Every year at the BOOT in Dusseldorf, one of the largest diving events in the world, the German diving magazine "Tauchen" awards the Tauchen-Award. This year 2018 was the 20th price giving. To start with, I would like to say that I'm not a big fan of the Tauchen-Awards. There is an explanation to this, and I have to state that this is my personal opinion. The Tauchen-Award is awarded to dive centres, training organizations and equipment. It is voted by the readers of the magazine, not by a group of experts. For me, this means that almost always the winners are dive centres that have more German-speaking customers, so first and foremost, it's the crowd that does casts the votes, not the quality. Small dive centres that focus on high-quality rather then mass-production stand no chance. Also, I think that at such Dive Centres, the customers are pushed to vote for the Tauchen-Award. Other centres don’t focus on influencing their customers in that way because they prefer to care for them in a more personal way. The choice of training organizations is only about the masses. That's life, that's the way it is. Mass before quality is in the foreground, unfortunately. Well, this year the votes for equipment were in favour of the diving torch MARES EOS 20RZ. Now you could say, MARES, CRESSI, SCUBAPRO, AQUALUNG ... one had to win. Well, I noticed something different. Apparently, here the readers were a bit more sceptical with regard to material and vote for products that are not intended for the mass, such as "Waterproof" materials, to give an example. But now back to the EOS 20RZ. Why am I writing about it? Because much to my surprise, this year, I agree with the reader's choice.
The EOS 20RZ has some very good features and a very good price/performance ratio, unlike other common diving lights. While other branded dive lights, so no cheap china products, with similar technical details are priced at over 600 Euros, and the MARES price recommendation of the EOS 20RZ is 295.00 Euros. In some shops you can even find them for around 240 Euros. (as of 2018-02-11) A lower price is awesome, but it's also about the quality and performance. The workmanship is very good, the metal case weighs 594gr. And it is easy to handle. The dive light is powered by a rechargeable battery, which you can charge with a normal cell phone charging cable. Especially convenient when you are traveling. In my opinion, there should be one standard charging cable, otherwise, with lights, camera, etc. you will carry 4-5 chargers with you. The charging takes about 7 hours, burning time at the highest power (2300 lumens) 100 minutes, at low setting 180 minutes. In my opinion, very good times. It is possible to regulate the lamp to 2 strengths, low to 690 lumens, which is perfectly adequate in normal dives, and the maximum setting at 2300 lumens, which is a very good performance, e.g. for video filming. In addition, there is the SOS / Flash function for emergencies. As I am talking about video, I should also mention the light beam. Again, there are 2 settings. A hotspot with 12 ° and a floodlight with 75 ° without hotspot. The light beam of the floodlight could be a little bit bigger, but when you film, you usually use at least 2 lamps, and that would give you 150 °.
Here again all data in detail:
In my opinion, the EOS 20RZ is a practical diving torch of good quality for recreational scuba divers and amateur filmmakers with a very good price / performance ratio. An absolute buy recommendation.