Good diver watch brands?

[CT Sean]

Too generic a question. Are you a watch guy (or girl)? do you care about automatic vs quartz movement? analog vs digital? Country of origin? what's your budget? It's pretty much the same as asking "What's a good value sedan?" everyone is going to tell you something different if no additional conditions are supplied.

Having said that
Seiko makes good dive watches in prices brackets from >100.00 for a Seiko 5, all the way up to several thousand for a Spring drive
Casio makes near bulletproof G-Shocks if you don't mind the styling
Citizen Has several good dive watches - mostly in the 200ish to 600ish price range. mostly Eco-drive (solar) quartz but they do have new automatic in a couple different colors
Oris makes excellent "value for dollar" Swiss dive watches around $2000.00
There's tons of microbrand dive watches that watch enthusiasts fawn over anywhere from 200 to 3000.
I'm sure someone somewhere will tell you an an AP Royal Oak Offshore Diver is worth every penny of it's 20k MSRP

 

[LandonL]

I see Momentum has, or used to have, a model called Deep 6 which is orange. Wonder if that watch has any connection to Deep 6, of Deep6 regulators. Would be a nice watch for Deep6 fans!

No connection to us. lol.

I have a Hamilton Swiss with an orange band that is a great dive watch. It matches our colors too, which is nice.

 

[hammet]

When you talk about luxury watches, forget about accuracy, sturdiness, etc. E.g. Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet are very fragile and even small bump could cause your visit to AD for repairs. Fully agree that similar accuracy could be seen even in cheap watches. Any quartz watch is going to be much more accurate that the best Rolex, PP, VC, AP, etc.

AP divers (royal oak offshore divers and chronos) are NOT fragile. Not to sound snobby, but I have one and use it and wear it quite often as a daily wear. Have even taken it diving. Never owned a patek nautilus or aquanaut but they are waterproof to 100M and I serious doubt anything diving related is gonna screw one up (aside from dropping a tank on it).

 

[gcarter]

Looking for a decent dive watch, that’s a good value. From my research so far, Citizen and Seiko make some, but how about the Momentum Torpedo watch? Anybody have any experience with Momentum as a dive watch? Thanks!

I have 2 Momentums, my son has one. Daily wear for me, never take it off, been on hundreds of dives and as deep as 150 with nary an issue. Solid.

My main watch is the Deep 6 Steel with the black face, sapphire crystal

Deep 6 Steel

 

[mnscuber]

I've used a number of dive watches for swimming and diving. For analog, I like a quartz/solar/ecodrive under $200. One that follows the basic dive watch iso spec... 200m, unidirectional bezel, etc. I like the bezels that have ticks for every minute, not just for 0-15 or 0-20. I second the idea of a watch that allows a zulu/nato band - that adds a lot of flexibility. However, for day-to-day wear, I like the speed and water-inertness of a metal bracelet.

My go-to analog watch is an older quartz Bulova Marine Star (which I believe has a Citizen movement). The watch I've switched to for most diving (as a backup bottom timer) is a G-Shock DW-5600.

This site has a lot of info:
https://forums.watchuseek.com/f74/

 

[Doctor Rig]

Where are the OLED dive watches, like the Apple Watch? We see OLED in high end computers but not watches. Anybody seen any?

 

[Jcp2]

Garmin Descent is the closest thing to a Apple dive watch equivalent. It’s also $1000 for the regular version, a bit more for the titanium one.

 

[scrane]

I don't understand the confusion between a dive watch and a dive computer.

 

[Stoo]

I have a Tag-Heuer for show. A Timex digital for actually wearing in the water. Both are good, but very different price points.

 

[Doctor Rig]

I don't understand the confusion between a dive watch and a dive computer.

Confusion? No confusion that I understand. Both have the advantages and costs. Dive watch can be worn every day, is easily seen and can be used for diving for basic timing. A Computer can’t be worn as a daily watch (to big), visibility varies depending on display, and used as a dive manager, lots of features.

The OLED dive watch I inquired about, would be easily visible in all types of situations, due to it’s clarity and display and even have an analogue watch display, just as the Apple Watch does. The OLED watch could have minimalistic features like dive analogue dive watches today, or ramped up to contain all type of features, but the complexities of expanded features would make that watch more like full featured Dive computers today which is higher in cost and larger in size.

I expect OLED dive watch existence is inevitable, but when?