Have a look at the wrists round a typical boardroom desk, and likelihood is the watches strapped to them are one of many following: Rolex Submariner, Omega Seamaster, or Panerai something.

All three of them had been born of the murky depths, constructed like miniature submarines to maintain frogmen conscious of their remaining oxygen provide, however these days – just like the Vary Rovers pushed on the weekend by aforementioned board members – roaming Civvy Road as assertion put on, their extraordinary capabilities are unchallenged, unfulfilled.

Or perhaps not.

Fairly other than the actual fact a sure Commander Bond has been a eager advocate of these particular Rolex and Omega’s ever since Dr No, diving watches deserve their ubiquity for loads of causes: for a begin, they give the impression of being rattling cool and so they’re genuinely sensible, whether or not you’re PADI Degree 3 or nonetheless working in your doggy paddle. It could simply be all of the watch you want.

What Is A Diving Watch?

As with most elementary developments within the trendy wristwatch (self-winding rotor, date window, anti-magnetism) it was Rolex who patented the primary practicable ‘waterproof’ wristwatch: the Oyster of 1926, with case back and front screwed down onto the case center and the crown screwed down onto a cylindrical pillar protruding from the case – similar to a submarine hatch. Save for the addition of tighter ‘O-ring’ rubber gaskets, it’s a system that’s barely modified since.

A diving watch is basically that: a watch that has the flexibility to face up to the pressures of deep water. However as with something on the planet of luxurious watches, it needn’t cease on the golden formulation of water resistance, bezel ring and luminescence. You possibly can go for a diving watch with no less than three different largely pointless options. As a result of, you recognize… as a result of.

Rolex Submariner – the archetypal diving watch

Some divers have an inside timing bezel, sitting under the sapphire crystal flush with the dial. It’s extra slender and classic-looking however requires its personal screw-down crown to regulate and is subsequently a proper fiddle when you’re carrying diving gloves or just have freezing-cold and moist fingers.

Any diver who actually must know their depth can be unlikely to belief a mechanical system built-in into their wristwatch – if just for how troublesome it’s to learn on such a tiny scale. After which there may be the helium escape valve. The least understood, practically at all times pointless, however in no way most ineffective operate discovered on practically each luxurious diving watch.

It was invented by (you guessed it) Rolex within the late sixties, for its beefed-up ‘Sea-Dweller’, and basically permits collected helium gasoline to flee the watch throughout decompression. It’s a flowery addition, completely pointless for each day put on, but additionally fairly cool.

The Finest Diving Watches You Can Purchase Proper Now

Seiko Prospex Turtle Save the Ocean

The title ‘Cousteau’ is synonymous with the life aquatic, and it’s the grandson of fifties pioneer Jacques-Yves who perpetuates the household custom at the moment.

The Fabien Cousteau Ocean Studying Centre and by default the Earth’s best useful resource now straight income from its new partnership with Japan’s watchmaking large Seiko – a model whose Prospex vary embodies a steady lineage of super-affordable and ever-evolving diving watches because the sixties.

This one’s good to 200m with precision mechanics and a bang-on-trend gradient dial thrown into the cut price. Purchase Now:

Longines Heritage Pores and skin Diver

The museum at Longines’ St Imier HQ is a near-bottomless inspiration for the venerable model’s ongoing ‘Heritage’ assortment – a line kickstarted in 2007 with the now-cult-collectible (no-date-display) Legend Diver.

This newest Heritage revival goes even additional again, reviving the very first Longines diving watch of 1959, however going even deeper down – to 300 meters’ water resistance. The flawless gleam of that black-PVD-coated bezel simply begs to be twizzled at first sight. Purchase Now:

Omega Seamaster Diver 300M

Launched in 1948, the Seamaster line was Omega’s first official “household” of watches. Modeled on the “Watch. Wrist. Waterproof.” MoD-spec items made for Allied troops, it was quickly ramped as much as Submariner-matching 300m water resistance in 1957.

Because of Pierce Brosnan’s costume designer for Goldeneye, it’s the blue-dialled 1994 ‘Diver’ model of the Omega Seamaster 300 that we all know finest, as Oscar-winner Lindy Hemming needed to play on the Irish heartthrob’s piercing (sorry) blue eyes.

1 / 4 century on, it’s been revived with a scratch-proof ceramic bezel, wavy dial motif nonetheless intact however now – presumably referencing the incumbent James Bond’s grizzled appears – in gray. Purchase Now:

Oris Aquis Clear Ocean

Including to Oris’s established oceanic endeavors in shark conservation and Nice Barrier Reef restoration, this restricted version launched at Baselworld 2019 hails a brand new partnership with Pacific Rubbish Screening – a pioneering group growing expertise that captures plastic earlier than it enters the ocean.

