In September, Apple launched the Apple Watch Ultra, which isn’t solely waterproof to 100 meters (330 toes) in depth, however can be used as a dive laptop with the assistance of a companion app developed by Huish Outdoors. We took it into the deep blue sea to try it out.

I’ve been an enthusiastic scuba diver for greater than a decade. I’ve logged a whole lot of dives, and I’ve earned a handful of {qualifications} over time: I’m an SSI Rescue Diver, an SSI Master Diver and a PADI Divemaster; I’ve additionally accomplished a bunch of specialty coaching over time. If which means nothing to you, suffice it to say I’m educated in dive-specific first assist, and if you’re diving with me, I can (not less than in principle) save your life if one thing goes fallacious. I’m additionally certified to guide dive excursions.

I’m additionally an enormous {hardware} and devices nerd, so when Apple first introduced that the Apple Watch Ultra could possibly be used as a dive laptop, I bought very excited and overtly wrote that I might gladly belief my life to the freshest and chunkiest wrist-worn supercomputer from the Cupertino-based electronics producer. The article bought me some, er, attention-grabbing suggestions from the dive neighborhood, however I stand by it. So when Apple gave me early entry to the Huish Outdoors Oceanic+ app and an Apple Watch Ultra, I made a decision to place my cash the place my regulator goes, e-book a flight to Hawaii, and see if it may stand the strain of 100 toes of seawater underneath my watchful eyes.

Was I nervous? Not actually. A dive laptop can fail with out placing divers’ lives in danger. That stated, I ought to point out that whereas the Apple Watch Ultra is in its full and closing kind, the Oceanic+ app was not. I used to be operating a beta model, which did introduce a few nerves. The watch app was full-featured and labored sleekly, however the iPhone compendium app was slightly tough on the edges, nonetheless.

The Oceanic+ watch app itself is the place the brunt of the heavy lifting is finished, so I’ll spend most of my focus there, however let’s begin with a slight detour into some principle…

What’s a dive laptop?

If you’re a veteran scuba diver, you most likely don’t want this refresher, however for this evaluate to really make sense, we have to get slightly bit nerdy about what a dive laptop is and why it’s necessary to make use of one.

You could have heard of “the bends,” or decompression sickness. This is a doubtlessly medically critical situation that may happen once you breathe a gasoline (normally air) at strain (corresponding to underwater). The drawback is that when a gasoline is at strain, it goes in by means of your lungs, and the nitrogen within the gasoline will get absorbed into your bloodstream. From there, it goes in all places your blood goes – your muscle mass, your fats, your mind, your guts, and all of your different tissues. This isn’t harmful in itself, so long as the gasoline stays “in solution” – in different phrases, so long as your blood stays liquid, your fats stays fats, and your mind stays sans air bubbles.

If you scale back the strain too shortly, for instance, by surfacing from a dive too shortly, physics flexes its mighty arms (within the type of Boyle’s Law), and that gasoline can come out of answer, forming little bubbles. Those little bubbles can acquire in locations you don’t need them and trigger very critical points. A small air bubble in a blood vessel in your mind may cause an embolism. The identical air bubble in your coronary heart may cause coronary heart assaults and air wherever there shouldn’t be air may cause quite a lot of different nasty results. “Minor” points are additionally potential, which may result in rashes, itches or different unpleasantness. If you need a deep dive into all of the nasty stuff that may occur, be at liberty to Google decompression illness and dive accidents, and also you’ll come throughout some gnarly shit.

The quirk that complicates all of that is that completely different tissues tackle and launch nitrogen at completely different charges, so you want to preserve an in depth eye on issues.

A scuba diver observes that the goal 30-minute dive time alarm has been reached. Image credit score: Bang Bang Media.

