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Heavy Metal: A Look At The Most Significant New Dive Watches Of 2014  Rating:  Rating
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 Posted: Wed May 14th, 2014 11:24 pm
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oagaspar
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New Dive Watches Of 2014 Jason Heaton 2 weeks ago
 
Wednesday May 14th, 2014
HODINKEE is one of the most widely read wristwatch publications in the world. Launched in 2008 by then 25-year-old Benjamin Clymer, the site quickly gained notoriety for earnest looks at some of the industry’s most interesting, and occasionally forgotten timepieces.
Founder & Executive Editor
Benjamin Clymer
Associate Editor
Stephen J. Pulvirent Contributing Editor Kelly Jasper contributors Paul Boutros
Blake Buettner
Jason Heaton
Felix Scholz Eric Wind columnist John Mayer
Senior Digital Producer Will Holloway
The dawn of a New Year means revelry, resolutions, diets and a clean slate. For watch lovers, it also means looking forward to the crop of new timepieces unveiled at January’s Salon International Haute Horlogerie and April’s Baselworld. And everyone has his own taste: some like the high complications, others wait for Rolex’s new releases, and still others like to see what new mechanical marvel MB&F will reveal. My personal poison is dive watches and 2014 hasn’t disappointed. This year was a particularly rewarding year for any lover of dive watches. New materials, new colors, new names, and new versions of old classics were all revealed at SIHH and Baselworld. Here is a roundup of the most significant new dive watches of 2014.


IWC Aquatimer
 

IWC Aquatimer Deep Three
The last generation of Aquatimers, released in 2009, disappointed a lot of purists – gone was titanium, the beloved internal bezel was scrapped in favor of an external one, and the cases ballooned to 44 millimeters. While I found them more user friendly and better for real diving, I too felt they were missing something. 
This year's new Aquatimers seemed fussy at first glance but since SIHH I’ve had a chance to handle them more and I’ve grown to really like them. The SafeDive bezel system, while seemingly complicated for its own sake, is well executed and really speaks to what IWC does best: engineering. Also, the return of titanium is great to see from a master of that metal and the new Deep Three is definitely the best mechanical depth gauge diver on the market. Oh, and the real sleeper of the lineup is the 42-millimeter Aquatimer Automatic, which also happens to be the most affordable.


Cartier Calibre de Cartier Diver
  Cartier Calibre de Cartier Diver
You’d have to be living under a rock to not notice Cartier’s rise to prominence in high watchmaking over the past few years, but the release of the brand’s first dive watch caught everyone by surprise at SIHH. The Calibre de Cartier Diver is based on the successful Calibre family, which already included a three-hander and an excellent in-house chronograph. The Diver isn’t just a fashion watch with a spinning bezel either – this is a real ISO 6425-compliant dive watch. Even if few really care about those specifications, and even fewer will be taking this one deep, the fact that Cartier made the effort to do a dive watch right is worth applauding. 
So how’s the watch itself? Size-wise, its 42-millimeter diameter is spot-on and the 11-millimeter height even better. The bezel, a dive watch’s most recognizable feature, works well and the rubber strap is long and supple. The use of Cartier’s excellent in-house MC1904 movement gets a thumbs-up. And aesthetically, it’s a watch that looks elegantly sporty and is easy to wear. I beg to differ with the date display and the small seconds. Also, the large Roman numerals seem oddly out of place on a dive watch. Then again, this is Cartier, and anything other than Romans would be out of place. Overall, a great first effort and one that is bound to be popular.


Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver White Ceramic
 
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver White Ceramic
The Royal Oak Offshore Diver is one of my favorite dive watches of the past five years. I took two of these beauties deep to review for HODINKEE – the stainless steel original and the forged carbon variant. Sure, the internal bezel is finicky and unusable underwater and the strap is a little too short for wear over anything but a thin dive skin, but I still love them. The Offshore design seems perfectly suited for a dive watch, with its angular lines and thick integrated strap. It doesn’t hurt that it houses one of the greatest automatic movements ever made. 
This year’s ROO Diver is white ceramic and I was surprised by how much I liked it. To be sure, you’re more likely to see it on the beaches of Miami than on any dive boats but it doesn’t lack for any tool watch chops. The super-hard white ceramic is everywhere, even on the crowns. Where there isn’t ceramic, there’s titanium, like on the caseback, which has a sapphire glass for admiring the gold rotor of the calibre 3120. The dial and internal timing ring are extremely dark blue and the dial retains the lovely Mega-Tapisserie decoration of the other ROO Divers. While I’d still take the steel one over any of the subsequent ROO Divers, this may be the first white watch that I’d actually wear.


