Review on 🌊 Garmin Descent Mk2i: Advanced Dive Computer & Multisport Smartwatch Titanium Edition by Richard Cunningham

I bought 2 units for my wife and I after seeing a guy raving about one of them during Jamaica Diving Week in January. We migrated from Mares Puck Pro units which have done over 200 dives with no issues (1 needed a battery change which I did). The Mares device is very simple and precise, although we wanted something more sexual and without the immersive features. The Garmin Descent MK2i is a beast. It takes a lot of practice to use it properly and even get it right since I opened the PDF manual many times to learn something new or something I messed up. I have nothing to say. on non-diver performance aside from being a Garmin and what else you need in a day?. We use fitness beats as fitness beats and track our sleep, heart rate etc. Now for the diving - we have 23 dives in St Lucia at depths of 15-115' using single gas with a T1 transmitter on both units (so readings double balloon). We love the feature of seeing your buddy live anytime, and it removes the need to constantly check and have a buddy watch you when you're focused on something else. We set them on a conservative approach and always make a 15ft safety stop within 3 minutes of surfacing. On par with the Mares Division, they were virtually identical; Garmin is more accurate at adding decimals for temperature and exact psi than the tank valve version, although it is the same. We did decompression stops on several dives and on both devices (actually all 4 - 2 Mares + 2 Garmin) and the data was the same. We love the many ways you can view Garmin dives while switching screens mid-dive. The rear screen backlight is decent, although not bright enough in the dark (small den during the day), I'd still use my light so no big deal. The transmitter's audio is audible, if not annoying, and I'll try to mute it a bit, although I might lose range. What I don't like is the short battery life when diving. Yes, I'm aware I've disabled Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, features, etc., but why bother only with immersion or anything else. I found that after 1-1.5 days we had discharged the batteries to 50% and had to use a crude alligator clip charging plug. We've been using both dive computers all week and I'm not ready to just switch to Garmin. After diving in my tank it was difficult to track the pressure after exiting the water, the Mares is much easier as a single button press gave a surface interval compared to the Garmin which took multiple button presses to get to the SI screen . At the moment we like the "sexy" Garmin because it looks good and we can change the watch face, switch screens and move things around. the sapphire crystal was not scratched and survived multiple hits from the boat and coral unscathed. The system's weakness is the T1 transmitter, which is fragile and cannot be used to lift the balloon (ok, I figured it out), BUT. After tightening with a wrench, it came loose after a few dives and was prone to accidental touching or pressing and came loose. Garmin must provide you with the correct size flat wrench to tighten as standard wrenches will not work from the reservoir to the transmitter. This is the T1's best/worst feature - like the safety issue of sharing tank pressure, like the brittleness/lightness not to solve. One feature I may be misunderstanding at the moment is the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication between the watch/dive computer and the iPhone/computer. Maybe because outside of the US we remain in NoData/Airplane mode, as was the case in St. Lucia. We will keep Garmin devices and work to become better users. They did a good job trying to get the dive computer to work. Just buy something else to dive (Sherwood). If you are a workout enthusiast and love having lots of data/stats to work with. This is your unit. I will update this review when we have more data - lots of dives to come. ***Updated July 10, 2021 Now make 58 more dives for a total of 81 Garmin dives. I called Garmin to discuss some of the glitches and they responded very quickly and assigned two people to work on the Descent MK2i. We've made a software update that seems to have fixed some of the issues. However, there was a problem with the T1 transmitter - both had low battery warnings on our last dive in Grenada - I just replaced both batteries at home; On a trip to Grenada on the second day the T1 came loose and the o-ring burst when the reservoir valve was turned on - I brought tools so fixed the o-ring problem with cleaning and silicone and tightened with a flat wrench - problem solved, although it would be a problem under water. Problem with showing my wife's and mine's total tank pressure on our computers, although this is fixed in the downloads - I'll have to call Garmin about this. On a previous trip to Jamaica I accidentally put it in "gauge mode" and it got locked for 24 hours and since then, less than between dives, it's been stuck in gauge mode for a week! It was a problem. In Grenada we made several dives >100ft and encountered mandatory compression stops. The computer forces you to make a mandatory stop, say 10 feet for 1 minute, after which it automatically says you can essentially resurface. It bypassed the mandatory PADI (and Spa) 3 minute stop at 15ft no matter what you do. .SO - we had to do a countdown with a timer (actually we used the Mares safety stop countdown - now we wear both). I still love them, although I'm not ready to give up my backup computer (kinda nice to have) just yet. Not all.