For leisure scuba divers, there’s a fairly easy approach of avoiding decompression illness:

1. When diving, divers are likely to the deepest a part of their dive first, after which progressively and slowly go shallower and shallower on their dive, making certain they don’t ascend sooner than a sure ascent charge. A dive laptop helps right here: It will warn you if you’re ascending too quick.
2. When diving, make sure that they don’t keep down too deep for too lengthy so slow-loading tissues don’t get overloaded with nitrogen. Slow-loading tissues additionally offload extra slowly, they usually may cause issues even should you follow all the opposite guidelines of diving. A dive laptop will assist right here, too, by utilizing algorithms to maintain a mannequin of how a lot every of a diver’s tissues are loaded with nitrogen and advise divers to go shallower or to finish a dive if they’re overloaded. (The algorithm Oceanic+ makes use of retains monitor of 16 completely different theoretical tissue varieties, weighted in several methods to maintain leisure divers as protected as potential.)
3. Finally, divers can provide themselves some floor time between dives to correctly give their physique time to off-gas. In addition to diving, it’s necessary to not go mountaineering or get on a aircraft too quickly after diving, and don’t dive too deep or too typically in fast succession. How do you retain monitor of all of that? You guessed it: A dive laptop.

In the early days of scuba diving, earlier than dive computer systems have been a factor, you’d use a depth gauge and a watch. Your depth gauge would measure how deep you went, and your watch can be used to maintain monitor of how lengthy you stayed down there. And to calculate how a lot time you could possibly spend underwater, you’d use dive tables. These early dive tables have been calculated by basically testing on daredevil navy divers within the early 1900s.

As you may anticipate, that they had some points: Most of the folks within the assessments have been male, 18-25 years of age, and in superb form. I can nearly move for male, however the remainder of these issues usually are not true for me. The different drawback is that the dive tables don’t actually have an idea of multi-level dives: They assume that you simply plunge to a sure depth (within the case of a navy diver, plant explosives on an enemy ship), keep there to do a job after which resurface. That’s not likely how folks dive for enjoyable anymore.

So as quickly as dive computer systems grew to become moderately accessible, folks began utilizing these as a substitute. The first dive computer systems grew to become out there within the Nineteen Eighties, they usually began being moderately priced – placing them in vary of leisure divers within the late Nineties. They may beep at you once you ascended too quick, preserve monitor of your tissue loading, and preserve monitor of multi-depth, multi-dive situations that shortly grow to be too sophisticated to determine by hand. Some dive coaching nonetheless contains the usage of dive tables to assist educating the idea and historical past, however the overwhelming majority of divers don’t use these after they move their certification.

The Oceanic+ app makes use of the Bühlmann decompression algorithm, which is extensively used and trusted throughout the dive trade.

So do you want a dive laptop to maintain you protected?

As a part of your dive coaching, you’re taught learn how to floor safely from a dive. While a dive laptop telling you how briskly you’re ascending could be a good security blanket, in case your laptop ought to fail and all of your different devices additionally crap the mattress, you possibly can nonetheless safely make it again to the boat.

A trick most divers are taught is to “ascend at the rate of your smallest bubbles.” In different phrases, they breathe out by means of their regulator, and waft their hand by means of the bubbles that kind. Find the smallest bubble; it is going to be ascending very slowly by means of the water. Keep tempo with all of it the best way to the floor, and you’ll be ascending at a protected, sluggish charge.

Now, in case your dive laptop did fail, a protected, conservative diver wouldn’t select to dive once more that day. In principle you could possibly buddy up with a diver who had a extra aggressive dive profile than you in earlier dives (i.e. they went deeper for longer than you) and you could possibly assume that their dive laptop’s knowledge can be protected for you, too. If you keep shallower than them on the subsequent dive, it’s best to, in principle, be wonderful. However, should you dive on completely different gases (say, your Nitrox combine was 32% and theirs was 30% oxygen), or if they’ve accomplished fewer dives than you latterly, issues get difficult.

In addition, a dive laptop is a private security machine. If you probably did find yourself with decompression illness, the dive medics on the hyperbaric chamber will use the info out of your dive laptop to determine what occurred and learn how to deal with you. In principle, as a result of no wise divemaster will suggest you employ another person’s dive laptop as a proxy in your security, most dive operations will ask you to not, and no dive certification physique will condone this type of factor. I might clarify all of that to you, after which I’d add — hey, as a licensed diver, you’re answerable for your individual security; you do what suits along with your acceptable danger profile.

