The Garmin Descent Mk2 is a watch-sized dive computer that is perfect for those who want to explore both underwater and topside worlds. This dive computer features multiple dive modes, including single and multiple gas dives, gauge, apnea, apnea hunt, and closed-circuit rebreather. With ABC sensors, including an underwater 3-axis compass, and surface GPS capabilities, the Descent Mk2 allows you to mark your entry and exit points.
On land, the Descent Mk2 doubles as a premium multisport GPS smartwatch with multi-GNSS support, multiple sports apps, wrist-based heart rate monitoring estimates, Pulse Ox sensor, advanced training features, Garmin Pay payment service, music storage, smart notifications, and more. It has a rugged yet elegant design with a 1.4″ color sunlight-readable display and a battery life of up to 80 hours in dive mode, up to 16 days in smartwatch mode, and up to 15 hours in GPS mode with music.
Some of the key features of the Descent Mk2 include enhanced wrist-based heart rate estimates and Pulse Ox sensing of blood oxygen saturation to support advanced sleep monitoring and altitude acclimation at high elevations. It also has built-in support for multiple sports apps, advanced training features, contactless payment, music storage with premium streaming service support, smart notifications for calls, texts, and calendar alerts, and more.
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OceanAveBoy –
I bought 2 units for wife and I after seeing a guy rave about one on a January Jamaica diving week…We switched out from Mares Puck Pro units which had 200+ dives and no problems (1 needed battery replacement which I did). the Mares unit is very simple and accurate although we wanted something sexier and with non diving features. The Garmin Descent MK2i is a beast…It takes lots of practice to use it correctly and even figure it out as I have the Manual pdf open lots of times to learn something new or what I messed up…I don’t have much to say about non-diving performance except it is Garmin and what more is needed to day?…We use as fit bits and tracking our sleep, heart rate, etc. Now for diving – We have 23 dives in St. Lucia at depths 15-115′ on single gas with the T1 transmitter on both units (so dual tank readings). We love the feature of seeing your buddy’s air at all times and alleviates need to keep checking, plus buddy watches out for you if you focus on something else. We set these for conservative and always do a 15′ safety stop for 3 minutes before surfacing. Head to head with the Mares unit they were essentially identical; Garmin is more precise in adding decimals for temperature and exact psi compared to the tank valve version, although same. We ran decompression stops on several dives and both units (actually all 4 – 2 Mares + 2 Garmin) and data was the same. We enjoy the Garmin many ways to view dive on changing the screens during the dive. Backscreen illumination is decent although not bright enough in darkness (a small cave in daytime), I’d use my light anyway so no big deal. The transmitter sound is audible although not annoying and I’ll see about tuning it down a bit although I may loose range. A feature I don’t like is the short battery life when diving…Yeah, I know about taking off Wifi, bluetooth, functions etc, but why have to bother just for diving or anything else. I found we ran batteries to 50% after 1-1.5 days and needed to use to primitive alligator clip charger plug. We used both dive computers all week and I am not ready to go to just Garmin. After dive my tank pressure was hard to screen back to after exiting water, Mares much simpler in that one button push gave surface interval vs. garmin that needed several buttons pushed to get to the S.I. screen. At this point we like the “sexy” Garmin as it looks nice and we can change the watch face, changes screens and move stuff around. the sapphire crystal did not scratch and sustained several knocks against the boat and coral with no damage. The weakness in the system is the T1 transmitter that is fragile and cannot be used to lift tank (OK I got that) BUT…after wrench tightening it would loosen up after several dives and susceptible to accidentally touching or jostling it and it got loose. Garmin should give you a flat wrench of correct size for tightening as the standard wrenches dont work on the tank to transmitter distance. This is a best/worst feature with T1 – love safety issue of joint knowledge of tank pressures, dont like fragile/ease to loosen. A feature that I may not have correct now is the wifi and bluetooth communications between watch/dive computer and iPhone/computer…perhaps because we staying NoData/Airplane mode when out of the US as were were in St. Lucia. We will keep the Garmin units and work toward becoming better users…They did a good job trying to work in the dive computer…for just diving get something else (Sherwood)…if you are a workout enthusiast and love to have lots of data/stats to work with..this is your unit. Ill update this review as we get more data – lots of diving coming up..