I was an early adopter of the Scotty High Speeds 4 or 5 years ago and the digital counters are original and still working well as are the riggers and Scotty's factory service of them when needed, has been excellent and without cost.
Recently I purchased a new digital counter which is on the boat as a spare because I understand that the battery is expected to run out in about 5 years so I did not want to be caught without a counter while fishing. Don't know if the spare which is on the boat is of the new type with the switch that will allow you to turn off the counter and save battery life. I don't know if there is a recent manufacture run which may be of lesser reliability than the original ones but I guess I will find out when the batteries on my first generation digital counters burn out and we give the replacement counter a try.
That said, it has always bothered me that Scotty designed the counter so that the battery was sealed into it and you have to replace the whole counter at rather high cost rather than just replace the battery. Why not design it with an O-ring sealed battery compartment, so you just replace the battery, unless the battery is most of the cost of the unit which seems high. Even with the new design, with a switch which means the unit does not have to be on all the time and thus have greater battery life, you are still going to have to buy a new counter at some point. I think the manual counters on the older design riggers have a life time warranty unlike the new digital ones. The life time warranty is how Scotty grew market share, dominate the local BC market and why I have purchased many Scotty Riggers. For that reason I don't like it when they play around the edges with the warranty as they seem to have with the digital counters but I understand it because batteries have a limited life.
When my original digital counters die I am going to cut one open and see what would be involved in sourcing a battery and resealing the unit just to see if it can be done. Since the battery is sealed in and not intended to be replaced I doubt Scotty went to the trouble to make the battery a proprietary design as some manufactures sometimes do to create a cash cow. It may be worth trying to refurbish my original very reliable counters if they stop working for no other reason than a dead battery. Has anyone tried this already?
I am curious, does Scotty warranty the digital counters for the expected life of the battery which I think is about five years or are you required to buy a new counter because it is consider a consumable because the battery is sealed into it, no matter when it fails.