Rolex Sea-Dweller 4000
 
Rolex Sea-Dweller 4000
Anticipating what new references Rolex will release each year is an exercise in speculation akin to guessing the college basketball Final Four. Everyone has a theory and a preference for what he’d like The Crown to introduce, but one watch everyone seemed to want was a new Sea-Dweller. Well, this year, Rolex didn’t disappoint. The Sea-Dweller 4000 rivaled the new Pepsi GMT-Master II for the revelation of the show at the Rolex booth, and in the end it's a far cooler watch.
When the Sea-Dweller was replaced in Rolex’s lineup by the DeepSea Sea-Dweller, many, myself included, were disappointed. The Sea-Dweller is a Rolex icon and the true essence of what Rolex does best. This new one, officially called the Sea-Dweller 4000, is done right. Left at 40 millimeters like its historical forebear, it is thicker than the current Submariner to bump up its water resistance to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) and has the signature Gas Escape Valve that Rolex pioneered with the first Sea-Dweller in 1967. Like that first watch, the new reference also eschews the date magnifier though it utilizes the same calibre 3135 as the Sub. Can the Rolex lineup sustain three dive watches, especially with the Sub and Sea-Dweller being the same diameter and so similar in appearance? Time will tell. The Sea-Dweller definitely has niche appeal and that’s exactly what I love about it. 


OMEGA Seamaster 300 Master Co-Axial
 
OMEGA Seamaster 300 Master Co-Axial
The other big dive watch news at Baselworld was the return of the Seamaster 300 to OMEGA’s line-up. I’ve long thought if OMEGA had kept building the 1960s SM300 with only minor improvements through the years, it would be as popular and as iconic as the Submariner is for Rolex. Instead, the Seamaster line took a different path, full of different references, case shapes, and names, and the sub-brand seemed to get watered down. Sure, the Planet Ocean captured some of the essence of the early SM300s, but the standard Seamaster reference always seemed lost in the shuffle. This new Seamaster 300 was, hands-down, my favorite dive watch of BaselWorld 2014. 
This is a heritage update done right, in much the same way Jaeger-LeCoultre has done the Deep Sea tribute pieces – great nostalgic designs done with modern materials and with a killer movement inside. It’s the best of the old with the best of the new. There’s the thin bezel with retro font from the original 1957 SM300, but done in matte ceramic. A near-perfect 41mm case and those broadarrow, vintage-lumed hands, also from the 50s original, are driven by none other than OMEGA’s co-axial calibre 8400, which has a 60-hour power reserve and is resistant to a ridiculous 15,000 Gauss of magnetism. OMEGA has been on a roll lately with its vintage-inspired pieces as well as its movement development, and this watch is the best of both. Sign me up.



Bremont Supermarine Terra Nova

 

Bremont’s Supermarine watches have been favorites of dive watch aficionados for years, with great lines , chronometer-spec movements, and build-quality that puts them squarely in the league of the big boys from Switzerland. I’ve dived with the original Supermarine 500 and my own Supermarine 2000 has accompanied me on many escapades, aquatic and otherwise; it’s my go-to adventure watch. Clearly, others feel the same – including British adventurer Ben Saunders. Saunders is a longtime Bremont fan and the brand asked him to wear a prototype of a new Supermarine on his record-setting trek to the South Pole and back this past winter (austral summer). Saunders had a couple of requests – a titanium case to cut down on weight, a GMT hand for tracking a second time zone, and in place of the dive timing bezel, one with compass bearings for navigation purposes. The result is the limited edition Supermarine Terra Nova.
The Terra Nova has the 43-millimeter diameter of the Supermarine 500 instead of the 45 millimeters from the S2000 but keeps the same Trip-Tick design, offset protected crown, and sapphire bezel of both. The 24-hour hand is a striking yellow and the dial is cleaner thanks to the absence of the day display seen on the other Supermarines. Saunders announced the new watch from a satellite-uplinked blog post from a tent in Antarctica, possibly the coolest and most legit way to launch a new dive watch I’ve ever seen.


