| As I own a Sport KISS, I'm biased, but as I've stated on other boards now that it is out I would never, ever recommend someone getting an SCR. I did my Dolphin course, and dived the unit a bit, but was really dissapointed by what is can do in practice, or at least how much phaffing around you have to do, particularly on multi-day trips with different sites in different depths, any one of which could be blown out requiring you to change jets and mixes (Dolphin, other Rebreather's would be flow rates and mixes). Diving in twins was about the same weight, less hassle, pretty much the same deco (don't beleive the hype - you get the same benefit just diving the same Nitrox mix you 'approximate' in your calculations on an SCR) and less worry that everything is working.
However, CCR gives you good deco, no bubbles, less weight (overall - for individual short shallow dives single tank divers laugh at you - but you can go a whole day without touching your breather, and you have less problems with deco and available gas on 25m+ dives). Oh, and while all breathers aren't great at less than ~6m, the Sport KISS has to be one of the better ones I've used, certainly much much much better than an SCR, and less worry about low O2 (as long as you track it) than an SCR when shallow after a deep dive (customising O2 levels for the bottom on an SCR means you're compromising O2 levels shallow, which is something to be wary of, but simply a non-issue on CCR).
The Sport KISS is lighter, and easier to maintain than any of the SCR's I've personally dealt with, about the same price, and training is equivalent. The flexibility you get is more than worth the minor difference in price. In fact, a lot of times when you add in the cost of putting O2 monitoring on an SCR (I consider it a requirement, others don't) then the Sport KISS, depending on local variations, can be cheaper! And, when you consider you will likely save on gas mixing in the long term (you'll use about the same sorb) things get better. After you've seen other divers have to call dives on more complicated breathers because they can't identify the problem (this is a controversial point, but I've seen it enough that I consider the easy problem diagnosis of the SK VERY important), things get even more in the favour of the Sporty.
Alternatively, there seem to be more and more good deals on Insiprations around, but I consider them a bit of overkill for dives less than 40m (too much clutter on them means more drag, which makes diving less fun for me).
Go CCR - really. The Sport KISS is pretty much designed to remove the attractiveness of SCR options - and those of us diving them love them! |