Big Step Up From Handheld
We ran two deck shot/game clocks with the handheld controller for two previous water polo seasons, but decided to step up to this one after using one at another team's tournament. This controller is a big step up over the handheld in convenience and quality, with 2 main improvements:
(1) The handheld ran on 2 AA batteries, and would eat them up pretty quickly, sometimes as quickly as a game and a half. As the batteries died off, the buttons seemed to get a little more erratic. This unit runs on a rechargeable internal Lithium battery. In its first outing we ran games from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm without needing to plug in, and the controller and clocks worked flawlessly the entire time.
(2) The desktop has an Undo button that allows you to reverse an accidental shot clock reset.
Like other Colorado products, the construction is very robust -- and the user interfaces are very quirky, dated, and clunky. But it's a big improvement over the handheld, and in my view worth the significant cost delta over the handheld. The only disadvantage over the handheld is that you can't get up and walk around with it when a ref blocks your view of play (at least not easily), but it's worth that minor inconvenience.