Tudor Heritage Black Bay Midnight Blue
 
Tudor Heritage Black Bay Midnight Blue
A lot of people thought Tudor would release a blue dive watch at BaselWorld but most thought it would be a blue version of the Pelagos, as an echo of the blue Snowflake Submariners of the '70s. The blue version of the Heritage Black Bay was a surprise, and a welcome one. The original Black Bay is still one of the coolest retro-inspired watches around and will sell (affordably I might add) next to the new blue version.
The blue bezel and crown tube are subtle and catch light differently depending on how you look at it – sometimes it appears black, sometimes marine blue. It is more subtle and more versatile than the burgundy accents of the original Black Bay. The marker surrounds on the dial are not gold anymore but silver instead and the dial doesn’t have the faux-aged texture of the original. The watch still comes on the excellent steel bracelet or a distressed leather strap and both are supplied with a nylon one-piece strap. Though technically it’s not a substantive change from the original Black Bay, it’s one that make sense and is a nice alternative for someone who doesn’t want to go full-on retro.


Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Chronograph
 
Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Chronograph
Given that dive watches are largely vestigial in this age of digital dive computers, I guess it’s only fitting that most of the recent releases from the big brands take their design cues from historic references. Blancpain is a brand with a lot of dive watch heritage to pull from, having arguably invented the entire genre. Last year the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe made its debut, looking much like one of Blancpain’s 1950s watches. This year, the Bathyscaphe got a chronograph update and the new watch is a true tour-de-force diver. 
Most significantly, the movement in the Bathyscaphe Chrono is an in-house column wheel flyback chronograph with, get this, a 36,000 vph (5 Hz) frequency. High precision, flyback functionality and, oh yeah, it’s got a silicon hairspring for immunity from magnetism. Impressive stuff indeed, especially combined with the great 1950s-inspired design of the watch, now complete with pump pushers that are usable to the full 300-meter rated depth. The watch is available in matte black ceramic or brushed steel and, keeping with the current trends, comes with a NATO strap. When the movie rights to my first novel get sold, this is the watch I’m getting. Until then, a man can dream.

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 Posted: Thu May 15th, 2014 09:55 am
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Skipdawg
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Very nice across the board. Nice WIS eye candy.

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 Posted: Thu May 15th, 2014 02:41 pm
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mcwright
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The Tudor does it for me. ThumbsUp02.gif

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 Posted: Thu May 15th, 2014 04:30 pm
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joecb
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Love the Bremont Super Marine!!

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 Posted: Fri May 16th, 2014 12:05 am
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bigrustypig
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Surely you could guess what my eye and heart goes fordog smile.gif

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 Posted: Fri May 16th, 2014 05:36 pm
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exc-hulk
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Omega, Bremont and Tudor are killer watches !

Like the overall look of the Bremont and the GMT function.

The new Omega looks really vintage. Love the matte dial.

The blue bezel and the silver handset fits the Tudor very well. But the Tudor with red bezel and golden handset looks gorgeous as well. So I need both !
thumbsup.gif


The new Aquatimer line is not my thing. I do not know why, but it is not for me.
The old Aquatimer look so much better.

The Cartier looks like a cheap watch from a junk box. Terrible..
.no.gif

Last edited on Fri May 16th, 2014 05:38 pm by exc-hulk

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 Posted: Fri May 16th, 2014 11:40 pm
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oagaspar
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I placed an order for the Black Bay Blue today with the local AD...hope to have it soon!happy guy.gif

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 Posted: Sat May 17th, 2014 01:22 am
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exc-hulk
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Really good choice Oscar !thumbsup.gifthumbsup.gif

Looking forward to your pics.

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 Posted: Mon May 19th, 2014 06:36 am
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elemental
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that bremont, wow. I may have to go to the local AD and see it in person.

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