All of that is to say that it isn’t truly harmful or scary to belief my diving expertise to a brand-new Apple Watch and the beta model of an app. I did dive with a second dive laptop within the pocket of my Buoyancy Compensator Device (BCD – that’s the life-vest-looking factor you possibly can see within the footage), so I had one thing to match the Apple Watch Ultra with.

If the watch or the Oceanic+ app had failed, I might have had an opportunity to go on the second dive, counting on my backup laptop. I ought to add that this isn’t unusual for me: Whenever I’m working as a divemaster and main different divers, I sometimes carry two dive computer systems — one for my wrist and one for in my pocket.

With all of that out of the best way… a variety of that is about trusting the gear you’re utilizing, which brings me to the subsequent query.

The dive laptop I exploit as a backup is a Suunto Zoop. There are dive computer systems which might be smaller than the Apple Watch Ultra – this isn’t certainly one of them. The Zoom is now discontinued, however it’s the measurement of an ice-hockey puck, and about as elegant. It does the trick of measuring your dive, nevertheless. These days, I preserve it in a pocket as a backup. Image Credit: Haje Kamps / TechCrunch.

How have you learnt should you can belief a dive laptop?

As talked about, in case your dive laptop fails, you possibly can nonetheless safely floor, however it will smash the remainder of your day of diving. Nobody desires to overlook out on diving whereas on an costly dive journey, so to know whether or not or not you possibly can belief a dive laptop, you want to belief a number of completely different elements of it:

1. The instrumentation – A dive laptop must preserve a operating log of time and depth. Most dive computer systems run a steady calculation of your tissue loading, and as well as preserve a log with sure intervals, so you possibly can evaluate your log later.
2. The algorithm – Different algorithms use completely different ranges of conservatism (i.e. how a lot security buffer it has built-in, maintaining in thoughts that everybody’s physique is barely completely different).
3. Reliability – It is exceedingly uncommon {that a} devoted dive laptop crashes. It could run out of battery, however as a single-function machine that solely has to maintain monitor of a single set of algorithms, there’s not a lot that may go fallacious.

Evaluating the Apple Watch Ultra and the Oceanic+ app, then, turns into a query of inspecting the instrumentation, the algorithm and the reliability.

For instrumentation, Apple claims that the Apple Watch Ultra is EN13319-compliant; this can be a European commonplace overlaying the “Functional, safety, and testing requirements” for “depth and time measuring devices.” In different phrases: dive computer systems. Apple Watch Ultra makes use of depth sensors which might be correct to 40 meters/130 toes. Typically, a newly licensed scuba diver is licensed to 18 meters/60 toes, however most scuba diving coaching orgs will supply a “deep diving” specialty, which is able to enable divers to go to the complete 40 meters/130 toes depth. Beyond that, you’re looking at “technical diving,” which normally requires diving with different gasoline mixes. Things get sophisticated quick from right here.

The algorithm and the person interface for Oceanic+ is obtainable by Huish Outdoors, which is aware of a factor or two about scuba diving. The firm owns quite a lot of extraordinarily well-respected scuba diving manufacturers, together with Atomic, Bare, Stahlsac, Zeagle, Hollis, and, in fact, Oceanic.

So the Oceanic model itself is reliable and has been serving the dive neighborhood for 50-plus years. The different diving manufacturers within the Huish Outdoors portfolio are extraordinarily extremely regarded and are trusted by leisure, technical and industrial/army divers all around the world. The query mark for me is that the model doesn’t essentially have a robust core competency as an app developer.

The reality is that Apple did select Huish Outdoors as its launch companion to launch the Oceanic+ app, giving the developer a major head begin, with the combo receiving a whole lot of hours of testing, each in pressurized chambers and in real-life dive situations. Sources inside Apple counsel that different app builders might be given entry to the depth sensors later this 12 months, and it’ll be attention-grabbing to see what different manufacturers determine to launch their very own variations of those apps.

The closing piece is reliability. I’ve not skilled crashes with Apple Watch apps earlier than, however it stands to purpose that they might occur, as they might with another app on another platform. Incidentally, that is the place Oceanic+ is, as of but, an unknown.

