Can i trust my Mk3i as a technical dive computer going forward?

The recent "blue triangle" issue may have been a frustrating inconvenience for many—particularly those relying on their devices for fitness tracking—but for those of us using the Descent Mk3i as a safety-critical piece of dive equipment, this is far more than just an inconvenience.

In my case, my watch entered a boot loop immediately upon returning to the dive center, following three days of technical multi-gas decompression dives (to 50m) in Tulamben, Indonesia. Fortunately, my diving was completed at that point, and I was able to sync my logs before the device became unusable. Additionally, I always dive with a backup computer to track my residual nitrogen load.

But what if this failure had occurred a day or two earlier? What if I were mid-trip with no way to verify my decompression obligations? I can only imagine there are divers elsewhere in the world right now caught in this exact situation, potentially putting their safety at risk due to an unexpected software-induced failure.

Garmin markets the Descent Mk3i as being technical dive ready—a device that divers should be able to trust their lives with. It is also one of the most expensive and premium dive computers available. Yet, how can I continue diving with it, knowing that it could suddenly brick itself due to a glitchy software update that was pushed without my knowledge?

This incident raises serious concerns about Garmin's credibility as a provider of "mission-critical" equipment. For technical divers like myself, this breaks confidence in the product and forces a reevaluation of alternatives such as Shearwater, which has long been considered the gold standard for technical diving.

Garmin must now take immediate action to reassure its diving community that this will not happen again. That means full transparency regarding software QA/QC processes, update deployment protocols, and concrete measures to prevent mission-critical failures in the future. Without this, Garmin risks losing the trust of the very community it seeks to serve.

Has anyone else experienced this failure mid-dive or mid-trip?

  • We are currently taking the Divemaster course, and now my watch is bricked. Moreover, I tried to restore it following the official manual, connected it to Garmin Express, but the watch turned off and is no longer responding. Even a hard reset doesn't help. I don't know what to do, especially since I bought the watch in Thailand, and now I am in Indonesia.

  • I understand your frustration, I would be too.

    I was lucky enough to not be effected, just lucky timing that I didnt use the GPS function when the faulty GPE file was pushed out.

    I would hope that Garmin learn from this as a similar issue happened a few years ago.

    Funnily enough this is one of the reasons the Descent Series do not have a beta program, so as to protect users from the watch crashing or exhibiting strange behavior.

    But the GPE file is not part of a firmware update, and it effects watches across the board that use the same GPS chipset released in the last 2 years or so.

    Can you trust the Mk3i going forward?

    Good question, lets hope Garmin update us all on how they will prevent this issue in the future.

    I'd suggest to Garmin to perform a quality check on the GPE file on their back end servers first, before being pushed out to Garmin Connect, and then have the watches firmware also do a quality check on the GPE file, if any issue then the watch should revert to the previous one kept as a backup.

  • Honestly I'll just buy a Perdix and use my Mk3 as a backup computer when it comes to technical diving. The Perdix is tried and tested and is reliable.