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Any Suunto D4 reviews to report?

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
 
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Ha, I bet you still keep you Communist Party ID card! So, the government should keep an eye on the price of freediving watches (and probably all other products one can imagine) and decide how much they can cost! It looks like you prefer paying tens of thousands of corrupted bureaucrats controlling the industry and economy, than paying the manufacturers. I know that system very well - have been living under the communist bastards for 30 years. The only result of government regulated prices is that nobody is motivated to manufacture anything, everyone is a state employee, and no one bothers to really work - you surely know it very well from your own country, too.

Suunto is not a monopoly or a cartel. There are at least half a dozen other manufacturers offering diving computers with freediving functions. And even if that's not enough and you believe their price is unfair, and that the market needs a cheaper products, simply borrow some money and create your own company producing them.

Eric Fattah did it, and indeed built a superior product. Unfortunately he found out that the market is too small and the manufacturing and other running costs too high, so his diving computer is actually multiple times more expensive than that of Suunto.
 
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Reactions: roy_nexus_6 and BennyB
hyeparis said:
2 Andy.
.....I am sure you can read it up in any economic course on "market and market failure."
PS And what does the word "whinging" mean in this context, may I ask? I am not a native speaker of the English, so I'd like to know.
Click to expand...

Thanks but I'm quite comfortable with my understanding of market dynamics and economics.

From Dictionary.com
whinged, whing·ing, whing·es Chiefly British
To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.
 
Reactions: BennyB
There are plenty of threads on this forum researching cheaper alternatives.I'm sure most spearfishers and freedivers will take a good look at these once the D3 is gone for good. Anyone know the sample rate of the freedive function on the Maris Nemo? It's expensive but does look stylish.
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.rofl
 
I think its refresh rate was 1s but it only wrote to its log every 4s. Aren't they bringing out a special freedive-only model though? I'd expect that to have pretty decent specs given the Nemo is already quite good.
 
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 :t
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Erik said:
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.
Click to expand...
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
 
Reactions: Erik
And I always wondered why my eggs would be overcooked when I went diving too.....
 
In that cold water you dive in? Never happen! I know my 2 eggs wouldn't have a chance rofl
 
sunfish said:
.
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.rofl
Click to expand...

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.
 
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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.
 
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).
 
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.
 
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! :duh


Pete
 
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
 
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... :head
 
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