The best analogy I can think of that imagine you do not have a fuel gauge in your car. You would need to guess how much fuel is left in the tank and get to a petrol station before you run out. Imagine you guess wrong, you’re driving down the motorway at 70mph and you suddenly grind to a halt in the outside lane. Far from ideal I would suggest!

A dive computer is similar, it tells you how long you can spend at a given depth and updates itself as you ascend and descend (your no decompression time). On top of this they will tell you if you ascend to fast, how deep you are, how long your safety stop needs to be, and if you have a top of the range computer will tell you exactly how much air you have left, how long it will last for and alarms will trigger if you push the limits too far.

Many countries such as the Maldives insist that you wear a dive computer by law. Most respectable dive centres will also insist you have one, especially if you are diving beyond 18m.

Failure to wear a dive computer severely increases your risk of DCI. What about the old dive tables you may ask? Good question. Have a think back to the last time you were diving and try and remember how many people were planning their dive with the tables? In 20 years of diving, outside of training, I have never seen anyone do it. Instead I see people (when I’m on holiday) just following their guide and hoping that they know what they’re doing and leaving it to luck. The other problem is that dive tables don’t really account for multilevel diving or aren’t as accurate. Therefore, a dive computer will give you a much longer dive time if your dive is to various depths.

For a piece of equipment that can potentially save your life they don’t have to be expensive. You can get a perfectly adequate dive computer for under £200. You can hire computers for around £10 per day but if you are going to use it more than one day a year then it’s probably worth investing in your own – that way you can learn to use it properly too!

There are 2 main types of computer, a larger wrist style computer. These tend to be cheaper and have a larger screen, and a watch sized computer that can be worn as a watch.

So the answer to the question, do I need a dive computer is YES!!!!

We carry a range of dive computers for all tastes and budgets so order yours today.