***Update July 10,2021. Now have 58 more dives totaling 81 dives on the Garmin. I have called Garmin to talk about some of the glitches and they are very responsive and assigned 2 guys to work onthe Descent MK2i…we did one software update which seemed to smooth out some of the issues. Still a problem is the T1 transmitter – both its had low battery warnings on our last diving trip to Grenada – I changed out both batteries easily at home; while on the Grenada trip on second day the T1 had become loose and blew an “O” ring on turning on the tank valve – i brought tools so fixed O ring problem with cleaning and silicone and tighten with a flat wrench – problem solved although underwater would have been an issue. Problem with reporting sum total of both tank pressures from wife and my tanks on our computers, although in the downloads it is sorted out – I need to call Garmin about this. On prior trip to Jamaica I accidentally put it in “Gauge mode” and it locks out for 24 hours and since less than that between succive days’ dives unit was stuck on GAUGE mode for a week! That was a problem. In Grenada we did a number of >100′ dives and ran into compression stops mandatory. The computer will get you to do a mandatory stop at say 10′ for 1 minute and after that is done it aaltomatically says you can essentially surface…that bypassed the PADI (and resort)mandatory 3 minute stop at 15′ no matter what you do…SO – we had to do a countdown on the timer (actually used the Mares safety stop countdown – we carry both now). Still love these although not yet ready to ditch my backup computer (sort of feels good to have it). More to come…
Thomas A –
I upgraded to this Garmin from a Fenix 5 because I am getting back into diving and I wanted one watch that did it all. And boy does it! Even if you are just using it as a dive watch, it is perfect! It’s small enough to wear all the time, but big enough to easily see all your dive info underwater. The air integration is seamless and being able to track your buddies air level and consumption rate is so amazing!In addition to diving, you also have Garmin’s full featured tracking of tons of other activities from running to biking to golf, all in one great looking watch!It’s not too heavy, and while it does also do sleep tracking, I find it a bit bulky to wear to bed, but it does work. And the battery life is out of this world! I use it for GPS tracking my runs about 5 days a week, diving with air integration some weekends and I only have to charge it about once a week.
Maxine Field –
I bought this watch as I am developing the mid life problem that is short-sightedness and could no longer read the dial of my dive watch. up to now I had 3 watches – a day watch, Dive computer and a fitness tracker for sport. When I saw this I took the plunge to try to combine all 3. I am very impressed.After purchase it arrived quickly and well packaged. Initially I was disapointed withthe brightness of the display but once you realise it is an LCD rather than OLED and is not effected by sunlight then you don’t worry – I have never had a problem reading the face ion all lighting conditions even in 10m murky water. It transpired it was a US import despite being sold direct from Amazon and came with the americain maps installed – Amazon Customer Services refunded the £50 required to download the European maps from Garmin.As a dive watch – I am afraid I can not report on the decompression or dive planning as I am a freediver but for this it is great and I particularly like the haptic feedback alarm.For other sports it has a pulse oxymiter (does not work through a wetsuit!) and a wrist based HRM built in however I found this to be wildly inaccurate when running – it seems to pick up on cadence rather than HR if doing a hard run. I have pared it with a Garmin Tri HRM which sorts out that problem – I have not yet tried this when diving but it says it will record your stats & transmit them to the watch when out of the water.Overall I am delighted with the watch on all fronts, it meets all my needs and excedes them. Yes it is pricy, but it has replaced 2 watches and a dive computer – oh & I forgot the 28day rechargable battery life (depending on activity).I will be taking it Skiing in January and it can download all the world’s ski resort maps! We wil see how good that is.
Guido Appenzeller –
Used this on a number of casual (air, 25m max) dives and so far I am impressed. It’s a good dive computer with better connectivity and export features than some of the Mares devices I had used before. Having a GPS on the dive computer is nice for entry/exit points and the APNEA functionality work well. Display is easy to read at the surface and in the water.It’s also a good smart watch. I am/was mostly an Apple Watch user and Garmin’s product is impressive. Flexibility of custom watch faces is far ahead of Apple, some tracking features are more precise and most alerts from an iPhone show up fine. Garming’s apps are a bit of a mess (you need 3 separate ones) but they are functional. Watch UI for configuring the watch and the apps is terrible and the logic of what the different buttons do is hard to fathom, but you don’t need it that much. Battery life is amazing and for me runs at about 2 weeks.Overall, this is a great dive/smart watch hybrid. For a normal day at work, I’ll continue to use the apple watch but for outdoor activities and vacation this is now my main watch.
Janet B Sim –
Love that Garmin has an excellent dive watch that is not too big and can be used for an all around fitness//sports tracking and everyday watch. Awesome product.