All 2,000 of the aqua-dial, 300-metre water-proof watches are available bins created from environmentally pleasant algae and have uniquely marbled caseback inlays created from recycled-plastic. Purchase Now:

Panerai Submersible BMG-TECH 47mm

Panerai has come a good distance since its primitive days kitting out shallow-depth, covert frogmen with brief runs of transformed Rolexes. For a begin, it’s now Swiss moderately than Italian, and whereas its iconic cushion form has been retained, the model’s received an entire lot extra high-tech.

The Submersible vary advantages from a brand new mannequin in BMG-Tech, an intriguing alloy created from titanium, zirconium, copper, aluminium and nickel. This cocktail is injection molded at a excessive temperature and strain (to this point so regular) however then it’s quickly cooled, only for a couple of seconds, which stops the atoms from reforming into an everyday construction, leaving it 70 p.c extra scratch resistant than titanium. Purchase Now:

Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver

Throughout its nascent nineties years, Bell & Ross gained a spot within the Guinness Guide of World Data with 1997’s Hydromax, which boasted an unprecedented water resistance score of 11,100 metres. Why not a rounded-down 11,000? Easy: the deepest place on Earth is the Pacific’s Mariana Trench, which is a mere 11,035m.

Each swimming badge thus unanimously earned and stitched to its Speedo’s, B&R turned a fashion-forward watchmaker favored as a lot by fighter jet pilots and bomb disposal groups as tortoiseshell-bespectacled architects, at all times with a formidable diving bell for the wrist someplace within the catalog.

It’s particularly technically spectacular that the present 300-metre mannequin comes dressed within the sq. ‘Instrument’ case, as water strain acts unpredictably round a non-circular joint. Purchase Now:

Tudor Pelagos

As loveable because the wildly profitable Heritage Black Bay is, it’s in the end a tribute act; a Now That’s What I Name A Tudor Submariner greatest-hits mixture of retro particulars drawing from the times when Tudor fitted-out Rolex’s final diving watch with cheaper actions, making them favorites of the American and French navies from the sixties to the eighties.

The Tudor Pelagos alternatively, launched quietly in parallel to the primary Black Bay reboot in 2012, was designed on a clean sheet of paper with a easy temporary: make the proper trendy diving watch. Very like the Submariner again in 1953, in actual fact.

Nothing was neglected and every little thing is just-so. Its potent cocktail of saltwater {qualifications} begins with the titanium case – a super-tough metallic that’s extremely difficult to engineer to divinxg-watch tolerances – adopted by the swap from an ETA motion to Tudor’s personal top-flight MT5612 calibre, adjusted to chronometer precision. Then there’s the usage of scratch-proof ceramic for the bezel, that means glances towards coral, or brick partitions inside stylish pubs gained’t scuff issues up. Purchase Now:

Bremont Supermarine S2000

The stressed action-man watchmaker of Henley-on-Thames ventures even additional beneath the waves right here, with a recent new tackle a group named after the Nineteen Thirties plane firm, Supermarine, whose Nineteen Thirties’ Sort 300 waterplane gained the Schneider Cup and paved the way in which for the Spitfire.

In actual fact, Bremont advanced its seminal pilot-watch DNA with 500m-water-resistance and high-luminescence just some years into Bremont’s lifespan, earlier than upping its sub-aquatic sport to a whopping 2,000 metres down in 2013, even inviting the curiosity of economic ‘saturation’ divers. If the bends aren’t going to get you light-headed, then the toothsome claret of this 12 months’s bezel re-design definitely will. Purchase Now:

Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea

Commemorating James Cameron’s record-breaking 10,908m descent to the deepest a part of the Mariana Trench in 2012 is the newly face-lifted blue-dial model of Rolex’s Deepsea – a hardcore model of the Sea-Dweller, designed for industrial divers who spend days on finish in helium-saturated bathyscaphes.

Whereas its wearer would expire far sooner, this wrist-born bathyscaphe is sweet all the way in which down to three,900 metres – or, as a trial run proved just some weeks previous to Cameron’s historic dive off the coast of Papua New Guinea, 4,000 metres, since a regular Deepsea was connected to his submersible’s hydraulic arm all through, resurfacing in excellent working order. Purchase Now:

Breitling Superocean Automated 46mm Blacksteel

Because of its extraordinary run of pioneering chronographs through the first half of the twentieth century, establishing Breitling as each army and civilian’s go-to timekeeper, we regularly neglect this Swiss watch model has an equally formidable repute for diving.

Relaunched to industry-wide raptures in 2007, fifty years after its first look beneath the waves, the retro-in-feel, however most definitely modern-in-build Superocean assortment is now a catalog fixture – refreshed and revived for 2019.

This super-precise ‘chronometer’ licensed mannequin will likely be proper at house with the fishes in addition to backside feeders and all method of unidentified species, due to a rare 2,000m water-tightness (10 instances the same old Superocean score), its tough-as-old-flippers Diver Professional II rubber strap and a rockhard ‘diamond-like carbon’ coating to its metal case. Purchase Now: