I believe this is the best regulator package
for scuba divers old and new. Here's why. Ladies and gentlemen welcome to Divers Ready! My
name's James, it is so great as always to see all of your smiling faces out there in YouTube land.
I hope you're all doing really well. If you're new to our channel, we make videos on Divers Ready!
with one simple goal in mind and that's to help make you a better more well-informed scuba diver.
So if you haven't done so already, make your next dive on our subscribe button down there, hit that
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every Monday yeah! We've been pretty consistent. Now I know you guys love gear review videos you
guys know that I'm at the mercy of companies that are willing to send me gear to be reviewed.
I don't have a bottomless money pit that I can spend on dive gear. So whatever comes
my way, if I think it's worth a review, I make the videos and I send it to you. Now in
this case, I have a regulator package here from Dive Rite, yes! Dive Rite are a sponsor on the
channel they've been very loyal supporters of Divers Read, there's no secret in that! However,
we do not do sponsored reviews. I'll leave it up to you to determine whether or not my opinions
about this have been biased by my relationship with Dive Rite. But suffice it to say, I try
and be as objective as possible because at the end of the day I make videos for you guys, and
that relationship is way more important to me than anything else. Dive Rite on the other hand
are one of those companies who are very happy for me to generate review videos. They want the
content out there, they understand that their potential buyers want to watch reviews
of their products from people like me. So yes lots more Dive Rite reviews coming
your way. But I figured we kick it off with this regulator package the XT Advanced Open Water
Regulator set because I truly believe that this may be one of the best regulator packages out
there on the market today for recreational divers. Now I got the XT Advanced Open Water Regulator set
from Dive Rite in about the spring of this year. It came to Bermuda with me, it came to South
Africa with me, it dove the Sardine Run with me. I've dived it here in Florida extensively all
through the summer. I probably have between about 50 and 100 dives on this regulator set
right now at the time of recording. So I feel pretty comfortable about sharing my thoughts with
all of you. As with every Divers Ready! review, I'm going to tell you the important features and
what I liked about this product. I'm going to tell you some things I didn't care for or would
hope would be improved in future iterations, and I'm going to tell you who I think this reg
set is best suited for. So let's dive straight in. First thing we're gonna tackle are the positives
and some of the features I really care for and the first thing you absolutely need to know is, you
get it all, everything! You get the whole reg set in one go. It comes with all these bits and
pieces that you see in front of you here. It comes with two bolt snaps one for the SPG and
one for your primary regulator. It comes with the angular ball adjustment for your second stage
for comfort, it even comes with the necklace and a regulator bag. An actual regulator
bag that's useful for other things, it's actually a dry bag. Straight out of the
package remove the labels, this is ready to dive, all you need to do is add the inflator hose which
is obviously sold with whichever BCD you decide on. Now I don't discuss prices here on the channel
because this show goes out to all around the world and it's going to vary where you are. But I
will tell you here in the US this regulator package sells for the same price as my previous
favorite regulator recommendation the Apeks XTX50, for which you only get one first stage and
one-second stage. So you still need to buy an octo, you still need to buy clips and an SPG
and necklace, and anything else you want to set it up with so it makes all the decision-making and
pricing factors very simple. All you need is this and add your inflator hose to it and this
pains me to say having spent an incredible amount of money with Apeks, they breathe nearly
identical. Now I don't have one of those fancy benchtop inspiration machines to scientifically
measure the work of breathing down to a number, but I can tell you this, at 100 foot down in dark
50-degree waters in South Africa surrounded by ragged tooth sharks, this regulator set performed
flawlessly. I also feel like this regulator set is a very easy introduction to primary donate.
If you were taught the old-fashioned way, which is donating the octo located somewhere in the
triangle of life, whatever the hell that is PADI. Then this reg set is a very easy way
to modernize your diving into a primary donate setup. Primary donate, if you're
not familiar, is when the regulator you would give to an out-of-air buddy is
the one you've been breathing off of and you switch to a backup which is normally
secured on a necklace around your neck. Now, in this case, the primary is octo yellow and the
redundant, which is this dark gray color lives on the necklace around your neck. Why is that an
advantage? Well, I could make a whole separate video on primary donate. But let's just say in
every out-of-air situation I've ever witnessed, the person who is out of air is obviously having
a very stressful moment and they never go for the octo, they have a lizard brain reaction and they
say oh well you've got something to breathe, we'll take that one and it ends up being the donor going
on to the octo. In addition to the excellent work of breathing that I found on these regulators,
the other thing that really surprised me is that you get a lot of features on the second stages in
terms of adjustments that you normally only find on much more expensive regulators. For example,
the breathing assisted, the venturi lever, adjust the comfort mouthpiece and that's not just on the
primary second stage. But also, on the redundant, they're actually identical except for the yellow
ring on the primary that you'd be donating. So that's a nice thing. They've packed a ton of
features in at this price point. I can't think of another regulator set that has that work of
breathing and all these features in this price category. Next thing I would say is that they
are very compact, they're easy to travel with, like I said I took them to Bermuda, I took them to
South Africa they packed down nice and small and they come in a nice padded dry bag for protection.
