It’s a testament to the auteur vision of De Bethune’s Denis Flageollet that the DB28 GS Yellow Submarine is unrecognizable as a dive watch. But the DB28GS Yellow Submarine is a dive watch without doubt – and without duplicate.
Few watches released in the last three decades have been as revolutionary as the Ressence Type 5. And now with the Type 5 L, Ressence increases legibility even more by the abundant application of Super-LumiNova.
All previous diver’s watches have one thing in common: the only functionality related to diving is the bezel. The Singer Reimaged Divetrack revolutionizes dive watches with its central chronograph timing functionality.
It is often said that it is easier to send a person to the Moon than to the ocean floor because of the extreme conditions found at great depths, such as no visibility and overwhelming pressure. However, in 1960 a wristwatch (Rolex “Deep Sea Special”) accompanied mankind to the deepest ocean floor even before it accompanied mankind to the Moon in 1969 (Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch).
Professional watchmakers have specialist machinery for testing the water resistance of their watches, but Colin Alexander Smith does not. So after servicing his Seiko SKX013 he was on the lookout for an opportunity to take it down deep. And he found the perfect opportunity while summer holiday diving at Aiguablava cove on Spain’s Costa Brava. But it didn’t go quite to plan and his Seiko came out of the experience a tad better than he did.
When Ball Watch asked Dietmar Fuchs to test dive one of the company’s newest watches, the Engineer Master II Diver Chronometer, he hesitated at first. Ball didn’t jingle a diving bell for him, but something else from its history jangled: a brand’s “history” section is always the first thing he checks before testing a watch and he discovered Ball Watch has the credentials. So he dove in and now shares his experience and thoughts on the watch here.
Diver’s watches are meant to be rough, tough tool watches, and limited editions are made to cash in on a model’s popularity. The Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver Full Lum is both, yet disproves these paradox presumptions as Martin Green discovered after wearing this watch for a while. What did he think? “It’s lit!”
Depth matters. And as experienced divers often like to go deep for as long as possible, decompression is a serious issue. The problem with mechanical depth gauges on watches is that they are usually either precise at depth (but not in the 12-meter decompression zone) or in the decompression zone (but not at depth). Dietmar Fuchs takes a deep dive into mechanical depth gauge watches and shares his thoughts and experiences here.
The dive watch can be seen as the off-road car of the watch world. Right after World War II, the world of diving was going through rapid developments. A leap in technology allowed humans to dive longer and deeper and explore a part of our planet we know so little about. But haute horlogerie?
As a fan of the extraordinary Seiko Prospex 1000, Dietmar Fuchs took the limited version of the reinterpretation of a famous Seiko diving watch diving and shares his real-world experience with it here.