TimeTechTalk.com Home

TimeTechTalk.com > Time Tech Talk > Time Talk > Epic 6 Watch Diver Comparison Part 1

Welcome to 3T! Please take the time to register and join in on the friendly,knowledgeable watch talk.Please note that not all registrations will receive an immediate activation e-mail.Those who do not receive an immediate notification will be activated manually within 48hrs. by an admin. without an e-mail activation url sent to you,you may then sign in using your username and password,if you feel there is a problem please e-mail us at timetechtalk@hotmail.com and include your name and username and we activate your account.Thank You!

 Moderated by: 3T
New Topic Reply Printer Friendly
Epic 6 Watch Diver Comparison Part 1  Rating:  Rating
AuthorPost
 Posted: Mon Jun 2nd, 2014 10:06 am
  PM Quote Reply
1st Post
oagaspar
Site Founder


Joined: Sun Sep 4th, 2005
Location: Akron, USA
Posts: 28116
Status: 
Offline
very good review of 6 dive watches from our friends at Timeless Luxury watches:Click on the pics for a full size view!ThumbsUp02.gif

Epic 6 Watch Diver Comparison Part 1



Let’s introduce the competitors, starting from left to right.



Nomos Ahoi If watches played a theme song when you put it on, the Nomos Ahoi would probably play Margaritaville. Its cool accents seem inherently beach-friendly. It lacks the movable bezels of all of its competition, but brings a display back, 200 meter water resistance and is perhaps the easiest to wear of all these watches with its light and ultra-thin strap.



The Nomos is also one of only two watches here with an in house movement (along with GS). That’s the beautiful Epsilon automatic.



Jeanrichard Aquascope Quite the opposite of the Nomos, the Aquascope has hardcore diver styling written all over, yet done with that unique JR flair that I find extremely attractive. The case combines DLC elements and multi-section assembly. Its tuna-esque flat bezel is also quite striking. But what I love most of all about this particular aquascope is that beautiful brushed blue dial.



Carl F. Bucherer Scubatec Easily one of the most hardcore diverse in the competition, the Scubatec brings a super high water resistance rating, a helium escape valve, and their chunky but beautiful bracelet. It’s got quite a nice dial as well, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s one of two chronometers here.



Grand Seiko SBGA029 Our only Japanese guest is bringing a gun to a knife fight as it features Grand Seiko’s super accurate 9R65 spring drive. It is potentially the most traditional of all the divers listed and is exquisitely made.



Bremont Supermarine Bremont’s Supermarine is both unique yet classic, and it’s the only watch here that brings a super tough (and luminescent) sapphire bezel. It’s also the only watch of the set that has a hardened case. And it’s also the second chronometer of the comparison.



Muhle Glashutte Marinus The Marinus is the only other watch besides the Nomos that features an exhibition back. It’s also the only watch with a modified ETA movement, using Muhle’s in house woodpecker fine regulation system, which should be somewhat more resistant to deregulation due to shock than the Etachron system.



it has an extremely bold look to it, yet is never cluttered or over the top.



So we’ve basically we’ve got two German, two Swiss, a Japanese and an English watch—so we’re representing four countries and two continents.



Clearly the Swiss aren’t messin
g around—both of these divers are big, bold and feature very high water resistance ratings.



Our German duo is much more diverse, with both an old school diver and a very unconventional, very modern incarnation. Interestingly, they both feature unique movements (one modified, one in house) and are the only two watches in the comparison with display casebacks.



And lastly we have our unaligned English and Japanese watches. What makes these two unique is that they’re the both very accurate. The Supermarine, like all Bremonts, is a Swiss chronometer, and the Grand Seiko has a spring drive, one of the most accurate movements in the world. With only one other chronometer in the comparison, the Scubatec, this is distinguished company.



The Face Our watches appeal to a wide variety of aesthetic tastes, from the conservative Grand Seiko to the modern Ahoi. Let’s take a closer look at the dials and hands to get an idea of what sets them apart.



Nomos does what they do best: modern simplicity. Here they use the silver plated dial that is so prevalent in Glashutte watchmaking, but unlike their dressy pieces, a red seconds hand is combined with very light blue lume that colors the hands.



The contrast of these colors against the white dial gives it a very relaxed look—this is a watch that isn’t afraid of the water, as its 200 meter rating would suggest, but it’s also got nothing to prove either. No big water resistance writing can be found on the dial, nor can you see that the watch is an automatic, so the dial is as clean as any other Nomos.



