Report Card On Intova Dive Light

When we bought our Intova dive lights (mine just before we left), I bought all the CR123 batteries you had in stock to make sure we had plenty for our winter's scuba diving. For one thing, your price on them ($6.95 was very good), and we thought they might be hard to purchase in Cozumel.

The first set of batteries, we had 25 dives on, including one shore night dive that I used the light just to see how it was at night (it was great)!!

I go by the battery voltage for our lights, for our dive computers, etc. I have a small digital VOM I carry for that purpose.

At the end of the 25 dives, the voltage on the CR123 batteries was 2.58 y 2.56 volts on mine and 2.82 y 2.83 volts on Greta's. The battery voltage on the new batteries was 3.28 volts. We did notice a reduction in brilliancy on our lights at that voltage, so we put new batteries in. We use the lights a lot on day dives, looking into every nook and cranny for critters, so we gave them a good test.

We actually bought two Li-ion CR 123 battery chargers with two rechargeable lithium-ion CR123 batteries from Radio Shack. The problem is they are only rated at 400mAh, as they are for digital cameras. We tested them before we left home. We charged two of the rechargeable batteries fully, put them in one light, put some water and ice cubes in a glass and turned the light on. It took 54 minutes for the light to go out. We thought we would need to use them, but after our experience with the non-rechargeable batteries that we bought from you (rated at 1400 ma (I am sure this is MAhours), we will return the Radio Shack batteries when we get back in the United States.

SUMMARY: The Intova lights are brighter than our UK SL4 lights that we have always used previously, and the CR 123 batteries last much longer than do the four "C" cells - we had to change the "C" cells every ten dives (once a week). We still have six packages left, so we bought plenty for our winter here. As of today, we have another 27 dives on our lights and they are still bright - we will see how many more dives we get on them before we need to change the batteries again.

If you would like to share this with anyone else, you are welcome to do so, including Intova.

Gary y Greta

Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico 77600