| | | NEW REGS WOULDN'T IT BE NICE TO DEMO every new regulator before committing your hard-earned cash? It is, after all, the most important piece of gear you'll buy, which puts a lot of pressure on making the right decision—and that's where ScubaLab comes in. We invited all major manufacturers to submit their new regulators (introduced within the last 12 months) for this review. After inspecting them and reviewing the owners' manuals we put them on an ANSTI breathing boat simulator to measure the precise breathing resistance a diver will encounter at four different depth/breathing rate settings that range from normal breathing at 132 feet to extreme exertion at 198 feet. Then we turned the regs over to a team of eight test divers to be your stand-ins. Their mission was to rate each reg using a 1 to 5 scale in seven ergonomic performance categories, from ease of breathing to comfort features. These divers also made notes on each reg—what they liked and what they didn't like. We then polled our test divers to find out which reg in each price category offered the best combination of features, comfort and performance and awarded these regs the additional honor of being named a ScubaLab Testers' Choice (see "Testers' Choice & Best Buy," p. 73). The complete results of all our tests are found in the charts on p. 98, and are summarized in the following reviews, which are presented here in alphabetical order within price categories. | | |