Yet, I hesitate to use the word austere, a word I normally associate with Nomos. The Ahoi is ever so subtly playful. The other substantial difference between the Ahoi and other Nomos watches is that lume is used more extensively—the hands have a full strip of lume and the hour markers have lume as well. There are other luminescent Nomos watches, but other than maybe the Club Dunkel, this is their brightest piece.
 


Thin baton hands and a lack of date (although one is optional) actually make this one of the most legible dials of the group, if not the most. Nomos is definitely blazing their own path with this one.



Bremont’s dial is exquisite and easily one of the prettiest here. The dialwork is very fine and complex with applied markers and a nice day-date window. Most divers, like Omega’s Planet Ocean, for instance, eschew borders around the date, but I think that a border both increases legibility (tells you where to look) and makes the dial look better thought out
.


Teak lines adorn the center of the dial with bold applied indices surrounding the perimeter.



The application of the lume is as voluminous as it is precise.



I also quite like the hands, which feel unique but not over the top. Their highly contrasting shapes at the tip makes them easy to distinguish in low light.



CFB’s dial work is also excellent, and is perhaps the most dynamic of the bunch. In indirect light, it appears that the motif is black scales throughout, but in direct light, brown halos can be seen, as if it were a sunburst texture.



The hands and hour markers are also very bold and well finished, with blue lume that appears white when not in use.



The applied markers are huge and befitting a hardcore watch such as this.



Seiko’s dial and hands are all business. It’s completely matte black, breaking with the tradition of highly dynamic sunburst dials from the company, but it’s a design aesthetic that certainly meshes with the traditional diver image it wants to achieve.



The GS is the only four hander here, adding a power reserve subdial. Interestingly, the hour and minute hands are brushed titanium, which gives them a very dark coloration.



The indices are applied (naturally) and the amount of lume is clearly voluminous.



While the outline is a nice touch and does direct your attention to the date, I would have preferred a frame like in most other GSes. On other watches that lack a frame here, like the Scubatec, it’s nicely beveled—so I think GS is missing an opportunity to create a more polished look.



Muhle’s dial is both bold and characteristically German, with virtually no unnecessary touches. It’s extraordinarily legible, probably the easiest to read of the bunch along with the Ahoi, and although the dial is printed, the Arabic numerals are so thick that it still has much of a 3D effect about it.



I also appreciate the date subdial, which while borderless, is nicely beveled and looks well thought out.



While the hands are super legible, you can see how much Muhle left on the table regarding the amount of lume deployed. I feel they missed an opportunity there.
 


The Aquascope’s dial and hands are some of my favorite of this competition. The vertically brushed dial is extremely legible, but it isn’t flat or plain like Grand Seiko’s. The hands are bold and almost all of their area is used for lume.



Again, the date window lack
s a
 frame, but like the Muhle, it has nicely beveled edges that don’t make it look like an afterthought. I also love the red tipped seconds hand which contrasts really well with the blue dial and strap. It’s a very colorful watch, but not overpowering.



So which watch has the best face? That’s a really tough question, but I feel like it’s Jeanrichard’s Aquascope. The blue brushed dial, the bold, fully lumed hands, the red tipped seconds—it all comes together to create a design that is unmistakably serious yet never boring. If I had to pick a runner up, it’d be either Bremont or CFB. It’s not that the others' quality was inferior—they weren’t, but just in terms of impressing me, their dialwork was a cut above.



The Bezel One important part of a good diver watch is the look and feel of the movable bezel. Except, apparently, if you’re Nomos, in which case nothing could be less important than having a rotating bezel.



Here are all of the watches in order of resistance in the bezel (the left watches requiring the least effort, the right requiring the most).



Nomos decided its only contribution to the life aquatic didn’t need a rotating bezel.



Jeanrichard gives me mixed feelings about their bezel. On the one hand, I think it’s the best looking bezel here, but on the other, it has by far the lowest effort. This would be the only bezel here that I might be concerned with moving it accidentally. There is also a slight bit of play in the bezel. This is not a defect, JR intentionally designs their Aquascope bezels to require very little effort. Tastes differ, but I prefer the bezel to be a little stiffer.



The Scubatec gets light bezel effort right. Its intensely bold bezel is both easy to grip and to move, but it never feels like it could be accidentally knocked around. It also has virtually no play. I like its thick numbers and blue ceramic first quarter. It may be the most evocative of the bunch.



