The Tissot Sea-Touch is a beautiful divers' watch, complete with a host of useful features. Like its other T-Touch counterparts, the Sea-Touch has managed to retain a clean dial, with the hour/minute hands almost magically performing functions usually assigned to sub-dials and additional needles. It could, however, have been a real work of art if the hour/minute hands had been designed more aesthetically, rather than the stern 'road sign' arrows that they seem to be.
Sea-Touch dive functions including dive depth, ascent rate and elapsed time, are the three basic ones that will do for any recreational scuba diver. The auto-actuation of the dive mode on contact with water below 5 ft, (and auto-deactivation 5 min after surfacing) is a also a great feature. The dive log book records all the basic dive data for later recall. All put together, it is more than a regular divers' watch (hence more pricey too) and, is likely to find favour with those who think dive computers are too geeky.
Compared to the first generation T-Touch watch, this one has several improvements including dual time, an LCD backlight and excellent lume that would be visible at the murkiest depths. The compass has got a useful fix, as it can be recalibrated if it gets magnetised and goes erratic. The 200 meter water resistance (incorrectly rated as 100m on the Tissot website) and double-sealed rubberised buttons give it a true diver capability.
Amongst the few depth gauge dive watches, the competition seems to come mainly from Citizen Aqualand. Others like Panerai Submersible Depth Gauge, Jaeger-LeCoultre Diving Geographic and IWC Schaffhausen Deep Two belong to an altogether different luxury league.
The Sea-Touch seems like a great watch, but its true underwater potential needs to be reviewed in earnest by someone who has fathomed it thoroughly in the 'deep'. Depth gauge accuracy, dive mode autoactivation/deactivation and bezel lume durability are items that need to be particularly evaluated in earnest, before the watch can be given a diver's thumbs up.
I can only think of one shortcoming: the watch does not have a standard countdown timer for terrestrial use, though it has 'elapsed dive time' for the dive mode. For the same reason, it does not have a rotating 60-min bezel -- which shall be missed by the uncomplicated folks' who used it as an egg-boiler or a parking meter timer!
