Worn & Wound
Watches & Wonders: Grand Seiko Finally Gives Us a Medium Sized Dive Watch, and it Includes a Spring Drive Powered U.F.A. Movement
If you were take a poll of Grand Seiko enthusiasts and collectors to ask them what they thought was missing from the brand’s catalog, I have a feeling a significant portion of respondents would tell you the same thing: a great dive watch. Grand Seiko has, of course, been making divers for years, and a lot of them have been objectively outstanding and well liked by certain pockets of the Grand Seiko community. But they’ve never had a diver that’s really caught fire in the way that something like the Snowflake has – there’s no icon in their dive watch range. I think most would agree that this is at least in part because to this point the brand’s dive watches have always been on the chunky side, and not really a viable competitor to the Submariners and Seamasters of the world in terms of their wearability. Grand Seiko seeks to change that at Watches & Wonders this year, with the rather ambitious release of the new Spring Drive U.F.A. Ushio 300 Diver. This new 40.8mm High-Intensity Titanium dive watch uses a new Spring Drive movement featuring the same tech as last year’s 9RB2 Spring Drive caliber, which boasts an accuracy rate of plus or minus 20 seconds per year. There are really two notable things about this watch. First, there’s the movement, Caliber 9RB1, which has the same U.F.A (Ultra Fine Accuracy) designation as the 9RB2 introduced last year. The 20 second annual accuracy rate is, according to Grand Seiko, the most accurate wristwatch movement powe...
