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xDeep Black Bottom Timer – New product review



xDeep have just announced their newest product the xDeep Black bottom timer, and here at Aquanauts we think that it will storm the bottom timer market. In terms of its features and most importantly an awesome OLED screen at the highly competitive price of £219 this is surely going to be a winner.

Up until now there have only been a few limited options for divers that don’t want a full decompression computer, such as technical or DIR divers. But current options were starting to show their age or were not really affordable, so there has been a definite need for an advanced bottom timer that contained all the important features such as resettable average depth, resettable stopwatch and a bright back lit OLED screen at a sensible price.

So in addition to being a full featured bottom timer one of the nice features of the xDeep bottom timer is a user upgradable update to either a nitrox or a full trimix computer. The initial upgrade when available will implement a Buhlmann ZH-L16C+GF with VPM-B available at a later date and the 32bit processor should have no problems with either algorithm.

Another nice feature as standard is a digital compass with a ‘guide me home’ function, hopefully not something I think I will need anytime soon but a nice plus none the less.

It also promises to be a tough little beastie, the case is made from delrin in a compact 24x56x57x mm case that provides enough real estate for the screen, and it even has an integrated bungie mount if you don’t want the buckle strap.

There are number of user customisable screen set up and short cuts in the menu functions, plus even options for multiple colours. But like other OLED screens be aware that the brighter you have the screen and more colours you have it will impact battery life. That being said the standard 1050mAh Li-Ion battery should give you about between 20 hours on full brightness and 40 hours on low brightness. However a full recharge should only 1h 20min and can be done with a mini USB universal charger.

They are available for pre order and we should be test diving the first to arrive in the UK by the end of August and look forward to reporting how they perform on a dive!