Guido Appenzeller –
Used this on a number of casual (air, 25m max) dives and so far I am impressed. It’s a good dive computer with better connectivity and export features than some of the Mares devices I had used before. Having a GPS on the dive computer is nice for entry/exit points and the APNEA functionality work well. Display is easy to read at the surface and in the water.It’s also a good smart watch. I am/was mostly an Apple Watch user and Garmin’s product is impressive. Flexibility of custom watch faces is far ahead of Apple, some tracking features are more precise and most alerts from an iPhone show up fine. Garming’s apps are a bit of a mess (you need 3 separate ones) but they are functional. Watch UI for configuring the watch and the apps is terrible and the logic of what the different buttons do is hard to fathom, but you don’t need it that much. Battery life is amazing and for me runs at about 2 weeks.Overall, this is a great dive/smart watch hybrid. For a normal day at work, I’ll continue to use the apple watch but for outdoor activities and vacation this is now my main watch.
visionary –
I had purchased this as a backup dive computer for a recent trip after my older computer used as backup finally failed. I quickly moved this to my primary computer because of its attractive watch face and the information it provides.Dove this watch in Cayman Brac and was impressed with the detailed dive log that included the location on a map of where the dive took place. Diving with Nitrox mix was no problem with this watch.Several days into diving our dive day was cancelled due to high winds and small craft warnings. As an avid cyclist, I opted to take one of the resort’s complimentary bicycles (the old one-spd coast-brake models) on a ride from one end of the island to the other. Using my phone and my RidewithGPS App, I was able to download a local ride map from the island to my phone and then import it to the Mk2. This saved me a number of wrong turns down deadend roads while giving me a moving map of my ride along with distance and other data. Upon completing the ride, I had again a record of that ride on my Garmin Connect App, including a map overview of the route and lots of fitness data regarding the ride.I rate the sleep monitor down on this because it’s really not practical for wearing during sleep due to the large size and weight of the watch (at least for me).I was so impressed with the performance of this watch, that I ordered a full suite of Garmin products to fully monitor my fitness and exercise data upon my return home. I’ll be giving my thoughts on those products when I use them. I have received the first of them today – the Vivosmart 5, which I bought primarily for my indoor cycle trainer and for sleep monitoring because it is lightweight and sleek.I highly recommend this diving computer and multi-fitness watch.
Maxine Field –
I bought this watch as I am developing the mid life problem that is short-sightedness and could no longer read the dial of my dive watch. up to now I had 3 watches – a day watch, Dive computer and a fitness tracker for sport. When I saw this I took the plunge to try to combine all 3. I am very impressed.After purchase it arrived quickly and well packaged. Initially I was disapointed withthe brightness of the display but once you realise it is an LCD rather than OLED and is not effected by sunlight then you don’t worry – I have never had a problem reading the face ion all lighting conditions even in 10m murky water. It transpired it was a US import despite being sold direct from Amazon and came with the americain maps installed – Amazon Customer Services refunded the £50 required to download the European maps from Garmin.As a dive watch – I am afraid I can not report on the decompression or dive planning as I am a freediver but for this it is great and I particularly like the haptic feedback alarm.For other sports it has a pulse oxymiter (does not work through a wetsuit!) and a wrist based HRM built in however I found this to be wildly inaccurate when running – it seems to pick up on cadence rather than HR if doing a hard run. I have pared it with a Garmin Tri HRM which sorts out that problem – I have not yet tried this when diving but it says it will record your stats & transmit them to the watch when out of the water.Overall I am delighted with the watch on all fronts, it meets all my needs and excedes them. Yes it is pricy, but it has replaced 2 watches and a dive computer – oh & I forgot the 28day rechargable battery life (depending on activity).I will be taking it Skiing in January and it can download all the world’s ski resort maps! We wil see how good that is.
OceanAveBoy –
I bought 2 units for wife and I after seeing a guy rave about one on a January Jamaica diving week…We switched out from Mares Puck Pro units which had 200+ dives and no problems (1 needed battery replacement which I did). the Mares unit is very simple and accurate although we wanted something sexier and with non diving features. The Garmin Descent MK2i is a beast…It takes lots of practice to use it correctly and even figure it out as I have the Manual pdf open lots of times to learn something new or what I messed up…I don’t have much to say about non-diving performance except it is Garmin and what more is needed to day?…We use as fit bits and tracking our sleep, heart rate, etc. Now for diving – We have 23 dives in St. Lucia at depths 15-115′ on single gas with the T1 transmitter on both units (so dual tank readings). We love the feature of seeing your buddy’s air at all times and alleviates need to keep checking, plus buddy watches out for you if you focus on something else. We set these for conservative and always do a 15′ safety stop for 3 minutes before surfacing. Head to head with the Mares unit they were essentially identical; Garmin is more precise in adding decimals for temperature and exact psi compared to the tank valve version, although same. We ran decompression stops on several dives and both units (actually all 4 – 2 Mares + 2 Garmin) and data was the same. We enjoy the Garmin many ways to view dive on changing the screens during the dive. Backscreen illumination is decent although not bright enough in darkness (a small cave in daytime), I’d use my light anyway so no big deal. The