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Specifications
| Mounting Options | Wrist-Mount |
| Operational Modes | Air, Nitrox, Gauges |
| User Controls | Four push buttons |
| Gas Mixes | Three |
| Air-Integrated | No |
| Onboard Compass | Yes |
| PC Kit | Included |
| Price | $1,200 |
| www.mares.com | |
The Icon HD’s full-color display uses LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and TFT (Thin Film Transistor) technology, and the reds, oranges, greens and blues literally leap off the screen. Its iPhone-esque main menu and four button controls make navigating through the system surprisingly easy. The Icon HD offers two very cool dive-mode options: Extended Mode presents all dive data on a screen with color highlights incorporated into bar graphs and banners; Profile Mode presents its dive data around a stunning blue depth/bottom-time chart with a little diver icon that lets you track your dive graphically, in real time. The color-coding for bar-graph tissue-loading, deco time and ascent rate is simply excellent, as is the fast-ascent bar graph with its bright-red backup banner that blinks and beeps when you exceed the safe-ascent rate.
Bottom Line
With its vibrant color, large compass, data-crunching capability and innovative menu system, the conservative Icon HD rivals the Cobalt in ease of use, plus it offers a wider variety of logging and map and photo-storage features than any DC we’ve ever seen, making it a Testers’ Choice for wrist-mount DCs and our other overall favorite dive computer for 2010.
| September/October 2010 Issue Scuba Lab Review Quick Links | |
|---|---|
| Basic Computers | |
| We define basic dive computers as single-gas units, nitrox capable to 50 percent. Computers in this category are good for recreational diving, plus they can function as backup computers or simple bottom timers for deep or technical diving. They range from no-frills, budget models to full-featured DCs with air integration. None of these DCs come with onboard compasses, although many come packaged in consoles that include traditional modular compasses. | |
| Genesis React Pro | Oceanic ProPlus 2.1 |
| Sherwood Profile | Sherwood Insight |
| SUBGEAR XP10 | SUUNTO D4 |
| SUUNTO Zoop | |
| Advanced Computers | |
| These are full-featured dive computers designed for divers who want the option of ratcheting up their diving experiences. Advanced computers allow you to program multiple mixes up to 100 percent oxygen that can be switched while at depth. They often also offer features like onboard compasses. | |
| Atomic Aquatics Cobalt | Mares Icon HD |
| Oceanic Geo 2.0 | |
