Are Expensive Dive Watches Actually Better?

Indexed: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]I've got eight dive watches in front of me. Five of which I'm going to cover, three of which are not here. I'm also going to cover. They range from $200 all the way up to almost $20,000. And the question I want to answer today is simply, what does more money actually buy in a dive watch? Now, the headline conclusion you'll meet at the end is the gap between a $200 dive watch and say a $10,000 dive watch or a $20,000 dive watch is on a curve. It's not a linear thing. And so, the curve sort of flips back and forth, too, on itself depending on where you're at. So, I'm going to defend what the best point is on that curve for you to purchase at, what I think you should probably look at depending on obviously your range and what you're comfortable with, how much money you want to spend, and where some value lies that, you know, you kind of have to make some caveats, and some other areas where you're buying something else instead. Now, quick note, I'm not covering every dive watch I've ever talked about in every price bracket. If you want to see all of the most recent updates, I've got a Tudor Black Bay 58 video coming up. I did a Timex Marine M1A, which is a $1,000 Timex video that I did recently. There are other watches on this whole curve.

[00:01:07]This is not a comprehensive buyer's guide. I don't have enough time to cover all that stuff, but we'll go through what we can here. Now, the first tier here is what I would consider probably the lowest price dive watch you're probably going to purchase. Now, there is a caveat. You could buy an Invicta.

[00:01:20]I've covered them before. Most people talk about them like crazy, and technically a Casio G-Shock is a true dive watch, 200 m water resistant. That is a better dive watch than most of these, but let's be fair, you're buying a dive watch for its aesthetic, you're buying it for its, you know, cool factor and look, and a G-Shock doesn't have the same look as a standard dive watch. So, we're going to focus on dive watch looking watches. Now, the first thing here on the $200 range that I want to focus on, I'm not going to cover the Orient Kamasu, which I recently did a review on, or the SKX007, which I also did a review on recently, because while they are great watches, I don't think they epitomize the true like buyer within $200 price range. When I think of someone who's going to buy a watch, a dive watch for 200 bucks, I think of someone who specs first. Doesn't care as much about, you know, whether or not they're going to have a brand name that they know forever, and maybe one that is willing to do some copyright infringement. And that would be a brand like Chronos. Now, Chronos here, this is essentially a Rolex Submariner dupe with a different name on it. It says Chronos on the dial as opposed to Submariner, and I could put them next to one another. I did a separate video actually comparing these two, this Chronos to the sub here. There are a lot of things you're buying here for almost 200 200-ish dollars. Now, I did purchase this. I think I purchased I have purchased every single watch I'm going to talk about here with the exception of this Baltic. When I mention that a little bit later, glide lock on-the-fly adjustment here in the clasp, you're getting, you know, the oyster look, you're getting decent finishing on here, you're getting a movement that works.

[00:02:54]You know, that it is pretty reliable.

[00:02:56]You've got a ceramic bezel insert, screw-down crown. You've got a lot of really nice refinements in a watch like this for that $200 range. And this is why I say value spikes. It also depends on where you place your value. Do you place it in brand name, or do you place it in the specs on the watch? Now, that is obviously up to you. I can't tell you. There are downsides to this watch, like I said. If you want to learn more about that, look at my video between the Submariner and the Chronos to see what your caveats are.

[00:03:22]That squeaking is a little note. That is one of the caveats. The second watch within this benchmark of the next rung up, I would say between your $500 to $700 range. And there are two watches I'm going to highlight there. Uh the main one here is, in my mind, the King Turtle here, the Seiko King Turtle.

[00:03:39]Absolutely love this watch. You're getting a lot of the similar things you saw out of that Chronos. You're going to have a screw-down crown. You're going to have 200-m water resistance. You're going to have a ceramic bezel insert, great loom. Here, you're going to get a lot of those specs, but with the brand name. When we were talking about the Orient, you had the Orient, which is a great watch, but the Orient has an aluminum bezel insert on this watch.

[00:03:59]This King Turtle now has a ceramic bezel insert, so you get that little upgrade there from one to the other. You can get a different aesthetic, one that isn't standard within this price range. You can also buy other watches in the same price range. I just think this epitomizes what a dive watch looks like.

[00:04:16]As you start going up in the price range, you're going to start being able to find brand with decent amount of specs, and you can get more of a unique package as opposed to trying to get something that is incredibly derivative, like the Kronos watch is obviously an exact copy of the Submariner. This has a lot of great things going for it. Good bezel action, a little stiff sometimes, but the 4:00 crown down here is really nice for wearability. You get this big cushion style case, great, you know, big, solid, beefy rubber strap with this keeper here is just absolutely solid.

