BC BEAVER LIGHTNING
WELL AND TRULY TESTED
Beaver has a new BC, and you would have to call £235 a competitive price these days – but you can get more than you pay for, says STEVE WARREN. He has a mask to test too, while ZOE AGER dons new Mares footwear
AT £235, THE BEAVER LIGHTNING is a low-cost BC. It is not a cheap BC. Cheap would imply poor quality and indifferent performance but the Lightning, as we’ll see, is a ruggedly built, comfortable, well-appointed and nicely performing jacket.
Normally, I don’t give away the equipment’s highlights at the beginning of a review. Nor do I usually discuss cost, because I prefer to leave it up to readers to decide if the price is right.
But when Beaver sent me the Lightning to try, it seemed to be at pains to represent it as basic. It’s refreshing that Beaver is so modest – but it really has no reason to be!
Beaver is a British company that has been around since the 1980s. It started out as a manufacturer of wetsuits and quickly became a market-leader. From there it branched out into supplying diving accessories, mostly imported, that are generally inexpensive. The Lightning is made in China.
The Design
The Lightning is a jacket-style BC for single-tank diving with cylinders up to 20-litre capacity.
It’s a single-bag design, using 1000-denier nylon for the main body, internally coated with polyurethane to make the bladder airtight.
420 denier is very rugged and typically used in low- to mid-level-cost BCs, so getting 1000 denier suggests a tough unit that should last well with heavy use.