Hodinkee
Introducing: Grand Seiko Shrinks Ultra-Accurate U.F.A. Ushio 300 Divers To Less Than 41mm Wide (Live Pics)
Higher specs, smaller measurements. It might be a perfect dive watch for Grand Seiko.
4,306 articles · 45 videos found · page 62 of 146
Hodinkee
Higher specs, smaller measurements. It might be a perfect dive watch for Grand Seiko.
Teddy Baldassarre
Grand Seiko has done something remarkable at Watches and Wonders for 2026. The headline story is the launch of the new Spring Drive UFA Ushio 300 divers, and on top of that, a new smaller case size. The new divers are available in two dial variations, the blue SLGB023 and the green SLGB025. Of course, the main attracti
Fratello
British independent brand Pinion revives one of its earliest designs for a modern audience. Founded in 2013, Pinion launched the Pure the following year. That period also marked my renewed interest in watches after wearing a titanium Seiko for 15 years. I still own that Seiko today. Back in 2014, watch design looked very different. […] Visit Pinion Brings Back The Pure In A New 38mm Case to read the full article.
Monochrome
Two years ago, Credor, the higher-end and classic side of the Seiko Watch Corporation, unveiled a very special watch based on the Locomotive concept. This watch, once designed by no other than Gerald Genta, was first presented in 1979, before coming back in a modernised and limited version for the brand’s 50th anniversary in 2024. […]
Worn & Wound
Since its launch in 2019, the Doxa SUB 200 has been one of my favorite value oriented dive watches to recommend. When it debuted, it was under $1,000 and really stood out in a crowd of vintage inspired divers. It was a particularly compelling option for enthusiasts who were after something affordable and loaded with a bit of history and was definitely not a Seiko. They were also getting that vintage appropriate sizing right before the pendulum swung all the way back toward watches under 40mm – the SUB 200 measures 42mm but wears significantly smaller thanks to the short lug profile. It was and is a great wearing, classically styled dive watch from a truly important dive watch brand. Doxa has just refreshed the SUB 200 and the watch that was revealed this week reflects a lot of what’s going on the industry at the moment, while also appearing to serve as a worthy heir (and complement) to the existing SUB 200. The new SUB 200 II sees Doxa making some unexpected refinements to the case and also offering the watch in a new suite of colorways and a novel case treatment. Taken together, it’s a significantly more contemporary execution of something we’ve all come to associate with pure vintage nostalgia. We’ll start with the case, which now measures 44mm in diameter. I did a bit of a double take when I saw that particular spec – we’re deep in the era of brands downsizing their iconic sports watches to accommodate the current appetite for sleeker, small-to-medium ...
Teddy Baldassarre
Typically when quartz watches are brought up in regards to the Grand Seiko catalog as a whole, they're thought of as entry points to the brand. However, there is much more to the story than "just" being a quartz movement, Grand Seiko has a lot more to offer here. Sit down with Teddy and Joe Kirk to discuss the merits o
Hodinkee
The Japanese baseball superstar is a rare global ambassador for Grand Seiko as the brand continues its international push.
Teddy Baldassarre
Grand Seiko is announcing a new global partnership with Major League Baseball player Shohei Ohtani this week through something called the Grand Moments Project, which kicks off April 1, 2026. Ohtani, who is a star pitcher (and designated hitter) for the defending world series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, not to mention the reigning National League MVP, hails from the Iwate prefecture of Japan, which is also home to Grand Seiko’s Studio Shizukuishi. The partnership represents a mutual respect, and shared philosophy around the value of, and approach to, time. The Grand Moments Project encapsulates this approach to every moment with intention and sincerity, and over time, the accumulation of those moments “refines the quality of time itself”. This is a partnership that seeks to acknowledge the methodical approach to every action we take, and celebrate the process itself over just the end result. Shohei Ohtani represents this ethos with an astonishing career made through a pursuit of excellency moment by moment. The 31 year old phenom comments “To carry forward a part of Grand Seiko’s heritage, shaped through decades of dedication, is something I deeply value.” Ohtani’s unique evolution within the sport of baseball is an apt corollary to Grand Seiko’s approach to watchmaking. Neither represents a straightforward journey, with Ohtani choosing to embrace his talents on both sides of the field as both a pitcher and a hitter while working his way from the Hokk...