[00:04:47]The King Turtle is a really great watch, and I have owned this, I think, for gosh, it's one of the oldest watches in my collection because it's just a great-looking, cool, fun everyday watch that I've worn and beaten the heck out of, and it just takes it. And I think that's what epitomizes, in my mind, a dive watch. At this point, you're going to spend that extra money because you want like a true dive watch. Yes, you've got your specs, your basic specs, but you've also got something that feels rugged, feels like a diver, at least in terms of the romantic version of a dive watch, meaning that it can, you know, be more rugged. And so, I think the King Turtle is the best version of that within this price range. Now, obviously, you can look at microbrands as well within this price range. Baltics a little bit less expensive, uh but this watch gives you, instead of all about beef, you're going all about character here. You're going for a vintage look.

[00:05:35]You still have the sapphire crystal. You got a sapphire bezel insert on the outside. Still screw-down crown. Still water resistance is there. You got better bezel action, in my mind, than the King Turtle on this. You're just trading one thing for the other. Instead of big beefy aesthetics and name brand, you're going for micro brand here, subtle skin diver aesthetic. And so, within this price range, you've got a whole host of options, especially between micro brand and main name brand.

[00:06:02]You've got a lot of different things you could buy within that.

[00:06:05]If you push your price range up into the thousand twelve hundred dollar range, you're going to find brands, especially in the micro brand space, that give you a whole heck of a lot. I did a review recently of the Shellback. Here you can see a lot of my different close-ups of that watch. Beautiful watch. Really like that a lot. And for its price range, you're getting a heck of a package. And so, that is a whole bunch of sweet spot.

[00:06:25]Again, when we're looking at this curve, basically, if you imagine zero as I don't own a watch, as soon as you spend two hundred bucks, you're getting a whole heck of a lot of watch. And then you're going to notice it starts to curve out, but you're still getting decent gains, you know, you're gaining brand name, you're gaining aesthetic, or you're gaining, you know, something else that's a little bit different than, you know, a standard watch, but it also has all the specs behind it. Once you get to that, you know, one thousand to two thousand dollar range, your big jump is really, I think, going to be around high-end quality. These little aesthetic choices that really make or break the feeling of the watch day-to-day. And that is where I think the true sweet spot is, around the two thousand dollar mark. And the best epitome of that is the Longines Hydro Conquest. I recently did a review on this. This is a new release this year. The strap that's on there right now, this is actually not the original bracelet. The original bracelet is this thing right here, which I also have, standard deployant, nice H-link style bracelet, you know, good finishing, nice stuff you got in here.

[00:07:27]You do have a micro adjust built in as well, slightly different version of it than you had with the Glide lock or the Chronos there. But, you still have solid end links, all the stuff that you're going to expect for this general price range. But, in my case, I swapped it out with this is the Fears/Ming/ I think there's someone else in that consortium. This is a 3D printed titanium mesh bracelet. And you can just see how much this thing drapes. It looks like fabric, but it's titanium. It's like metal. So, this is incredibly comfortable, really cool. I'm a big engineering, machining, manufacturing nut, and so I really love the concept of this, which is why it up. I do have reviews coming in July where I go through all my favorite bracelets, all my favorite rubber straps, all my favorite leather straps. It's going to be about 40 different brands that I'm going to show you in those series of videos. So, subscribe down below. I'm on a journey to hit 100,000 subscribers, so please hit that. Help me hit that journey, and obviously check out that video when that comes up. This is obviously one of my favorite bracelets.

[00:08:32]I'm happy I have this on my Longines watch all the time. I almost never take it off now that it came in. Super super nice. But, the watch itself for $2,000 just hits everything out of the park.

[00:08:43]The things I think you were missing on like the King Turtle here or on the Baltic is a real serious Swiss name brand. And, you know, while I have nothing against the Japanese, I love Grand Seiko, and I love Citizen, and I love Seiko, and I love Casio, the Longines here is obviously coming from a brand that's been around for a very long time. And you're getting a package that's just incredibly refined. You get these small little bits of case finishing, which I think are nice, but the ceramic bezel insert here, like the ceramic bezel, that bezel action is just beautiful. That is exactly what you're looking for. You got COSC certification on here. This is where you start getting resale values, where when you go to sell this, you're not completely losing your shirt compared to some of these other ones. You're still going to take a hit, but you've got a loom pip that's built into the bezel insert itself. You've got a solid movement in here, 80-hour power reserve.

