GEAR TESTS: FISHEYE FIX NEO 1500 DX SWR

Chris Parsons Nauticam Team Member

I brought along one of the new FIX NEO 1500 DX SWR focus lights. The "SWR" stands for Spot, Wide and Red - so as you can tell, this is a pretty versatile light. It is primarily a focus light, and it excels at that task. Typically, you'd use the "wide" setting most of the time; the nice even wide beam means no hot spots in your shot, and 1500 lumens is more than enough for most focus applications (and you can precisely dial down the power - more on that below). For night dives, you can switch to the "spot" mode, and the light behaves more like a traditional underwater flashlight - very useful to help you find subjects or find your way back to the boat. Once you have found your subject at night, you might want to switch over to the "red" mode. Many creatures don't react to the red light, and it can make getting closer to them much easier. The red won't show up in your shot when you are using flash. 

Like the other FIX NEO DX lights, there is a modern control panel on the light that indicates battery power, light mode, output power and more. And the coolest feature is that it gives you an estimate of the amount of burn time remaining at the current power level. If it is not enough time to finish your dive, you can adjust the power down by 1% increments. This kind of control is not found in other lights. The NEO's feature an option to charge the battery without opening the light - very convenient, but also offer the option to remove the battery and charge it. This is ideal, for example, on a liveaboard dive boat when you do four or five dives a day… you just bring an extra battery, and one battery can be charging while the other is being used. That way you always have a fresh battery ready to go diving.