Two out of the 40 or so divers that have been with us on this Oceanic+ testing extravaganza skilled points with the Oceanic+/Apple Watch Ultra combo. It’s not completely clear if this was a person error or whether or not the app malfunctioned in a roundabout way. I didn’t expertise any points, and I’m not clear on whether or not I must be nervous. I requested Apple about this, they usually stated they’re unable to touch upon particular incidents with beta software program.

Personally, if the Oceanic+ app had failed or crashed on my dives, I’d have been slightly grumpy, however as described above it doesn’t current an precise danger to divers. If you discover the app is malfunctioning, you possibly can floor slowly and safely. Huish Outdoors did launch an replace of the beta app as I used to be scripting this evaluate, and may have its closing launch prepared within the public App Store as you’re studying this.

Your correspondent greeting the photographer underwater. You can see the Apple Watch Ultra on my left wrist, dealing with towards me, and that I’m in dire want of a haircut and a shave. Image credit score: Bang Bang Media.

As above, so under

Oceanic+ is a modern, highly effective Apple Watch app that basically replicates (nearly) all the pieces a dive laptop can do, and provides a number of new toys to the combination. The app is in energetic improvement, and the workforce growing the app advised me they’ve an intensive roadmap for enjoyable new options it has within the pipeline. First issues first, although: Getting the app into folks’s fingers.

The app has quite a lot of free options that are helpful for snorklers and free divers. If you wish to use it as a dive laptop, nevertheless, it’s a must to pay its (remarkably well-designed) subscription charge to unlock the complete performance.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/oceanic-plus-pricing-model/ ‎

A diver inspecting their dive profile on the Apple Watch Ultra, observing it has been 1 hour and 11 minutes since their dive (generally known as the “surface time.”) Image credit score: Bang Bang Media.

At the floor, the watch can be utilized for dive planning and a log e-book, and to configure the settings in your subsequent dive. If you could have a latest dive on the books, it will possibly additionally present you your floor interval time.

None of that is rocket science; dive computer systems have been in a position to do most of these items so long as they’ve been round. The Apple Watch Ultra’s enormous touch-screen makes the person expertise considerably nicer than on conventional dive watches, which may be fairly indescipherable occasionally. Think person interfaces that appear like relics from the Nineteen Eighties Casio watch period, and also you get a reasonably good concept.

Dive Planner, Dive Mode and the logbook are all simply accessible once you’re on the floor. Image Credit: Apple.

Dive planning helps you employ your present tissue loading to determine how deep and the way lengthy you possibly can dive for after a floor interval.

The log e-book helps you see the depth profile of your latest dives, together with dive time, max ascent charge, water temperature, most depth and the gasoline combine (air at 21% oxygen or Nitrox as much as 40% oxygen), sampled each 15 seconds as you’re underwater. These are options you will get on any dive laptop, however Oceanic+ additionally reveals any warnings about your latest dives, and makes use of the GPS chip within the watch to point out a map of the place you dived. Small iterations, however they make an enormous distinction over conventional dive computer systems.

Dive settings, Scuba settings, and the dive alarm configuration display. Image Credit: Apple.

Finally, you possibly can configure settings in your dive, together with the models you wish to set your app to (Celcius or Farenheit, toes or meters, kilos or kilos) and dive mode (snorkeling or scuba), and scuba settings (partial oxygen strain and gradient issue settings, that are security settings normally left to superior divers, or divers who’ve physique compositions or medical situations that warrant being additional cautious). You may also configure your gasoline (air or Nitrox) and Nitrox oxygen degree settings.

You may also arrange dive alarms: a depth alarm to warn you once you’ve reached a sure depth and a dive length alarm. Both are useful to make sure you keep inside your dive plan. It’s additionally potential to configure whether or not the watch routinely begins monitoring dives when it senses you’ve hopped into the water or whether or not you want to begin the dives manually.

It’s potential to evaluate the dive or regulate settings on the floor. As quickly as you submerge, water lock routinely engages, and the contact display is disabled. Image Credit: Bang Bang Media.