[00:09:36]You've got a silicon hairspring on the inside of this as well, so you're anti-magnetic. I would make argument till I'm blue in the face that this thing could pass METAS certification, but because Swatch owns Omega and Longines, there'd be no reason for them to have this METAS certified. It would completely undercut the price of the Omega Seamaster, which is why this isn't. However, beautiful, amazing watch. I wear this all the time. I went on a trip recently to Mexico City, and this is one of two watches I brought with me because I love it that much. On the inflection point of value, this thing crushes it. From here on forward, fully diminishing marginal returns. As you go from what $2,000 to say $5,000, what you're really getting there is something like the Omega Seamaster, which is great. 42 mm across, 13.7 mm thick, ceramic bezel with laser engraved dive scale, dome sapphire, helium escape valve at 10:00, which almost none of us will actually ever use, but it's part of the watch's identity, screw-down crown, obviously, 300 m water resistance. A lot of good stuff comes with the Omega Seamaster. Inside, you got Omega's caliber 8800, which is METAS or master chronometer certified, anti-magnetic to 15,000 gauss, even though no one's putting their arm in an MRI machine, coaxial escapement, silicon balance hairspring, 55-hour power reserve, so you do take a little bit of a hit on power reserve side. But what this tier gets you is the METAS certification, if you care about that. Um it has been tested in the case to, you know, 0 to +5 seconds per day. They have Omega's coaxial escapement, which is a true refinement over the Swiss lever escapement. It's got James Bond pedigree, and the brand recognition exceeds, you know, most of these other brands, including Tudor, at the same price point. Now, what it doesn't get you, though, compared to the Longines is it is a little bit thicker. The wave dial, I think, divides people, so you have to like it or not. And the helium escape valve is obviously personal choice. But what it shows you is from Longines to Omega, what you gained was essentially certification, a METAS certification, which I already said because these share the same hairspring in the balance, which is most of what is affected by magnets. That's what changes your accuracy or your rate beats per day and your change there.

[00:11:44]Like between Longines and Omega, they're very very similar. Yes, one's coaxial and that will change how well it wears over time in theory.

[00:11:53]As far as I'm aware from reading George Daniels' book and a few other things, however, it doesn't change its magnetic resistance.

[00:12:02]And METAS doesn't certify it based on the coaxial escapement, it certifies it based on the magnetic resistance, water resistance, and accuracy, and power reserve, whether or not it meets its stated power reserve. And I think this could pass all of those things. So, that's a lot of money. This is what I mean, you're you're diminishing marginal returns by far. Now, to go from Omega to the Submariner. So, if you go to the Seamaster to the Submariner, I talked about this briefly in the Longines HydroConquest dedicated review, and this video originally was just a side-by-side Longines versus Submariner, but I thought it would be interesting to see the entire curve for everyone interested in this sort of topic. So, the Rolex Submariner here is around 10 grand, which is a whole buttload of money. This is the no-date version. There is a date version that's more popular. 41 mm across oyster steel, which is just a 904L steel, which a 904L versus 316L, it sounds like it's a huge difference.

[00:12:53]Really, it just means there's different metals that are included to make it a little bit more corrosion resistant. And when I say corrosion resistant, I primarily mean in salt water. So, there isn't really a huge benefit to 904L, and when I say huge there there really is no huge benefit at all to a normal person for 904L stainless steel. However, it's great that they can market a different type of steel, and I think that, you know, again, it's all about differentiating yourself from someone else. This particular one does have the 3230 movement inside, which is a superlative chronometer certified minus two to plus two seconds a day, which is tighter than COSC spec, 70-hour power reserve, Paraflex shock absorbers, anti-magnetic Chronergy escapement, in-house everything, Glide lock clasp on the backside, which gives you a huge amount of adjustment on this whole thing, tool-free. The adjustment itself is incredibly smooth. The refinement on a watch like this, the real thing you're getting here versus something like, let's say, the Longines, is really just around those tiny little refinements.

[00:13:53]Operating the crown here, when I go to, you know, pull this crown out, I unscrew it, I screw it back in, it feels smooth, almost like everything's been recently, you know, oiled, and it hasn't, obviously. This is a newer watch. It feels close to it, but not quite. And the bezel action, like this Longines feels nice, I like it, decent bezel action.

[00:14:15]This Submariner is perfect. I've talked about it a million times. Love the bezel action on here. But, is the bezel action worth an extra, in this case, eight grand?

[00:14:25]No.

