Diving watches

[Dody]

Personally i feel people are a little overly preoccupied with accuracy.....ive heard people calling a watch
"garbage" because it was fast by +10sec/day.

none of us are doing anything that requires us to be accurate to within 10 seconds.......and even if we compound that out to a month.....thats still only 5 minutes a month....

considering what an engineering marvel mechanical wrist watches are.....we have dozens of tiny gears....being subjected to non-trivial forces.....and with very little maintenance.....that fact that we can get watches that are +10 seconds a day...for $100 is truly incredible.

and the fact that we have watches that can do +2 seconds a day at all is utterly amazing from an engineering perspective.

I do. Laugh out of it if you want but I have meetings where people notice if I am only one second late. And it will instantly make it to the social media. This the f... 21 st century.

 

[greeniguana]

I do underwater surveys where I need to sync photo times to GPS points. My Casio syncs itself to WWV every day, so it is always within a few seconds of my GPS unit. And I don't have to do anything to make that happen.

 

[Hoag]

none of us are doing anything that requires us to be accurate to within 10 seconds.......and even if we compound that out to a month.....thats still only 5 minutes a month....

I wholeheartedly disagree. While it might be fair to say that "many" or perhaps even "most" people don't require that type of accuracy, some definitely do. I spent most of my career doing things that were timed to the second. For much of that, to ensure accuracy, the things I did had to be sync'd to either the Atomic Clock at the Naval Observatory In DC or to the GPS time standard.

 

[jale]

oooh i really like that setup.....im thinking i may need to copy that!

you can even change the depth module

 

[homerdoc]

I own a submariner, my wife got it for me 15 or so years ago. I stopped diving with it a long time ago, really specifically when a barracuda was eyeing my wrist down in aruba. Shiny thing on my wrist attracted him I guess. Same reason I tell my wife and daughter not dive with shiny earrings.

I do love it for camping/hiking and it goes with me everytime I do something like that.

As an investment, took at look at what it is worth and it is about 2.5 times more than she paid for it, however, microsoft stock we bought back then is way better than that!

I did have a random question because there seem to be a couple rolex guys posting. I have never had it serviced. Is that really necessary, and how much does it cost?

 

[jale]

What about a Swatch giving time AND depth
I don't understand why it is impossible to find an affordable watch like this Swatch anymore...

 

[Silt Life]

I own a submariner, my wife got it for me 15 or so years ago. I stopped diving with it a long time ago, really specifically when a barracuda was eyeing my wrist down in aruba. Shiny thing on my wrist attracted him I guess. Same reason I tell my wife and daughter not dive with shiny earrings.

I do love it for camping/hiking and it goes with me everytime I do something like that.

As an investment, took at look at what it is worth and it is about 2.5 times more than she paid for it, however, microsoft stock we bought back then is way better than that!

I did have a random question because there seem to be a couple rolex guys posting. I have never had it serviced. Is that really necessary, and how much does it cost?

Last time I had my wife's Rolex serviced it was $914.00.
Unfortunately, I am unable to keep any watch running for longer that a few days.... They just don't like me.

 

[davehicks]

I just had my Omega Speedmaster Professional serviced a few months ago. It was about $700 which included a full polish and replating the band and case. It was keeping really bad time (like -2 minutes per day) and is much better now, perhaps within seconds per day.

 

[Subcooled]

Now, for me, there is no real added value in having a diving watch compared to a diving computer. Even less when you wear two diving computers. Am I wrong?

• You told us that "I am also a big fan of watches and collect them" but that watch is way too expensive for actual diving. If you can afford it and you want to collect it, then fine, but it is very expensive and not a good investment as a tool.
  
• A dive watch can be worn as a part of a historical diving kit, if you are into that stuff (historical diving is great fun), but that would not be a modern Rolex, would it?
  
• A minimalist might wear a watch and an analog depth gauge only (the Oceanic one I love). Know your tables. You might want to spend 5% to 10% of the price of that Rolex on a nice and wearable used dive watch.
  
• The only other use of a dive watch, that I can think of, would be in sump diving where you might have a call out time and a computer that does not display time of day (mine does not). No one brings a Rolex into those places.

I do own an analog dive watch - a cheap one branded Apeks (the 500m version). I've tried to use it in bad visibility, but it is a bit small (twice as big would be nice) and the luma dot on the rotating bezel is, unfortunately, way too small to be visible where it really matters. Hence, as a tool it sucks and for everyday use it is too heavy. I absolutely hate when something is marketed as a dive watch and then you can't use it for actual diving.

For normal diving, you will want a large and readable screen.

 

[Subcooled]

Oh, the luma dot on the Rolex Submariner seems to be as small as on my $150 Apeks.
Can be gorgeous on the shore, though.