In the iPhone app, you possibly can add further notes about your dive: visibility, currents, notes about who you dived with, wildlife you noticed, tools you used, or different notes you wish to take. You may also add your dive certification playing cards and numbers and different useful notes.

For instance, within the display shot under, the post-dive data reveals the depth profile of my dive, together with my max ascent charge (24 meters per minute). The really helpful ascent charge is a most of 18 m/s, so the watch gave me a warning that I used to be fooling around.

Image Credit: Screenshot from Apple Watch

Also within the app, you possibly can plan your subsequent dive by deciding on the dive website on a map, and see latest water temperatures and different knowledge concerning the dive.

Over time, the corporate advised me it’s planning to make this knowledge crowdsourced, so divers who’ve been on the website lately can provide you higher-resolution concepts of the temperature, visibility, currents and maybe even wildlife noticed at varied websites. Helpful if you’re searching for whales or different giant sea creatures!

The iPhone app nonetheless wants slightly bit of labor, however even with some minor graphic inconsistencies and quirks (largely textual content alignment, minor typos, and so on.), it offers an excellent post-dive expertise:

From left to proper: depth chart, temperature chart, ascent charges, and remaining no-deco time. Image credit score: Oceanic+ display photographs

As you possibly can see from the screenshots, the Apple Maps preview was probably zoomed in slightly bit too far; sure, I used to be diving within the ocean, however with none visible cues for the place I used to be, the map isn’t that helpful.

The depth chart, temperature, ascent charges, and no-decompression (no-deco) graphs are improbable instruments for divers, nevertheless. Most dive computer systems allow you to connect with your laptop with USB or Bluetooth; it was refreshing to see how seamless the Oceanic+ expertise was. By the time I opened my iPhone, all my knowledge was already synced and able to dig into.

Taking it into the water

Yours really carrying the Apple Watch Ultra. It’s very comfy to put on with all its completely different wristbands, however it’s a comically giant watch. Let’s ignore that I’m utilizing an Android telephone on this photograph, lets. Image Credit: Bang Bang Studios

For regular use, the Apple Watch Ultra takes some getting used to. It is a really giant watch, and on my puny little computer-nerd wrists, it seems comically enormous. That problem goes away as soon as I’m within the water, although; giant as it’s for a watch, it’s about on par with a median dive laptop.

In the ocean, the Apple Watch Ultra is really in its ingredient. The show is giant, fantastically vibrant and really simple to learn underneath water. Apple says it’s the largest show ever on an Apple Watch, and twice as vibrant because the show on the Series 8.

I might be amiss if I didn’t point out the water sports activities band Apple has created for the Apple Watch Ultra. The ‘Ocean Band,’ as the corporate calls it, was designed particularly for ocean and water actions, molded from a high-performance elastomer.

The tubular geometry permits it to stretch for an ideal match, and the titanium buckle and adjustable loop implies that as soon as it’s on, it ain’t coming off simply. The band was designed for excessive water sports activities, together with kite browsing and different high-impact sports activities. Great for clumsy scuba divers like myself. I attempted to tear the watch off underwater, and failed. It’s remarkably sturdy.

The firm even sells a band extension if you want to put on the watch over a drysuit or a very chonky wetsuit.

The underwater readability of the Apple Watch Ultra is extraordinary – and fairly laborious to {photograph}, so that you’ll must take my phrase for it, I’m afraid. Image Credit: Bang Bang Media.

Once you activate dive mode, the watch enters water-lock mode, which implies that the contact display turns into unusable, and it’s a must to depend on the Digital Crown (which is 30 p.c greater than Series 8 with coarser grooves) and two buttons to interact with its capabilities.

In addition to the crown and the facet button, each of that are barely raised to allow them to be simply used even when you find yourself carrying gloves, the Apple Watch Ultra has an orange Action button. When diving, this can be utilized to dismiss warnings and alarms, and to pick out a compass heading on the underwater compass.

The crown is protected by a titanium guard to assist forestall unintended rotations, and the sapphire glass on the watch is protected by a titanium bezel all the best way round. All nice options to have on a dive laptop.