Grand Seiko’s bezel is exactly what you’d expect from the company—ultra-precise and traditional. The action splits the difference between the easiest and hardest to move bezels, making this a “moderate” resistance bezel. It was the smoothest of the test by some margin but still had a very solid “click” into each position with no play.



I would also classify Bremont’s bezel as being of the moderate-effort variety. While it wasn’t quite as smooth as Seiko’s, it did actually feel slightly more precise. Furthermore, it’s the only bezel in the comparison made from sapphire crystal (and lumed throughout) making it both beautiful and tough.



And lastly we have Muhle, by far the highest resistance bezel action of the lot. Perhaps related to the high effort, the bezel is fairly hard to grip as well. Otherwise, the bezel looks quite traditional, along the lines of Grand Seiko’s, but has a sort of 3 dimensional shape to it, as it bulges out of the watch.



So which of our watches had the best bezel? Well, it’s an inherently subjective question, but for me, there are a few favorites. For looks, I think JR’s got it just right. For the actual feel, I’d say Grand Seiko does it best. But in terms of the overall package, I would give it to Bremont. It’s the bezel with no weaknesses—it feels great, it looks great, it’s very tough and it’s lumed. So for this category, the winner is Bremont.



The Lume

 

One of the coolest aspects about dive watches is their massive use of lume. Here, in order, is the lume of the Nomos, JR, CFB, Seiko, Bremont and Muhle.

The Ahoi’s lume was faintest by a wide margin. It’s adequate to use for seeing your watch at night, but I don’t think it would be particularly helpful underwater.



Jeanrichard, however, is excellent. The long hour markers and the easily distinguishable double 12:00 markers, as well as hands that are pretty much made of lume make this highly legible even late at night.



The Scubatec was extremely bright and legible, and the difference between the hour and minute hands is very clear. I am very impressed with the Scubatec’s lume.



Grand Seiko’s lume was also excellent, with perhaps the most distinguished 12:00 and very unique hands that are unlikely to get confused. I also like the lollipop seconds hand because its circular allocation of lume is very unlikely to get mixed up with the other hands.



Bremont’s lume was very good, but not the brightest. I was particularly hoping the bezel would be brighter than it was. Still, it was very legible and certainly worth showing off—just not the best of this test.



Muhle’s lume was a mixed bag for me. Its blue lume was very bright, but I feel that Muhle was simply too stingy with it. The result is a watch that is certainly visible, but takes a little time to figure out where the hands are pointing relative to the pip at 12:00. If you’ve used the rotating bezel, then you won’t even have that, and this will be less than precise to say the least.



To me, the winner here is clear: the CFB Scubatec had both the brightest and among the most legible lume. The difference between it and the nearest competitors was surprisingly obvious. The runner ups would definitely be the GS and JR. I compared them both side by side but was unable to determine which one had better lume.



The Case One of the most distinguishing design features of a diver is the case. Diver cases are big, tough and extremely pressure resistant with screw down crowns. Sometimes they even feature a helium escape valve. And, on very rare occasion, they even have a display caseback.



One such rare watch is the Nomos Ahoi. Here its beautiful in house movement is on full display despite a 200 meter WR rating. Also noteworthy are the crown guards, a feature unique to the Ahoi among Nomos’ lineup.



The screw down
 crown, another rare Nomos feature, looks great, but can be hard to grab and to wind due to its diminutive size.



Otherwise, it’s simply the dressiest, most subtle case of the group. It’s sized very well for daily wear at 40mm.



The Aquascope’s case is anything but subtle.



Like the Terrascope, the case is actually several interlocking elements that allow JR to have much more control over the design and create a huge variety of variants. In this case, there’s actually a blue PVD coating hidden in the case between the bezel and lugs. It looks very cool and due to its position is unlikely to be scratched.
 


JR’s crown was large enough and smooth to screw down, as well as easy to find the thread. It allows for a 300 meter water resistance rating.



The caseback, like most of the watches here, offers tantalizingly little visual cues as to the movement inside. Still, the bold JR logo is a nice touch and reminds me a bit of GS’ lion.



The Scubatec’s case is one of the most hardcore of them all. It’s extremely large and edgy, with huge protruding crown guards.



The beefy case comes with some other perks as well, like 500 meters of water resistance, which ties with Bremont for best of the comparison. Like the Bremont, it also has a helium escape valve.



The screw down crown has a great matching blue stripe on it. It’s also one of the easiest to screw down and has extremely smooth winding.



