I have a long-standing and long-abiding love of some watches which are perhaps a little bit oddball in their appeal. Some of them are watches which I bet most HODINKEE readers except for the more long-lived and determined have never heard of. To pick two just at random, the Ikepod Sea Slug is one and the one-handed Audemars Piguet "Philosophe" – which is as diametrically opposed to the Brutalist vibe of an Offshore as a watch can be – is another.
Right up there on the list, rubbing shoulders with some exceedingly refined and rarefied mechanical watches (like, I don't know, this one) is an ocean-going titan of the deep known to all and sundry as the Eco-Zilla, but perhaps better recognized if you are searching for one, as the Citizen Promaster Professional Diver 300M.
Now, I am not only not a professional diver, I'm not even an amateur diver although I dream feebly of getting a dive card in the same way that any Walter Mitty dreams of getting a dive card (or a pilot's license, for that matter). But since the primary function of dive watches and pilot's watches nowadays is not to offer practical assistance to divers and pilots, but rather to make people who are not divers, nor pilots, feel like divers and pilots, I would submit to you that the Promaster Professional Diver is one of the best dive watches ever made.
Let's look at the specs because that's what we all do. Is it a small watch, or even a watch that lends itself to daily wear to the extent that a Sea-Dweller does (which is, let's face it, not a lot)? Oh no, perish the thought – at 48mm x 18.6mm it is a Big Diver's Watch of the old school. It is, in fact, bigger than an IWC Big Pilot's Watch (I have always gotten a little bit of a kick out of the fact that "big" can be read to modify either the watch or the pilot – I think of a sign in an IWC boutique that says "You Must Be THIS Big To Buy This Watch!"). It is certainly a dive watch de jure as well as de facto, if by de jure we mean, as we so often do, an appeal to the terms of the dive watch standard ISO 6425.
In terms of legibility, the Promaster Dive 300M gives up nothing to any other dive watch at any price point. Skimping on lume would be a poor economy and it is something that the Japanese manufacturers have always understood. You might not be making a snooty Swiss product with a four- (or five-, or six-) figure price tag but by God, for the money you want something that luminesces bright enough for you to read a fine-print edition of Moby Dick at the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
This watch has absolutely nothing in common with the Bulgari Octo Finissimo in rose gold except one thing – it wasn't until very recently that I had a chance to actually have one on the wrist. In the case of the Bulgari, the in-the-metal impression was more or less the exact opposite of what I had expected. I thought I would appreciate it but not necessarily like it, much less fall helplessly in love. With the Promaster Dive, on the other hand, I had the same experience you might have if you are a Marvel MCU fan and you go to an especially good installment in the (apparently endless) series – you get exactly the satisfaction you think you are going to get, only with the volume turned up to 11.
The general aesthetic is tank turret, or I should say, battleship turret just to keep the similes somewhat nautical. There are plenty of enormous dive watches which use titanium or ceramic to reduce the amount of mass you have on your wrist but if ever there was a watch that leans into its unapologetic ursine heft, it's this one. You don't put it on the way you put on other watches, you strap it on the way Tony Stark strapped himself into the first Mark 1 Iron Man suit before it got all nanotechnologically implausible and started with the AI back-talk. What keeps the wearing experience reasonable is the equally heavy strap and the massive buckle and keeper which have fearless-exploration-of-the-dangerous-but-beautiful-undersea-world written all over them. You won't be desk-diving with this one unless you don't care about the finish on your desk.
The watch seems intended to project the seriousness of its intentions in terms of utility. The crown is on the left although it doesn't necessarily need to be, screwed down all the way it sits basically flush with the crown guards, which don't stick out very far from the case itself. I had a hilarious moment when I tried to turn the bezel the first time – there is knurling on the side of the case that looks at first like it's part of the bezel, but it's not.
The actual bezel sits several millimeters inside the circumference of the case and has very deep semicircular notches cut into it so that it's fairly easy to turn, despite the fact that you can't grab it from the sides. No accidental bezel movement here. The knurling is on the outer ring that holds the turning bezel down and you can unscrew it (with some effort, and turning clockwise) to get access to the one-way bezel itself.
As with any watch, there are little details that are easy to miss unless you actually have the watch "on wrist" as James S. likes to say (what's he got against definite articles?). One of them is the bezel where you have alternating wide and slim areas for the Arabics denoting 10-minute increments – 10 is narrow, 20 is wide, and so on.
You are, by the way, not going to be putting this watch on a NATO or indeed, a non-OEM strap, any time soon. Where the strap enters its recesses in the case, it's thicker than a lot of actual watches, and both ends are held in by four large screws threaded into the caseback, which run through steel inserts in each strap end. There are aircraft carrier anchors less securely attached. (Since writing that I have discovered that the watch fan community being what it is, you can find non-OEM steel adapters that will screw into the recesses and let you use the watch on a NATO if you must, but this makes the watch sit even further off the wrist – nonetheless, as an incurable tinkerer, I might give it a shot.)
Oh, and there's a very nice engraving of a standard diving dress hard-hat on the back, just in case after all this you still harbored any confusion about whether or not you were wearing a diver's watch.
I said this is not a desk diver, but the truth is, it makes such a strong visual and design statement that you can actually do the whole high/low (or technical/chic, if that's your thing) dichotomy with a good chance of making it work. Contrasts are everything in style and depending on what you pair this with you might have a very interesting opposites-attract situation. I'm not saying it would work with monogrammed loafers, a Charvet shirt, and a Rubinacci blazer, but I'm not sure it wouldn't work either. It reminds me a little of the Ploprof in this respect, which is another absurdly technical watch, overspec'd to the gills for its intended environment, with an attention-grabbing and highly idiosyncratic design. Maybe someone can give it a shot at Pitti next year.
It is, in short, the perfect watch for anyone looking for an ultra-technical, broad-shouldered old-school diver's watch, or a nothing-like-it design statement, or hell, why not both. If you want to spend at least some of a long hot damp summer feeling like you're in beast mode, this is the way to go. I have no idea how Citizen can make this watch and sell it for what they sell it for – currently, $396 of your favorite dollars – but it is, in short, one big badass Value Proposition.
Update: "Bada**" changed to "badass" in the last paragraph of this story. The author regrets chickening out the first time around.
Find out more about the Eco-Drive Promaster Professional Diver 300M at CitizenWatch.com.
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