

Andy - the EDY displays the max depth of the previous dive during the surface interval. It does however show the max depth for the day in the 'History' screen, rather than the max historical depth of the watch.

[ADR]

YOU ARE RIGHT , my apologies to Cressi for the misinformation I posted. That means you can get previous D3 functionality in a unit with a metal case for a great price. Fathom dive in sydney are selling the Cressi Edy for $495 Aussie ($297 Euro).

[Bill McIntyre]

I'm a late entry to this thread, but even though it doesn't matter, I want to express my agreement with hyeparis. I don't think Suunto is doing me any favors by replacing the D3 with a unit costing twice as much because it has features I don't need and will never use.

I consider the D3 to be a huge contribution to safety, and I am totally dependent on mine now. I've changed the battery myself about 5 times and had it done in a shop once, and have never had a problem with it.

But even the price of the D3 was a stretch for a lot of young divers, and the D4 will be totally out of reach. I realize that Suunto is in business to make money and has no responsibility to promoting the safety of a significant portion of the diving community. But there is such a thing as consumer loyalty to a brand, and they just lost mine. They are doing this because they think they can. When my D3 gives up the ghost, I'll look long and hard for a replacement from another company before I look at a D4.

[laminar]

Eric had a design for a simple, freediving only computer along the same lines as the F1/X1 that would be smaller, sexier and all that. But really, and this is the honest truth, the market just isn't there. It's not there for a start-up company like Liquivision and neither is it there for a big company like Suunto, or else they would be all over it. Freedivers are simply not numerous enough to support the mass production of cheaper watches that have enough R&D in them to make them exciting to use. Maybe in 5 years, Liquvision could try again, but I doubt it.

It's a real shame that the market Liquivision found is tech diving because now that the X1 works well enough for a rapidly growing number of tech divers around the world and has found a price point that makes it feasible, there are few if any freedivers who will buy one. That's the reality of it.

I'm lucky enough to be able to use the "extra" X1s from early production runs when we go diving. And I'm still of the opinion that they leave anything by Suunto in the dust.

Still I do understand the feeling of not having the ideal diving computer. After using a variety of diving computers, the only one I ever bought (in the early days) was a simple Casio bottom timer and watch. Then its battery ran out and I didn't want to spend 50% of the retail price to get the battery changed!


Pete

[dave]

Although the D4 is currently expensive, its price should drop fairly quickly if most other dive computers on the market are anything to go by.
The costs in producing a dive computer are mostly development and marketing. The units themselves cost pennies.
I would not be at all surprised if a freedive and gauge mode version of the D4 (with a different name)comes out in the future, at a lower price point, as this is exactly what Suunto did before with the Mosquito and D3.
I have no idea how many D3s suunto have sold, but I suspect it is "quite a lot" . The development costs of the D3 would have been pretty close to zero, as it is just a mosquito with features disabled. Pure freediving is a tiny niche, but the spearfishing market supports several specialised manufacturers and is a lot bigger. For a lot of technical divers the deco calcs are an unwanted feature, and the D3 was quite popular as a backup gauge. I doubt the D3 was a failure commercially for Suunto

cheers
dave
Spearguns by Spearo uk ltd finest supplier of speargun, monofins, speargun and freediving equipment

[TheDude]

After I checked the specs for the D4 it was kind of disappointing. No real improvements for me - the sampling rate (not the recording interval) was a big disadvantage on D3 and Mosquito, and now just came on par with my Mares Nemo. Surface time alarm is nice to have, but not really needed. Adding a second depth alarm is also very good, but you still don't know how deep you are most of the time - depth interval alarm is the way to go and the selling point of the Nemo for me. And of course there is again the plastic...

But to be honest, Mares did disappoint me even more. Their new model - Nemo Excel, has 0 improvements, absolutely nothing... Just the design is different, and not necessarily better. If they only changed the recording interval for freedive, it would lift it to be one of the best freedive comps out there. How difficult can it be to just change the software a bit...