Best Dive Watches – 12 of our Favourites
The most important question to ask when buying a luxury dive watch is not “What are the best dive watches?”
But rather,
“What do I need my dive watch to do?”
Professional divers will need a minimum of 200m water resistance, an ISO 6425 Certification, strong lume on a contrasting dial and an unidirectional bezel for tracking dive time. This comes at a price but if you’re heading to the Mariana Trench, then the investment is worth every penny.
However, if you just like the style of a dive watch and you want it to tell the time, you will find much wider and more affordable options available.
Before we talk about our favourite dive watches, let me just pause to explain water resistancy in luxury watches. It’s important to know and might just save you a lot of money.
Water resistance in watches refers to the watch’s ability to withstand exposure to water without letting it seep inside and damage the internal components. However, ‘water-resistant’ doesn’t mean ‘waterproof’. No watch is 100% waterproof.
The depth rating of any watch indicates how much pressure it can handle, often measured in Meters (m), Atmospheres (ATM), or Bar.
A Guide to Water Resistance Ratings:
- 30m (3 ATM / 3 Bar) – Splash Resistant:
- What It Can Handle: Light rain, handwashing
- What to Avoid: Swimming, showering, immersion
- 50m (5 ATM / 5 Bar) – Light Swimming:
- What It Can Handle: Showering, shallow swimming
- What to Avoid: Diving, snorkeling
- 100m (10 ATM / 10 Bar) – Recreational Swimming:
- What It Can Handle: Snorkeling, swimming, water sports
- What to Avoid: Deep diving
- 200m (20 ATM / 20 Bar) – Professional Marine Activity:
- What It Can Handle: Scuba diving, high-impact water sports
- What to Avoid: Saturation diving
- 300m+ (30 ATM / 30 Bar) – Professional Dive Watches:
- What It Can Handle: Deep-sea diving, saturation diving (if equipped with a helium escape valve)
- What to Avoid: Honestly, nothing unless you’re going beyond human limits
As you can see, for most non-professional divers, a luxury dive watch is more about fashion than function. However, you still need to be careful if you decide to wear your luxury dive watch to the pool or beach. Read our insight ‘Can I Go Swimming In My Luxury Watch’ for more guidance.
Here at Oakleigh Watches, we absolutely love our dive watches and stock several pre owned options across the main luxury brands – Rolex, Omega, JLC, Tudor, IWC, Panerai, Oris and Breitling. For the purpose of this article, we thought it might be helpful to highlight our 12 Best Dive Watches across 3 pre owned prices brackets;
- Under £4,000
- Mid Range – £4,000 -£10,000
- Over £10,000
Let’s ‘dive’ right in – I couldn’t resist it … sorry!
Best Dive Watches Under £4,000
Breitling Superocean Heritage Chronograph 44
This Breitling Superocean Heritage Chronograph 44 is a superb example of a 44mm stainless steel dive chronograph from one of the most famous watch manufacturers in the world. It uses a fully COSC-certified self-winding Swiss Breitling Calibre 13 movement. Some Breitling SuperOceans are water resistant to 1,000 metres, 700 metres more than a Rolex Submariner.
You can get a smaller, 42mm model with 500 metres water resistance – still great for professional divers!
Shop Pre Owned Breitling Watches
Oris Depth Gauge
The Oris Aquis Depth Gauge is very purposeful automatic dive watch with a 46mm stainless steel case and bracelet. The subtle black red and yellow colours work really well together. The built in depth gauge is a really cool feature that works using a hole in the outer crystal at 12 o’ clock. It’s a genuine alternative to the Rolex Deep Sea at a fraction of the price.
IWC Aquatimer
This IWC Aquatimer Automatic 2000 is a very cool diver’s watch from IWC Schaffhausen, one of the most famous of all the Swiss watch manufacturers. Powered by the in house 30110 automatic movement, the stainless steel case houses a Superluminova dial with baton indexes and with the double marker at 12 o’clock and unidirectional ceramic bezel. This IWC looks every bit the functional diver and makes a classy alternative to other divers on the market.
Best Dive Watches £4,000 – £10,000
Omega Seamaster Diver 300M
This is the all new 42mm green wave version of the Omega Seamaster Diver 300M that Pierce Brosnan wore in his Bond movies, before all the ‘007’ bits were added on and to be honest is probably the better for it.