The Scubatec definitely has one of the most interesting of the solid casebacks with two manta rays emblazoned on the back. Depending on how you look at it, it kind of looks like plesiosaurs.



The Grand Seiko’s case, aside from its bezel, is pretty much standard GS fare—and that’s a good thing. There is no drop in polishing quality from any of Grand Seiko’s dress watches to their diver.



Interestingly, the Grand Seiko ties with Nomos for lowest water resistance, at 200 meters. In the real world, this is far more than enough, but it is intriguing that the only two watches with in house movements also have the lowest water resistance.



The SBGA029 has my favorite steel caseback of the group. It’s all business and very low key. The traditional Grand Seiko medallion, which has adorned Grand Seikos since the ‘60s, is a nice touch.
 


An interesting side note about the GS: the bezel and crown were designed to make replacement very easy.



Bremont’s case is superb and is one of only two watches here with a helium escape valve. It, of course, uses Bremont’s famous Triptick construction:



This allows Bremont to have more flexibility in designing a case. In this instance, they’ve opted for a black DLC coated barrel. Unlike most Bremonts, the hardened bezel has not been used in favor of an even harder sapphire. The rest of the watch, however, has been treated with Bremont’s B-EBE2000 technology and hardened so it's very scratch resistant.



The Bremont also has the coolest crown guard here, with a nice propeller motif for the crown. It ties with CFB for the best water rating here at 500 meters.



The motif on the back is a surprisingly geometric pontoon plane, keeping with Bremont’s tradition of aviation even in a dive watch. Also worth noting is that the Bremont has an anti-shock movement mount to protect it from bumps.



The Marinus is the only other watch besides Nomos that lets us view the movement. But unlike the Nomos, it offers a more robust 300 meter water resistance rating, meaning that there were no compromises in this design.



The off-centered crown is very large and easy to grip. I dare say it’s one of the best in the comparison.



Coming in at 44mm, this is not a small watch, but it is interestingly thin at just 12.2mm.



So which watch had the best case? In my opinion, it has to be the Bremont. It looks great, it’s hardened, it has a very high WR rating, an He escape valve—it checks pretty much every box. Second place would probably be the Aquascope for me, for looks alone, or GS for its excellent case back. All that said, it’s a shame to hide Grand Seiko’s beautiful movement being that steel. They could take a page from Omega’s playbook and go with sapphire in the next generation of this watch.



Continued in Part 2: http://timelessluxwatches.com/reviews/epic-6-watch-diver-comparison-part-2

Back To Top PM Quote Reply  

 Posted: Thu Jun 5th, 2014 11:30 am
  PM Quote Reply
2nd Post
Skipdawg
3T WIS


Joined: Thu Mar 29th, 2007
Location: Washington USA
Posts: 14965
Status: 
Offline
That is very cool!

cool.gif

Back To Top PM Quote Reply

 Posted: Thu Jun 5th, 2014 09:26 pm
  PM Quote Reply
3rd Post
stew77
Admin


Joined: Thu Mar 26th, 2009
Location: Colorado USA
Posts: 10249
Status: 
Offline
The Nomos Ahoi seems like the odd man out given its very classic/dressy lines and style, but it is 200m WR and I will admit to considering a watch without a moving bezel a proper dive watch (how many historic Anonimos do I have anyway?!subtlelaugh.gif).

The Grand Seiko, the Bremont, and the Muhle Glashutte are probably by favs within the more classic diver category (without seeing them in person), but I will admit to diggin' that odd man Nomos Ahoi for the ultra-classic/dressy lines if I want something just a bit more "formal"...

Cool comparison...cool.gif

Back To Top PM Quote Reply  

 Posted: Thu Jun 5th, 2014 11:47 pm
  PM Quote Reply
4th Post
oagaspar
Site Founder


Joined: Sun Sep 4th, 2005
Location: Akron, USA
Posts: 28116
Status: 
Offline
The Nomos stuck out for me too...not easily found from my search for one either! found one on the Bay from Japan at $4500.!mistake.gif

Back To Top PM Quote Reply

Current time is 06:19 am  
TimeTechTalk.com > Time Tech Talk > Time Talk > Epic 6 Watch Diver Comparison Part 1 Top



Lead Theme By: Di @ UltraBB
UltraBB 1.17 Copyright © 2007-2012 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0974 seconds (36% database + 64% PHP). 26 queries executed.