What is a Dive Watch?

A Deep Dive into Dive Watches

Dive watches are a subset of tool watches. Dive watches were originally designed for diving--and particularly--SCUBA diving. 

Hamilton Khaki Navy Frogman Automatic Dive Watch (Amazon photo)

Dive Watch Properties

Dive watches are made of robust materials like stainless steel or titanium to resist corrosion, they have high degrees of water resistance (typically above 100-meters with 200 or 300 meters water resistance for professional models). They have unidirectional rotating bezels to help with timing a dive. They usually have screw-down crowns to increase water resistance. Professional models might also have helium release valves to help professional divers using underwater diving bells decompress their watch without damage.

Dive Watch Examples

Watches like the Rolex Submariner, Rolex Sea Dweller, and Omega Seamaster Diver 300M are well known dive watch examples. The titanium Hamilton Khaki Navy Frogman Automatic Dive Watch here on Amazon is a very good example of a solid dive watch.

Dive Watches versus Diver-style Watches

Over the years on this blog, I've evolved into reserving the label "dive watch" for watches that had more than 100-meters of water resistance, rotating bezels, and screw-down crowns. Watches that have the look, but don't deliver the performance features, get the "diver-style" watch label. They can still be beautiful, but I don't want to call them dive watches.

While I love it dearly, my old Pulsar PS9319 (reviewed here on this blog) is just a diver-style watch. Even though it has 100-meters of water resistance, it doesn't have a rotating bezel and it is clearly made for beauty and not SCUBA diving.

If you are realistic about your likelihood of SCUBA diving, you can save lots of money by choosing a diver-style watch over a proper dive watch. But, it's also nice to know that you could go SCUBA  diving anytime if you had the time.