Review - Oceanic DataMask with Heads-Up Display

Dive toys just keep getting better and better, don't they? On a recent trip to Grand Turk, I tested out the new Oceanic DataMask, a stylish black dive mask with a futuristic heads-up display. No more SPG's, no more wristwatches, just floating information at your eyeball-tips. Sounds great, huh?

The mask comes in a high-tech molded case, with a hefty instruction booklet and software CD. The design is somewhat asymmetrical, with the heads-up-display unit protruding in the lower right, and two control buttons on the outside of the mask. The right side of the frameless visor is somewhat smaller than the left, to accommodate the HUD lens assembly. The left side also has a nice little side-view window, which the right side lacks. My first impression was that the mask was somewhat higher-volume than my previous mask, but the difference wasn't noticeable during my dives.

As I soon found out, the only way to operate the dive computer is while you're physically wearing the mask; since there's no external display. I took a while to get used to the stark two-button operation (my previous computer, the Suunto D9, had a generous four buttons), but the interface is logically laid out, and after a couple dives I stopped referring back to the manual. While wearing the mask, a glance to the lower right shows the LCD display, hovering in black space, about ten inches away.

After scrubbing out the mask, and applying liberal amounts of defog (especially to the HUD lens), it was time for my first dive. The DataMask fit well, no problem with comfort or leaks. The balance of the mask was noticeably uneven on the surface, but this went away underwater, and it was easy to forget I was wearing a special mask. (So easy, in fact, that for my first few dives I found myself looking at my D9 wristwatch, forgetting about the heads-up display!) The display is in the corner of peripheral vision, so it didn't distract at all from the actual diving. The field of view seemed significantly less than my usual mask, but not problematically so.

During a dive, all the dive information is accessible with a couple clicks; one button flips through pages of data, and the other toggles the HUD display on and off. I found it most convenient just to leave it on; the display was unobtrusive enough that I could ignore it easily.

Both the DataMask and my D9 use wireless transmitters, attached to the high-pressure ports of my first stage. Not once during a solid week of diving did the transmitters interfere with each other or fail to sync, and the pressure and depth gauges were in exact agreement between the two computers. (The D9 wristwatch regularly reported a depth one foot lower than the mask, which stands to reason, if you think about it.) The only real discrepancy was with temperature; the D9 consistently reported 84-85 degrees, but the DataMask consistently 79-80 degrees. (Diving comfortably in a 1-mil vest, my money's on the D9.) I may send it in to have it calibrated, or I may simply consider it a nice nitrogen-narcosis test, having to add five in my head...

On my first dive, I developed an itch on my nose, and gave in to the temptation to remove the mask to scratch it. Putting the mask back on, some sunscreen got into my right eye, and for a minute or so I was diving left-eyed. As soon became apparent, this meant I couldn't see my gauges! (Nicely, I had the D9 for backup.) On a related note, I'm not sure how much of a safety concern it is that my gauges aren't readable by my buddy, and it isn't clear how this could be remedied, short of some wireless data-sharing. Another problem I noticed was that the viewable angle of the HUD is very limited; the mask has a tendency to slide up on my face a bit, which greatly reduced contrast on the display. I occasionally had to push the mask down into place before I could see the display properly. (Or this could just be due to my funny-shaped nose; I have the same problem with most masks.)

Fresh off the pixel-happy iPhone technology-fest, I had subconsciously expected the visual LCD itself to be a bit more high-tech. Instead, it resembled something of an 80's Casio wristwatch, with large blocky LCD digits and an oddly speckly blackish background. Perhaps this low-res approach was done for reliability, but it certainly leaves room for aesthetic improvement. The backlight is adjustable from 5% to 100% brightness, and I had it at 5% during my night dive, which was perfect; the trouble came when I went to dive again at noon the next day, and the display was nearly impossible to read. I had to squint a lot and try to find some shade before I was able to adjust the controls back to a more legible 75%. Perhaps the display should default to a higher brightness level after a few hours, just as the nitrox setting defaults to 21% one day after a nitrox dive? (The D9 always remembers the nitrox level, which is great; I wish the DataMask would just stay at 32% and display the percentage on the main screen. Instead, it just says 'nx'.)

The one feature of the D9 that I most missed in the DataMask was an ascent rate indicator. It's true that the mask beeps if you ascend too quickly, but it would be much nicer to see a visual indicator, so you have some warning. On the other hand, the DataMask shows a nice nitrogen-exposure bar graph; when it hits the top, you're in deco. (I didn't do any deco dives this trip, so I wasn't able to test this mode.) The mask was a little squirrelly about safety stops; once when I swam up to 19 feet and then descended to 27 feet, it kept counting down the three minutes. It also was fairly annoying about 10-minute air warnings; I would get an alarm for 10-minutes of air time left (til hitting 500psi), then ascend two feet and have 12 minutes left, then go down a foot and the alarm would go off again. The mask also freaked out a couple times when I hit the 10-minute limit during the safety stop, and it wasn't quite obvious what it wanted me to do, just displaying a blinking "ATR" (air-time remaining) instead of the three-minute countdown. With 650PSI left at the time, 12 feet from the surface, that seemed a little odd.

Finally, a feature of the mask that I really wanted to test, but wasn't able, was its freediving mode. In freediving mode, times are in minutes and seconds, instead of hours and minutes; you can set time-based alarms and countdowns, and it does its best to track nitrogen levels for freediving mixed with SCUBA. The one time I did some light freediving was just after a shallow dive, when the mask was still locked into scuba mode. (I was somewhat paranoid about locking up the computer, which the D9 is prone to if used for freediving after scuba.) This will have to wait for the next trip!

So, in summary, I'd say that my overall impression was mostly positive. (4 out of 5 starfish, I'd say.) The DataMask was very natural and comfortable to use, and I got used to it after the first couple dives. However, on balance, I did not find it overwhelmingly better or more convenient than my D9. There is, however, lots of obvious room to improve, and I heartily expect that versions 2.0 and 3.0 will knock my watery socks off!

Happy diving,
Ben