Review Dive Kit App

Diving apps tend to be a pretty mixed bag. There are some decent ones out there, but plenty of chaff to wade through. To me, at least, there just aren’t that many diving problems that truly benefit from an app. In most cases, it’s easy and convenient enough to find information online.

It piqued my interest when the creator of a new diving app, Dive Kit, reached out. The app combines a decompression planner alongside helpful diving calculators in a single package. With a dive trip to Scapa Flow later in the year to plan, I had the perfect opportunity to put the app through its paces.

Features

The centrepiece of Dive Kit is the deco planner. It features repetitive mixed-gas diving using the Bühlmann ZHL-16 algorithm. Dive Kit also includes the following useful diving tools:

Best Mix (Find optimal O₂%)	Blender
Gas Specs (EAD, PPO₂, END)	Mix Results
Gas Usage	Cylinder Specs
SAC/RMV	Unit Converter
Buoyancy	Hand Signals Guide

Real World

Dive Kit does the basics well. Starting it up for the first time, it was easy to find exactly what I needed, with its logical menu structure making it straightforward to navigate. The deco planner is well featured, with up to six gas mixes, automatic optimal switch depths, automatically calculated contingency/deviation plans, and clear warnings (low tank pressure, PPO₂, etc.).

The deco planner includes all the tweakable settings you’d expect: ascent/descent rates, working/deco PPO₂, RMV, last stop depth, and more.

Dive plans are clearly displayed in the app and can be exported as easily printable slates. They can also be shared with a buddy using a QR code, which is a neat feature.

*Dive Kit clearly presents dive plans with relevant warnings*

Dive planning, in theory, is relatively straightforward: understand your planned depth, duration, gas mixes, and consumption, then ultimately your decompression responsibilities. It becomes slightly more complicated when you overlay real-world constraints onto the tidy diving science. You might not have the perfect kit configuration or ideal gas for a dive—this is where the supporting calculators come in handy.

In my example of planning dives in Scapa Flow, I ideally want to dive with lean nitrox mix and a deco stage for accelerated decompression. Planning a 40m dive, I could use the “Best Mix” tool to calculate the optimal bottom gas (nitrox), and then start working out the most practical deco gas for a five-day trip.

I ran several scenarios using different deco gases (50%, 80%, 100%). One tool I found particularly helpful when running these variations was the “Mix Result” tool, which shows what the resulting mix will be if you add a chosen gas to a cylinder. In this example, it quickly allowed me to see what my deco gas would look like if I topped it up with air rather than attempting to maintain a constant deco mix throughout the trip.

Gas costs money, and in the real world there are often trade-offs between efficiency, practicality and cost.

Let’s be clear: many of these diving tools are just basic diving maths that can be done manually. However, it’s the combined workflow, being able to quickly move between complementary tools, that I found so useful.

Crucially, the app was also stable. I didn’t experience a single crash during testing. The only quirk I found was that it wouldn’t allow me to take a stage using the same mix as my back gas. It’s not a common configuration and can easily be adjusted for in the app. The app’s still receiving regular updates so this may be patched out in the future.

User Friendly

There are user-friendly touches throughout the app that show real thought has gone into its design. I liked being able to select the type of diving you’re doing: recreational, technical, or trimix, which simplifies the interface by removing irrelevant variables.

The app is easy to navigate, with clear, uncluttered menus and no fiddly (small) toggles. It also offers a choice between light and dark display modes, and the ability to reorder tools on the homepage for quick access to your favourites.

One of the things that impressed me most was the amount of useful information sitting behind the tools in the built-in guides. These provide helpful details about the principles and science of decompression theory.

Verdict

Dive Kit is a very well-executed app and a useful all-in-one diving toolbox. For my purposes, it strikes the right balance between granular detail and ease of use. I found the combination of a deco planner and handy calculators to be incredibly powerful and time-saving.

The app isn’t just useful for technical divers—it’s valuable for any practical diver who plans dives, works with nitrox mixes, or fills their own cylinders. I found it just as useful for planning recreational dives as for those with decompression obligations.

It’s also good value, coming in significantly cheaper than many competitors. If you’re not planning to do any decompression diving, a free version of the app is available without the deco planner.