I love how incredibly straightforward and easy to use the Suunto D5 is to use. It’s operated by via 3 buttons on the right-hand side which are prominent enough to be easy to press even with thick dive gloves but also don’t come out far enough to stick into the side of the wearers wrist as has been the case with some of the older and much more bulky dive computers.
Now, you do get a user-manual when you buy the Suunto D5 which tells you everything you need to know about operating said controls and in truth the absolute best way to get familiar with operating a dive computer is by playing around with it in real life yourself!
All the same, let’s take a quick look at how to navigate through the controls of the Suunto D5:
Short holding or long holding each of the 3 gets different functionalities.
Pressing the middle button lets you switch between displays, e.g. watch face, dive display (several formats), compass. Holding down the middle button takes you to the setup menu where you can adjust display info, settings, view dive logs, etc. Holding down the middle button again takes you out of menu and back to display.
When in display mode, tapping the top button starts or stops the timer. Holding it down resets the timer.
Tapping the bottom buttons switches which data is displayed in the bottom window – e.g. temperature, compass heading, timer, no-deco time, gas heading, gas mix etc. Holding down the bottom button in display mode lets you set the compass bearing.