The best dive watches 2016, from Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak to the perennial Omega Seamaster
A dive watch is the most conspicuous timepiece you can own, and the most hard-wearing: designed to shrug off the toughest life can throw at it, and look bloody marvellous while doing so.
In fact, some of the greatest, most daring watch designs of all come down to those twin requirements of endurance and visibility, making the dive watch as much a style statement – the more colourful the better – as it is a tool. For the summer, it’s the ultimate all-action accouterment, even if the most action it sees is a gentle jog along the beach.
Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean
To test this thing to its full potential, you’d have to go deeper than any human has ever dived: its 600 metre rating is about the depth of two Shards. But as you turn into a pancake, the watch will be just fine, with Omega’s indestructible Co-Axial Master Chronometer movement inside, and a turning bezel that sees orange rubber markings (for the first 15 minutes) fused into a ring of glossy black ceramic. omegawatches.com
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver Chronograph
Audemars Piguet this year adds a chronograph option to its range of redoubtable octagonal dive watches, and has broken out the paint box in the process. It’s available in bright orange, yellow, navy blue/yellow or lime green (annoyingly, the latter is only available from the brand’s store in Geneva) – the contrast with the black subdials and rotating inner bezel adds up to a whole heap of high-viz cool. audemarspiguet.com
TAG Heuer Aquaracer 300m Ceramic
We may know TAG Heuer more for racing chronographs than dive watches, but this superbly sporty number shows the brand has more than got what it takes on sea as well as land. In fact it’s been making Aquaracers for several decades, the latest seeing an upping in size to a muscular 43mm, a restyled bezel with scratch-proof ceramic inlay, and a zippy new colourway in blue with yellow detailing. tagheuer.co.uk