Spring has arrived, and with it, dive season for many of us. Manufacturers are rolling out plenty of drool-worthy new gear to entice us back into the water, and few have as many offerings as Italian manufacturer Cressi. We’ve picked our six favorite pieces of new Cressi gear for 2017 to help inspire your start-of-season splurges.
A dive computer that wears like a watch: The Goa
The new Goa dive computer wears much like an everyday watch, with a diameter of only 2 inches (48 mm) — think large wristwatch, rather than bulky dive computer. This means you can wear it not only on dive days, but in your day-to-day life as well. It comes in black and white, with a range of color accents to spice things up. It covers both freediving and scuba, with air and nitrogen options for the latter. Conveniently, it allows you to change between air and nitrox, and nitrox settings, during desaturation — something not all dive computers do, much to the frustration of liveaboard divers.
Retail price: around $399
The light but heavy hitter: The Ace BCD
Cressi has long been known to make extremely solid and well-designed BCDs, and this new addition to the line-up is no exception. Ticking in at only a nudge over 7 pounds (3.1 kg) in weight, the Ace is a full-featured, lightweight BCD with a pretty impressive lift capacity of 42.7 pounds (19 kg). It features a back-inflation design, which means you get the comfort of a traditional BCD combined with the streamlined design of a wing-and-backplate. A great traveler, even for cold climates where you’ll be carrying extra weight, it will also work as your everyday BCD at home.
Retail price: $529.95
A novel take on a regulator: AC10V/Cromo Master
The lightweight, high-performing warm-water AC10V/Cromo Master is a real beauty. But it takes trained eyes to spot its true merits: a novel design of the point where the second-stage hose meets the first stage. Rather than a traditional, fixed point, Cressi has mounted it on a rotating cuff, ensuring that the hose, and with it, the second stage, is always in the right position. Combined with very high breathing performance and easy switching between DIN and INT standards on the first stage, this is a great option for your next travel regulator.
Retail price: $449.95.
The rental BCD: Start Pro 2.0
An affordable option, the Start Pro 2.0 is great for scuba-diving schools and dive centers renting out equipment, who want to offer a comfortable, easy-to-use BCD with top-of-the-line features without breaking the bank. Large, easy to read size indicators on the shoulder strap make it easy for the dive center to see what sizes are available in the gear room. Good lift capacity, comfortable design, and integrated-weight system makes this BCD a contender for the budget diver as well as dive centers.
Retail price: $329.95.
The lightweight fin: Agua
The Agua is as classic Cressi as it gets: a lightweight, high-performance fin that will work for almost any diver, regardless of skill level or athletic prowess. The foot pocket features Cressi’s super-soft Self-Adjusting Foot Pocket, which ensures a snug, but never cramp-inducing, fit. This is a great warm-water fin for those who want performance, but don’t want to schlep the weight around to get it.
The ultralight: Patrol BCD
For the traveling diver who does not want to pay overweight charges, Cressi introduces the Patrol. At an impressive 5.7 pounds (2.6 kg), it’s an extremely light BCD, but with sufficient lift capacity for most divers. It features back-inflation design, an integrated-weight system, and hard-wearing materials.
Suggested retail price: $399.95
