Computers

[decoeric]

I paid $1099 for my VR3. I know of 2 shops here in Minnesota that carry them. I am sure there are more but I know of 2.  I bet that if you wanted one they would ship it to you anywhere in the world. In fact I know they would. The 2 shops that I know of are Scuba Dive and Travel, call them and talk to Richard or Stacy, and Scuba Center call the Eagan shop and talk to John Avery. They are a lot of money but they are awesome computers and in my opinion the only computer you will ever need.




Like I said I use to dive an older Cochran Commander Nitrox, and it was a great computer for me, I never had any issues with it and I had it down beyond 200' a number of times. I was out on the Cochran website and checked out the model you are looking at and it seems like a descent unit. How much is it? The only thing I don't like about Cochran computers and I can't say if they have changed this since mine was the gas-switching feature. But reading the description on the EMC16 it doesn't sound like they have. They have a "no hands" switch feature, which in theory sounds great but I found that I didn't like it. How it works is you set the depth that you are going to switch to another gas and when you reach that depth the computer switches to that mix whether you have or not. So it is kind of a bad feature in my opinion I would rather switch the gas myself in case something has changed and I didn't switch or maybe along the dive I switched back to air from nitrox because it does not allow you to switch back. So that is something that I would look into, because like I said I didn't like that feature at all.

In regards to your question about the VR3 and cold water, you can set the unit to be more conservative during the dive and I believe this feature is for cold water, low vis, or altitude diving. The Cochran will do this to. But neither unit will switch automatically.

Personally I don't think you can go wrong with either computer the VR3 or the Cochran, after my horrible experience with the Dive Rite Nitek Duo I would not get one of those, but the price is very attractive. If you are looking at all at the VR2, look at the VR3 it isn't that much more money but in my opinion is a much better unit.

Good luck...

eric