The skeleton hands and raised indexes are rhodium-plated and are filled with white Super-LumiNova, while the helium escape valve has been given a conical design. Driven by the OMEGA Master Chronometer Calibre 8800, which can be seen through the sapphire-crystal on the wave-edged caseback.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Diving Chronograph
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Diving Chronograph is a superb JLC diver. It has a powerfully proportioned 44mm stainless steel case with the triple crowns on the right hand side and wears slightly larger than you think it would. It comes on a purposeful JLC rubber strap with a stainless steel JLC buckle.
The black arrow baton and Arabic dial is perfect and looks superb against the white lumed hands. The flashes of pale blue set everything off perfectly and are uniquely JLC.
Another classy diver that’s just a little bit different
Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600m
The current Omega range still features three sizes of Planet Ocean but no 42mm. There’s 39mm, a 43.5mm and a 45.5mm but nothing in between and this is making the discontinued 42mm an appreciating asset.
Although it’s been around since the mid 1940’s mainly as a dress watch, in the 1990’s the Seamaster name was given to a revamped series of sports watches including the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean. This relaunched the model to a whole new market of dive watch fans and it quickly became a classic.
Panerai Luminor Marina
The Panerai Luminor Marina PAM00005 is a classic example of a large, straightforward, manual winding Panerai dive watch. If you like limited editions – only 1500 were ever made.
This watch has a classic combination of a black dial and white hour plots and hands. The black leather strap complements the 44mm stainless steel case really nicely and it can easily be swapped out for a rubber one if the occasion requires it.
Best Dive Watches Over £10,000
Rolex 116660 DeepSea James Cameron
The Rolex 116660 Deepsea is amongst the ultra-resistant divers’ watches engineered by Rolex for deep-sea exploration.
First made in 2008, its 44mm case is 17.7mm thick and it has a 5.5mm crystal – for comparison, the current Submariner is 41mm and just 12mm thick. That makes the DSSD the biggest Rolex wristwatch ever with a depth rating of 3900 meters. Like the Omega PloProf, it was designed with few concessions to daily life although of course most of them never see a scuba tank.
Tudor Snowflake Submariner
If you like your dive watches with a heavy dose of both history AND rarity, then the Tudor Snowflake Submariner could well be for you.
Made from the 1970’s to the 1990’s, these stunning watches were made very much in the style of the Rolex Submariners from the 1960’s. The best ones had an interesting twist that Rolex never dared consider – a matching dial and bezel insert in a rich shade of Royal Blue.
Very rare in good original condition and even scarcer as a Full Set, this is a dive watch for the connoisseur collector.
Rolex Sea Dweller 16600
The Rolex Sea-Dweller was launched in 1969 and was the result of years of collaboration between Rolex and real-world diving professionals, who worked together to create the ultimate diving watch.
The 16600 version was made from 1988 and had several practical improvements over the previous models.
The sapphire crystal and new and improved helium escape valve design extended the depth rating to an impressive 4000 feet. These elegant watches were engineered and built for just twenty years before being discontinued in 2008. Whether you’re an experienced diver, a passionate recreational swimmer, or just a lover and collector of watches, the Rolex 16600 Sea-Dweller is a pioneering dive watch.
Omega Seamster PloProf Ti
The Omega Seamaster PloProf has a long history as Omega’s most water-resistant divers’ watch with a depth rating of 4000 feet. This particular version has Omega’s Master Chronometer Calibre 8912 renowned for its anti-magnetic resistance, superlative timekeeping, and precision.
The titanium case has an orange ceramic bezel ring with Super-LumiNova numerals, triangle and scale for increased visibility. The polished titanium “sharkproof” mesh bracelet adds to the clearly signalled purpose of this watch.
Always a brave choice, the titanium case and bracelet of the latest versions have made them much more wearable.
Rolex Submariner Date 16610
When people think of the classic Submariner, the 16610 often comes to mind. Produced from 1988 through 2010, after which it was replaced by the 116610. For fans of rare beauties, the earlier models were made with a Luminova dial and hands, drilled lugs, and folded end links.
It is a highly capable dive watch, rated for 300m water resistance and has a screw-down crown, threaded case back, a flat sapphire crystal, and a 120-click, unidirectional bezel.
So there we have it, 12 of the best dive watches that we stock regularly in our online store. These are the brands and models that have been designed to withstand great depths but also the test of time in the world of pre owned luxury watches.
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