The watch makes use of water-based sensors solely throughout a dive: depth gauge, water temperature, and the compass, along with the time. You don’t get the important readings (coronary heart charge, and so on.) that you’d get on a run, which I believe makes a variety of sense. Apple means that measuring vitals is difficult to do constantly underwater, and in any case I ended up carrying the Apple Watch Ultra over a wetsuit anyway, so it couldn’t have made a studying if it had needed to.

In use within the deep blue sea

Once a dive is began and the water lock mode is on, you need to use the Digital Crown to scroll by means of quite a lot of data screens. On all screens, you possibly can see your present depth and no-deco time. Always on display can also be a variometer, which strikes up and down as you ascend or descend. It may be remarkably laborious to find out whether or not you’re transferring up and down in open water, in order that’s a really useful instrument to maintain you degree within the water, for instance when doing a security cease.

Primary display, Secondary display, Compass display, and the Air display. Image Credit: Apple.

You can rotate the Digital Crown to entry further screens or press the Action button to set a compass heading. On the varied screens, divers get entry to a bunch of additional data.

Primary display:

• Dive Time – useful to know the way lengthy you’ve been underneath, and when the boat expects you again
• Minutes to Surface – how lengthy wouldn’t it take to securely ascend to the floor, together with a security cease
• Water Temperature – by no means actually all that useful, as there may be not a lot you are able to do about it when you’re within the water and realized you didn’t put on a heat sufficient moist go well with

Secondary display:

• Max depth for this dive – useful to make sure you are sticking to the outlined dive plan for this dive
• Current ascent charge – good to keep watch over when you find yourself surfacing out of your dive to make sure you are ascending at an inexpensive charge
• Percentage battery left within the Apple Watch Ultra – the battery life on this factor is extraordinary, however it’s good to have the ability to test

Compass display:

This is a brilliant useful display; underwater compasses are essential, and infrequently one of many solely methods to know which approach you’re dealing with underwater. Traditional compasses are a royal ache within the wetsuit to make use of, and the Oceanic+ app has probably the greatest implementations I’ve ever seen.

• Current compass bearing
• Target compass heading (set utilizing the Action button)

Air display:

This display confused me slightly; I doubt it’d are available all that useful more often than not, however it’s neat to have the ability to confirm that your watch is utilizing the settings you thought it was.

• Conservatism
• Gas settings – air vs Nitrox, and oxygen proportion should you’re diving on Nitrox
• Max oxygen partial strain setting. This is nice to know, as oxygen can become toxic to the central nervous system at excessive partial pressures. Here’s a “fun” reality for you: Oxygen may be poisonous to people should you breathe pure 100% oxygen at as little as 6 meters/20 toes deep.

In addition, the watch will use a robust haptic sign, simply felt by means of a wetsuit, to attract your consideration to it when it must inform you one thing.

It can provide security warnings corresponding to decompression limits, extreme ascent charges and security stops. It may also warn you should you’re at your most working depth (which varies based mostly on what gasoline you’re respiratory), and buzz you with any depth or time alarms you could have set.

The alarms are very effectively coloration coded: Red for issues that want quick motion, yellow for warnings, and blue if the water temperature drops under your configured threshold. And the big, vibrant display and distinguished haptics means you’re not going to overlook something.

Below are some examples of the warning screens: too-rapid ascent warning; security cease reminder; goal depth alarm; and temperature alarm. The inexperienced strains throughout the center of the display is the tissue loading. If it goes all the best way down, you’re out of no-deco time, and it’s time to floor to keep away from pointless danger of decompression illness.

Image Credit: Apple.

Once within the water, there may be remarkably little to say concerning the Apple Watch Ultra as a dive laptop: It’s simple to make use of; the crown and buttons are phenomenal so far as person interfaces go, the screens are well-designed; and the necessary data is evident and really simple to learn.

I introduced my trusty outdated Suunto that has been with me on many a dive to function my secondary dive laptop for these take a look at dives. The readouts from the 2 dive computer systems have been nearly an identical throughout. The small variations may be attributed to having the Suunto in my pocket whereas the Apple Watch was on my wrist.

