What's the difference between Sunnto d4 and d4i?

[kevtron]

I just got my D4i! So far it's awesome. Been playing with it training in a 5m pool, and gonna get deep this weekend~

One quick question if anyone has one. The manual says that I can access the stop watch in Dive mode with a long press of the 'mode' button. But when I do a long press all it does is turn on the back light. And of course a short press just changes mode.

I tried turning off the main back light settings, but then a long press dive Dive mode does nothing. Any ideas?

 

[Simos]

Maybe the backlight is the 'dive mode'

 

[kevtron]

I know this thread is old, but as it's a good source of info on this watch I wanted to point out something I've found. I was recently diving with friends who have a D4, and I asked them how to turn my dive mode off. They pointed out how easy it was to simply turn it to 'off.' So I checked, and the D4i has no dive mode off. Which means just jumping in the pool logs a 2 sec 1.5 meter dive. And any dynamic near the surface will log multiple short/shallow dives. Very annoying while training. And if I was teaching it'd be even more so.

 

[Pia]

@zilviss - yes, sounds like an incorrect cable. The correct cable has a product code SS018214000 and the inside of the connector is red.

@eNeRGy - you're correct, it could be more clearly stated on the user guide that the timer is available in the Dive Air / Dive Nitrox / Dive Gauge modes but not on Dive Free.

\Pia from Suunto

 

[Gerald]

Just bought a Suunto D4i

Unfortunately my D3 broke down after 7 years of moderate usage. I posted elsewhere that the mode button broke off. Otherwise the D3 was indestructible and I even used it for cliffjumping. The electronics worked fine until the end, the only disadvantage was a relatively small circular memory of 8 KB that allowed to store a freedive-time of only approx. 2 hours.

I just bought a Suunto D4i last week and had the chance to test it in a lake last week.

Pros:

1. The D4i looks impressive and overall it is easier to navigate through the menus.

2. When I view the samplings in Memory/Logbook I can skip over values when I press the UP-botton for approx. 2 seconds. After pressing it again shortly I can stop wherever I want to look at certain values.

Cons:

1. The battery check is now "mandatory" in all Dive Modes (when switched on or while autoswitching after immersion), whereas the D3 had the battery check in Scuba Dive Mode only. Looks like these battery checks consume a lot of battery by themselves.

2. Dive Mode On/Off: There seems to be no possibility to deactivate the dive mode (like in the D3), i.e. to turn it into a sports watch that allows me to jump into the water without using up battery and memory.

3. Memory: according to the manual the memory has only a capacity for 80 hours of diving with a 20s samplingrate. That would amount to only 4 hours of freedive mode. Am I correct?

4. Precision: I checked my Suunto with a calibrated line in a mountain lake (Attersee near Salzburg, elevation: 469 m) and observed a difference in the range of 3.3 %. Example: Mesuring line: 36.8 m/ Suunto D4i: 35.6 m.

5. Sampling rate: I didn't find any option sampling faster that 1 second. However I think it's convenient to let the user decide between a 1s, 2s and 5s samplig rate in freedive mode.

Regarding the "impreciseness": This difference can only be justified by the difference in airpressure (469 m is equivalent to a column of water with a height of approx. 0.5 m) and the difference of specific weight between fresh/salt water which on the average is 2,6%. Next week I will be off for Croatia and I'll keep you posted about my "research" in salt water.

cheers, Gerald

 

[trux]

Re: Just bought a Suunto D4i

Unfortunately my D3 broke down after 7 years of moderate usage. I posted elsewhere that the mode button broke off.

Broken buttons at D3 / Mosquito are frequent, but there are plenty of DB users who repaired their watches. Check out the archive. The last time I remember, Kars posted a DYI instructions for that somewhere here.

Looks like these battery checks consume a lot of battery by themselves.

I do not think it makes any significant difference. The battery check is nothing like turning on some additional circuits, but a very simple software operation measuring the voltage, that is being sensed continually anyway directly by the CPU.

3. Memory: according to the manual the memory has only a capacity for 80 hours of diving with a 20s samplingrate. That would amount to only 4 hours of freedive mode. Am I correct?

That's 240 dives of 1 minute, or 120 dives of 2minutes. You will probably not fill it easily even during two weeks of holidays. If yes, then download it to your PC or in the closest Internet cafe, and you can start anew.

4. Precision: I checked my Suunto with a calibrated line in a mountain lake (Attersee near Salzburg, elevation: 469 m) and observed a difference in the range of 3.3 %. Example: Mesuring line: 36.8 m/ Suunto D4i: 35.6 m.

Yes, indeed, as you can see in the comparative review at Apnea.cz, the D4i, misses the salt/fresh water modes, and is calibrated only to saltwater of a single water density. Many of other computers do have either manual or even automated fresh/salt water mode switching. At some of them, you can then also set the water salinity more precisely, for the higher accuracy. You need to apply the correction manually, when diving in fereshwater.

5. Sampling rate: I didn't find any option sampling faster that 1 second. However I think it's convenient to let the user decide between a 1s, 2s and 5s samplig rate in freedive mode.

Check out the page 48 of the manual. It tells:
"You can set the dive profile sample rate in free dive to 1, 2 or 5 seconds."
However, personally, I find anything longer than 1s useless for freediving. The memory is big enough to hold plenty of dives even when using 1s sampling rate, so there is little reason to use slower rates.

 

[Gerald]

@Trux

Thanks for your input!

just one more overall impression: scuba divers benefit the most from the improvements of the D4i. Relatively little has changed for freedivers.

Besides, the DM4 software is crappy and doesn't even allow basic stuff like exporting your samples into a csv.file. With the SDM 1.6 it was so much easier to manage my samples and to shuffle them around. SM4 stores it's data into a SQLite db.file and extra software is neccessary to access these data electronically.

cheers,Gerald