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Liquivision F1 demo appraisal

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feign

Well-Known Member
Jun 30, 2003
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I thought that it would be worthwhile and appropriate for those of us who recently had a chance to use the F1 at the Telegraph cove expedition to comment for the benefit of other freedivers. I think 6 of us or so used the production F1 for the first time on this trip. I had the opportunity to use the computer on a 9 hour dive day and have a tutorial with it's creator on some of the finer details at the end of the session.

Ok, first off the display is crazy good. Even in direct sunlight at the end of a dive to evaluate this thing is nicely readable. It doesn't get washed out like every other computer. The deeper and darker your environment, the brighter this thing seems to get. I know my d3 in dark places becomes difficult to read, this is not the case with the F1.
Also, the display is a widescreen format (16:9 like). I am not sure if this was done on purpose, but it is kind of cool. For those of you that are electronic freaks and can't stand to even look at a display of any kind unless it 16:9, this feature of the F1 will turn you on.

The size of the unit is nicely compact, more so than I thought when seeing pictures before.

No buttons when in dive mode, which means so fussing around or screwing things up when out at sea.

Lithium ion rechargeable of some kind, which according to E. Fattah it will last as long as the user. This is really nice because you don't have the option of destroying your computer when you replace a battery and jack the seal up like on other units.

When adjusting settings with the buttons attached, it is surprisingly easy and simple to use, in spite of the complex data sets that await you in the brain of this thing.

About the data. The basic stuff, depth and time is big and bold staring right at you when you need it. There is a lot more data that can be evaluated like ascent, descent rates, temp, etc. This kind of info will be a tantalizing feast for those wanting to evaluate diving performance and peak their abilities. I didn't have time to assess or fully appreciate this info in the day that I used the computer. I was also quite occupied slaying the denizens of the deep as well. I will mention one other thing on the display though, pointed out to me be E. Fattah. On the side of the display is a graphical bar depicting the ascent or descent rate. This bar can be easily glanced at mid dive to give the user a sense of their progress. For example, if I had known it was there it may have helped me when I had a downdraft current pushing me down and had me wondering if I was making any progress in reaching the surface.
At the end of dives the profiles can be evaluated, including a graphical depiction of the whole dive in a depth/time format.

The software is supposedly flexible in that in the future there may be particular or custom features added to accommodate the needs of the user. This leaves the functions of the F1 with even more potential down the road.

One thing that I would like to see in the software would be date and time added to the dive logs, which would help when going back to old dives to reference them easier.

A downside to the computer is that it costs some decent coin. I guess you get what you pay for though. It is definitely the top dog of freedive computers. I plan on getting one when my finances permit.

Thanks to Eric Fattah for designing the F1 and for generously allowing all of us on the trip to demo it. :)

Lee Brewerton
 
Re: Liquidvision F1 demo appraisal

Regarding the F1. This thing is fantastic. Reading it is completely effortless - no buttons or stopping the flow of the dive to squint, turn the guage flat or sort out what it says. It gives relevant information in an intuitively organized real time display that is amazingly readable in all conditions across a wide range of viewing angles. I only touched the surface of it's functionality (no pun intended) but after the dive it gives you this great graphic readout of each dive - with times at depth, rate of decent/ascent, total time etc. Descent/ascent/temp and other info is all available during the dive in a way that is not at all confusing - and prioritizes the most relevant info. The display is very intelligent and intuitive.
I looked through my pictures to see if I could find any that show it and found these two of Brianna - check out how visible the guage is - even in overcast with a fair amount of particulate. If the focus was a little better you could probably read the depth in the pictures.

The F1 is elegantly designed, practical, comprehensive, sturdy and intuitively user friendly. It was a blast to be able to try one out
 
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Re: Liquidvision F1 demo appraisal

I am one of the fortunate ones who already dived with the F1 over a weekend in Croatia and the overall verdict - this is THE computer for freediving.

I will not repeat what has been already said in the previous posts - instead i will make a brief comparison between the F1 and Suunto Vyper. The latter i own and used mostly for scuba diving but i took it along this time, in gauge mode to see how it features right next to the F1.
- visibility underwater - no comparison here, F1 is in a different class and no wonder is one of its the prime selling points - and yes, it helps a great deal not to waste time trying to figure out your depth or time.
- accuracy - F1 has double decimals for actual depth and one decimal for temperature (the afterdive reading) whereas the Vyper sticks to one decimal for depth and none for temperature. I also noticed small differences in depth reading between the two, with the tendency that Vyper was rounding up to the lower depth number - note that i had both computers on the same hand next to each other.
-alarms - both computers have depth alarm but F1 has 4 different alarms at 4 depths of your choice, now that i found quite useful. It may be useful for the future to have perhaps an alarm for time as well - this would come in handy for recreational freedivers or speros who are more concerned on the time spent underwater rather than depth alone.
- afterdive information - again it is clear that F1, being designed with a freediver in mind, gives you a lot of information, in particular I found useful the total time of descent and ascent and maximum speed (and at which depth it was reached). It helped me slow down and fine tune my rate of descent in particular, right from the first dives.

I will be taking the F1 to Dahab next week and it will see a lot of water for several days, more on it after returning back home.

Finally, a video clip filmed in Croatia, you can clearly see the F1 as well as the Vyper, yet the display is visible only on one of the computers, even at very low rezolution!



Serge
 
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Just found a pic that I took during the same trip - I know, the numbers on display are not impressive in any way, i was just goofing around with the camera in the shallowsrofl


serge
PS this is my 100th post, just noticed!:thankyou
 

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