The Suunto additionally makes use of a barely completely different algorithm. Having stated that, making an attempt to match the dive profiles on the 2 units jogged my memory why the Oceanic+ was such a fantastic leap ahead. Even determining learn how to step by means of a logged dive on the Suunto is an unmitigated, depressing catastrophe. We’ve come a good distance in dive tech.

Easy to learn underwater. Image Credit: Apple

What is lacking?

Apple Watch Ultra plus Oceanic+ is a hell of a combo. It’s heads and shoulders above the competitors by way of display and person interface, and the automated syncing and logging to my telephone is a improbable perk. Which isn’t to say that the Apple Watch does fairly all the pieces but.

Most high-end dive computer systems are “air integrated,” that means that a transmitter may be added to your first-stage regulator, which transmits how a lot air you could have left in your tank to your dive laptop. Rumor has it that Oceanic+ and Apple Watch Ultra may need one thing within the works so as to add air integration sooner or later sooner or later, though each firms remained tight-lipped on if and when when this is likely to be out there.

As you climb nearer to the $1,000 mark, dive computer systems are additionally in a position to do extra unique gasoline mixes, largely used for technical diving. They are additionally higher at doing decompression diving, which is dives the place you exceed your no-deco time, and want to remain underwater for longer to off-gas.

I think the Oceanic+ app has deco algorithms in place to save lots of your bacon in case divers by accident overstay your no-deco time, however I wasn’t in a position to confirm this earlier than this text was printed. Again, not one thing you’d anticipate leisure divers to run into on the common. For context, in my a whole lot of dives, I’ve solely ever as soon as needed to do a decompression dive; it concerned staying at 10 meters for 6-7 minutes additional.

One benefit the Apple Watch Ultra has over conventional dive computer systems, nevertheless, is that almost all dive computer systems spend 11 months of the 12 months in a drawer, whereas Apple’s machine can be utilized for, effectively, the a whole lot of issues that individuals use Apple Watches for, together with making calls, fall detection, well being monitoring, notifications and rather more. On a cost-per-day-used foundation, the Apple Watch Ultra is an absolute cut price in comparison with each dive laptop in the marketplace at this time.

I can’t assist however marvel if we have now entered an analogous house for dive computer systems that we noticed for sat-nav units some 15 years in the past. If you’ll recall, within the time earlier than iPhones, there was a interval the place everybody had devoted sat-nav units from producers like TomTom and Garmin. When the iPhone got here alongside, they delayed their very own demise on this house by releasing mapping apps for the brand new telephone platform with vital worth tags, earlier than they have been all destroyed by the likes of Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze and different free mapping apps with reside visitors knowledge.

It wouldn’t shock me if sooner or later within the non-too-distant future, as costs of Apple Watch Ultra and comparable units come down, dive computer systems will appear as anachronistic as utilizing a suction-cup to place a Garmin machine in your windshield does at this time.

Sup. Image Credit: Bang Bang Media.

Should you make the leap?

Time will inform if an $800 watch is accessible sufficient to place a serious dent in dive laptop gross sales. After all, $500 buys you a great entry-level dive computer. It is admittedly far bigger than the Apple Watch Ultra, and never almost as good or as simple to make use of because the Apple/Oceanic+ combo. The next-end dive laptop, nevertheless, like Suunto’s D5 or Oceanic’s own ProPlus 4 computer, value about the identical because the Apple Watch Ultra.

Would I like to recommend that you simply belief your dive vacation to an Apple Watch and an Oceanic+ app? Yes, with a caveat. I would want a number of extra dives with a backup dive laptop in my BCD pocket earlier than I might depend on the Oceanic+ app by itself.

I’d belief it so long as Huish Outdoors ensures that the soundness and reliability of the app stay its No. 1 precedence over all of the enjoyable bells and whistles it could possibly be tempted so as to add over the subsequent months and years. And if the app continues to remain secure, I can’t think about it should take very lengthy earlier than the skeptic in me totally embraces it.

🤙 Thanks for studying, see you on the reef! Video credit score: Bang Bang Media