Intro | Table | £150-199 | £200-249 | £250-299 | £300-349 | £350-399 | £400-500 | Conclusions
EXTRA
May 2000
COMPENSATION CLAIMS
BEAVER ZODIAC 2000 With no D-rings and no pockets, this very basic BC distinguished itself by making me cry out in alarm (and a certain amount of pain) as Mike Seares fully inflated it on me.
If you want to know what torso squeeze is, try this. It is a jacket aimed at the diver on a budget, and presumably new to the sport.
We hope not too many new divers make the false economy of buying this one because, at the surface, it left my mouth under the water when it was inflated as much as I could stand. If you want a Beaver BC, get the Hercules. £150
OCEAN REEF SYNTEX This is a club/dive-resort BC which does its job well when fully inflated at the surface. It performed very much like the well-trusted Buddy Pioneer. Two average pockets and no D-rings keeps things plain and simple and the corrugated hose dump worked very well. It is a single-bag design made in Italy and I expect you will soon see it in the hire departments of many dive centres worldwide. £179
DACOR SPORTSTER Another BC which follows classic and traditional lines. Without a lot of maximum buoyancy available, it proved better at the surface than we expected. There are no trendy steel D-rings and only one, average, pocket (the other is a dummy) but it does have two large weight pockets low down at the back to resist that annoying floaty aluminium cylinder effect towards the end of a dive. With these pockets, weights cannot easily be dumped by the user.
This is a comfortable single-bag design that won't squeeze the torso when fully inflated. It will appeal to the occasional warmwater diver and the dive centre or school market. £180
CRESSI-SUB AQUA PRO 5 We assume that this single-bag design is also intended for dive centres, though it looked a little too smart for that! One clue is that its size is marked clearly on one shoulder-facing, which helps enormously when faced with massed ranks of BCs.
There was one D-ring and the pockets were useful but not outstandingly so. It had a very good handle, again ideal for dive centres, and under water worked perfectly. Its small amount of maximum buoyancy did not seem to matter because it still supported me fairly well at the surface and we think that this, as with all BCs intended for this market, will probably most likely be used with aluminium cylinders. £190
AP VALVES BUDDY TRAVEL WING 16 A wing-style BC in the purest sense, this is simply a doughnut-shaped double-bag rather like the one on the Inspiration rebreather (only smaller), the classic Buddy hard backpack, and a well-designed harness with six D-rings. There is a crotch-strap too, and it wouldn't be a Buddy without the 400ml auxiliary air cylinder.
I was taken by it. It gave a dive that reminded me of the days before we were encumbered by equipment. I had to offer up the left shoulder to get all the air out of it while swimming horizontally, but another dump at the other shoulder would defeat the idea of minimalism that this BC applies. If it proves too stark for you, you can add a pouch or weight pockets if you like.
The Travel Wing 16 proved to have a maximum buoyancy of just over 16kg but this still put it up with the best when it came to providing surface buoyancy. One other thing; this BC actually provided a splash of colour. From £197
SEEMANN SUB RESORT As its name implies, this is the sort of BC you might be offered for hire at a warmwater dive resort, reflected by the fact that it had both a good carrying handle and a strong loop of webbing for hanging.
Ironically, we thought it less than ideal for inexperienced divers because it gave so little surface support compared to others tested and left the diver's head barely above the surface.
This German-manufactured BC uses a very basic single-bag design which proved a little uncomfortable as it was filled to capacity. It had two simple flapped pockets, but these were not very easy to get into. £199
Intro | Table | £150-199 | £200-249 | £250-299 | £300-349 | £350-399 | £400-500 | Conclusions
Appeared in DIVER - May 2000