transmitter sound is audible although not annoying and I’ll see about tuning it down a bit although I may loose range. A feature I don’t like is the short battery life when diving…Yeah, I know about taking off Wifi, bluetooth, functions etc, but why have to bother just for diving or anything else. I found we ran batteries to 50% after 1-1.5 days and needed to use to primitive alligator clip charger plug. We used both dive computers all week and I am not ready to go to just Garmin. After dive my tank pressure was hard to screen back to after exiting water, Mares much simpler in that one button push gave surface interval vs. garmin that needed several buttons pushed to get to the S.I. screen. At this point we like the “sexy” Garmin as it looks nice and we can change the watch face, changes screens and move stuff around. the sapphire crystal did not scratch and sustained several knocks against the boat and coral with no damage. The weakness in the system is the T1 transmitter that is fragile and cannot be used to lift tank (OK I got that) BUT…after wrench tightening it would loosen up after several dives and susceptible to accidentally touching or jostling it and it got loose. Garmin should give you a flat wrench of correct size for tightening as the standard wrenches dont work on the tank to transmitter distance. This is a best/worst feature with T1 – love safety issue of joint knowledge of tank pressures, dont like fragile/ease to loosen. A feature that I may not have correct now is the wifi and bluetooth communications between watch/dive computer and iPhone/computer…perhaps because we staying NoData/Airplane mode when out of the US as were were in St. Lucia. We will keep the Garmin units and work toward becoming better users…They did a good job trying to work in the dive computer…for just diving get something else (Sherwood)…if you are a workout enthusiast and love to have lots of data/stats to work with..this is your unit. Ill update this review as we get more data – lots of diving coming up..***Update July 10,2021. Now have 58 more dives totaling 81 dives on the Garmin. I have called Garmin to talk about some of the glitches and they are very responsive and assigned 2 guys to work onthe Descent MK2i…we did one software update which seemed to smooth out some of the issues. Still a problem is the T1 transmitter – both its had low battery warnings on our last diving trip to Grenada – I changed out both batteries easily at home; while on the Grenada trip on second day the T1 had become loose and blew an “O” ring on turning on the tank valve – i brought tools so fixed O ring problem with cleaning and silicone and tighten with a flat wrench – problem solved although underwater would have been an issue. Problem with reporting sum total of both tank pressures from wife and my tanks on our computers, although in the downloads it is sorted out – I need to call Garmin about this. On prior trip to Jamaica I accidentally put it in “Gauge mode” and it locks out for 24 hours and since less than that between succive days’ dives unit was stuck on GAUGE mode for a week! That was a problem. In Grenada we did a number of >100′ dives and ran into compression stops mandatory. The computer will get you to do a mandatory stop at say 10′ for 1 minute and after that is done it aaltomatically says you can essentially surface…that bypassed the PADI (and resort)mandatory 3 minute stop at 15′ no matter what you do…SO – we had to do a countdown on the timer (actually used the Mares safety stop countdown – we carry both now). Still love these although not yet ready to ditch my backup computer (sort of feels good to have it). More to come…
visionary –
I had purchased this as a backup dive computer for a recent trip after my older computer used as backup finally failed. I quickly moved this to my primary computer because of its attractive watch face and the information it provides.Dove this watch in Cayman Brac and was impressed with the detailed dive log that included the location on a map of where the dive took place. Diving with Nitrox mix was no problem with this watch.Several days into diving our dive day was cancelled due to high winds and small craft warnings. As an avid cyclist, I opted to take one of the resort’s complimentary bicycles (the old one-spd coast-brake models) on a ride from one end of the island to the other. Using my phone and my RidewithGPS App, I was able to download a local ride map from the island to my phone and then import it to the Mk2. This saved me a number of wrong turns down deadend roads while giving me a moving map of my ride along with distance and other data. Upon completing the ride, I had again a record of that ride on my Garmin Connect App, including a map overview of the route and lots of fitness data regarding the ride.I rate the sleep monitor down on this because it’s really not practical for wearing during sleep due to the large size and weight of the watch (at least for me).I was so impressed with the performance of this watch, that I ordered a full suite of Garmin products to fully monitor my fitness and exercise data upon my return home. I’ll be giving my thoughts on those products when I use them. I have received the first of them today – the Vivosmart 5, which I bought primarily for my indoor cycle trainer and for sleep monitoring because it is lightweight and sleek.I highly recommend this diving computer and multi-fitness watch.
Thomas A –
I upgraded to this Garmin from a Fenix 5 because I am getting back into diving and I wanted one watch that did it all. And boy does it! Even if you are just using it as a dive watch, it is perfect! It’s small enough to wear all the time, but big enough to easily see all your dive info underwater. The air integration is seamless and being able to track your buddies air level and consumption rate is so amazing!In addition to diving, you also have Garmin’s full featured tracking of tons of other activities from running to biking to golf, all in one great looking watch!It’s not too heavy, and while it does also do sleep tracking, I find it a bit bulky to wear to bed, but it does work. And the battery life is out of this world! I use it for GPS tracking my runs about 5 days a week, diving with air integration some weekends and I only have to charge it about once a week.