[00:14:26]No, it is. Now, there are small other refinements. The hairline brushing on here is a little bit finer. The polishing here on each of these links is a little bit crisper. The links themselves have a little less play than something like Longines, but it's very minute between these two different things. Now, the Submariner does have the Rolex brand name on it, which is the huge differentiator between the Longines and the Rolex. You look at these two things, people that don't know watches see the Rolex and they think that's expensive, if that matters to you. There is a brand prestige though to Rolex, and there isn't a lure to it, and there is a long history of them being incredibly reliable for a long period of time. You know, I love the aesthetic of the Submariner, I love the font sizing, I love the indices, the size of the indices, the handset, all that stuff is beautiful.

[00:15:13]Uh I like the crown guard execution a little bit more. I like the lug look a little bit more. I like the bracelet, the oyster style versus the H-link, a little bit more.

[00:15:22]All these things are a little bit different. And again, for eight grand, definitely, definitely not worth $8,000.

[00:15:29]Your curve is basically flat at this point to pay more more money for not a huge amount of extra features. Small bits of extra refinement. However, like I said, I love this watch. I've worn the heck out of mine. You can see I've got scratches all through my Submariner because I have worn it like absolute crazy because this is the watch when I go to my watch box pick one up, this is the one I tend to reach for. The Longines is a right now a close second to this.

[00:15:56]And again, for eight grand, not worth it. From the Seamaster to the Submariner here, they're basically interchangeable in my mind. However, the bezel action on the Seamaster, I absolutely hate.

[00:16:08]I have [snorts] mentioned that before a million times. I do not like the bezel action on the Seamaster, that's why I do not own one. And uh the size is a little big for me. But between the two, is it worth the extra three, four thousand? Obviously not.

[00:16:20]Again, you're buying very little extra.

[00:16:22]Now, the last watch I want to mention here is the the creme de la creme of money in dive watches, and that is the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. You could technically spend more money if you went with gold, and there's some other dive watches from more prestigious or independent brands that might be more expensive, but I'm talking mass market.

[00:16:40]The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and the Submariner differ primarily on interior finishing of the movement itself versus, you know, exterior finishing in any way, shape, or form. The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms is close to 20 grand, depending on which type you buy here, somewhere between 18, 19,000 dollars. It is titanium, however, that doesn't make a huge difference. This is a $200 watch that's also in titanium, it's a copy of the Tudor Pelagos. It's 200 bucks on AliExpress. So, titanium's not the reason it is almost 20 grand. It's 300 meter water resistance. Inside is the caliber 1315, free sprung silicon balance wheel, which is the same thing as the Longines here.

[00:17:20]It does have three barrels for 120 hours of power reserve, which sounds great.

[00:17:24]But this IWC also has 120 hours of power reserve. So this is five grand. Again, not fully explaining why it's 20 grand here. The big difference is the finishing. You can see all the finishing on the movement on the inside of that watch, and you can see some of the finishing on a Rolex watch that I have also opened up. They are different from one to the other. And by a landslide.

[00:17:47]Now the Omega does do a little bit nicer finishing on their watch. You can see what the Seamaster's finishing looks like. It doesn't have the same sort of interior angle work or anglage work to the bridges. It doesn't have the same level of finishing on the inside of that movement. And I've done whole videos talking about what makes a watch expensive on its finishing, and you can find that up above as well. There are a lot of different reasons why people fawn after the finishing on the Blancpain.

[00:18:14]And obviously the brand itself has been marketed as a high-end luxury brand for a long time. And marketing does matter here. The name Blancpain is known for being high-end luxury, just like the name Rolex is known for being, you know, mid to slightly high-end luxury. Just like these days Seiko is known for affordable watches. The brand does do a lot of that pricing. It does push that pricing. So while the finishing on the movement is nicer, is it double the price nicer than the Submariner, or is it 10 times the price better than the Longines? Sure, only you can tell. It's your money to spend. In my mind, no.

[00:18:55]Obviously not at all. But then again, I own both the Submariner and the Longines when clearly the Longines does everything it does for a fifth of the price. So it does depend on what you're looking for, but there is, obviously like I said, a big flat section after the Longines where what you're spending money on doesn't dramatically or or really that much at all change your wearing experience and your enjoyment outside of the brand name and very minor refinements. So, that's kind of the range in dive watches. Hopefully, this has been informational. This has been fun to watch. Like I said, journey to 100,000 subscribers, hit that down below. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you guys think if there's anything else on this tier and this curve that you guys should explain, talk about it down the comments. I'll see you in the next one. Take care.