But on top of that, I had a friend and student of mine reach out to me and say, “hey what reg are
you diving these days”? I told them I've really been enjoying testing these regulators out. He
bought a set for himself, liked them so much, went out and bought three more sets for his wife
and two daughters and all four reg sets went to Hawaii for a diving vacation, and the next thing
you know I'm getting sent an underwater group shot from Hawaii. Of course, as for any regulator
sets on the common market these days it is available in DIN or YOKE. Bar or PSI options
for the SPG. The hose routing is absolutely ideal straight out of the package, you don't have to
move any hoses around, there's no flappy hoses, it's great streamlining, no drag, effortless. The
first stage has a rotating turret so you get that nice comfortable feeling when you've got the
second stage in your mouth that you have a full range of motion without it fish hooking you and
pulling you around. So that's a pretty decent rundown of the features that I enjoyed with this
regulator set. Let's look at some things I would hope will be changed in future iterations or just
some considerations if you're thinking to buy. First off, I have to acknowledge that this is not
a true long hose configuration. But if you really wanted to make it a long hose configuration you
could swap out the primary hose, which I believe is four feet, for one that was two or three feet
longer. Remember this is a recreational reg setup, the only reason you need a six-foot or
seven-foot donate hose is for sharing air through a restriction which you're not going to
do on a recreational dive, are you? Are you? Good. I thought not. So it took some getting used to
obviously this hose roots underneath the arm and comes up into the mouth that way which was just
different, it was just something I had to work on, not something that would be changed. But just
something that you're going to have to get used to coming from an over-the-shoulder primary
regulator. The next thing that needs to be adjusted is the fact that there was quite a bit of
plastic packaging that came with this set. There were plastic bags over both second stages and
first stage to protect them. Come on Dive Rite, we can do better than that. A couple of other
changes that I'm going to make to this regulator set just for my own personal comfort that you guys
might want to consider as well. The bolt snaps are held in place by these little bungee tabs they
have the habit of sliding up and down in the water which is less than ideal so, I'm going to
take these bungees off and replace them with a line with a cavern knot. Now I understand why
Dive Rite does this because to ship them with the cave knot would be a lot more labor intensive.
But you're going to want to change them out, and if you don't know how to do that, I have
a video which I will link up above there on how to attach a bolt snap to pretty much
anything. The other change I'm gonna make is, I'm gonna get rid of this plastic boot that the
SPG comes in. I am a brass and brass guy myself, and these plastic or rubber boots tend to hide
all manner of sin. Saltwater gets up in there and it's really hard to rinse it out properly
after a dive. So I'm just going to cut away the plastic boot and have the hose come down and just
a plain brass and brass SPG on the end of that. So that's something else I'm going to change
on it to get this set up to my exact liking. Right so, let's talk about who I think this
regulator set is best suited for. Honestly any recreational diver, literally any recreational
diver will get value for money out of this reg set. If you are new to scuba diving, and
you're looking to buy your first regulator set, you are not gonna find better value for money. If
you need to buy regs for your entire family, as my buddy did, you're not gonna find better value
for money and you don't have to think too hard about it. Dive Rite have put together a package
that just simply works for any recreational dive. I've done cold water diving with it, I've done
warm water diving with it, I've traveled with it, I was trying to think really hard of what kind of
recreational dive this regulator set couldn't keep up with and I got nothing for you. I have no idea.
So, there you have it ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed
this rundown of this fantastic regulator package for recreational divers. If you learned something
from it, if you were inspired by this video, please give it the old thumbs up and let me know
what you thought of my comments in the comment section of this video down below. If you want more
information on the XT Advanced Open Water package, I will put a link to the product page in the
description of this video below. It will be an affiliate link and any purchases made through
that link may earn me a small commission and I thank you for supporting our channel. As always
don't forget to subscribe to Divers Ready! If you haven't done so already. And until next time
my name is James, this was your Divers Ready! review of the XT Advanced Open Water Regulator
set from Dive Rite. Dive safe, dive often.