Teddy Baldassarre
Grand Seiko is a brand that’s adept at making the intricate seem effortless. This talent for restraint is best demonstrated dial side, specifically with its play with textures that call for a second (or third, fourth, and so on) look. While the deceptively simple “Snowflake” dial is among the brand’s most renowned examples of its mastery of subtlety, today, I’m pulling focus to another iconic example of Grand Seiko’s dial mastery with the more dramatic White Birch variation. Down below, I’ll be breaking down the importance of the “White Birch” SLGH005 in Grand Seiko’s recent history, some of its guiding design philosophies, as well as all the necessary specs you need to know. [toc-section heading="History And Context"] Debuting in 2021, the SLGH005 with its “White Birch” dial marked a historic turning point for the brand, and in the years since, it has become regarded as an example of the brand’s strengths firing on all cylinders. Before its introduction, Grand Seiko had already become synonymous with intricately textural dials (which, of course, drew inspiration from the natural world), but the White Birch texture is really when the brand turned up the heat an extra notch. Before, the brand largely relied on radial and horizontal textures, and it isn’t a coincidence that the continuous series honoring the Japanese micro-seasons (most famous being the “Shun-bun”) was already in play before the White Birch hit the scene. Many of these dials...
While silicon mechanical movement components have swept across Switzerland, adoption has been slow within the Japanese watch industry, stymied by Swiss patents and professed concerns over the material’s durability. To this day, it remains the unlikely domain of Orient Star, a small brand with priority access to Seiko Epson’s massive industrial base. This positions Orient Star to capitalise on consumer demand for increasingly long power reserves, without sacrificing performance. Thanks to an ultralight and geometrically efficient escape wheel with a patented design, Orient Star is able to deliver a 70-hour power reserve without resorting the same counter-productive trade-offs to balance energy made by some Swiss peers – here’s how it was done. A silicon wafer of escape wheels. Image – Seiko Epson The quest for longer power reserves Recent consumer demand for longer power reserves has sent the industry’s engineers scrambling for ways to increase the autonomy of existing movement platforms. A movement’s power reserve is dictated by the length of the mainspring, which unwinds at a constant rate. That is why using a chronograph doesn’t cause a watch to run down faster – usually. Of course, you need to find somewhere to fit that extra length of mainspring while maintaining the movement’s dimensions, such as by thinning out the barrel walls, narrowing the inner barrel arbour radius, or, reducing the thickness of the mainspring. However, while decreasing the ma...
Monochrome
Founded in 1948 by Henry Belmont, Yema was France’s top producer and exporter by the 1960s. Renowned for legendary models such as the Superman, which appealed to professional and amateur divers alike, Yema went the way of many other mechanical watch brands during the quartz crisis and changed hands, including a stint with Seiko, until a French […]
Monochrome
Whenever movements are discussed, attention tends to focus on the Swiss, which is understandable, but it excludes some of the biggest movement manufacturers. Seiko, Miyota and so on, let alone the Chinese, produce far more movements per year on their own than ETA or Sellita do, for instance. To put this into some form of […]
Monochrome
It was hard not to love, or at least feel some tenderness towards the Orient Bambino models (especially the Classic) released by the brand to mark its 75th anniversary. We are tempted again with the M45 F7 Small Second, as Orient Star (established in 1951, part of Seiko Epson since 2017) expands its Classic Collection […]
Monochrome
The Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s was a defining moment for the industry, to say the least. Following Seiko’s Astron in 1969, the first quartz watch to hit the market, a huge swathe of traditional brands closed down as cheap, extremely accurate and virtually maintenance-free Japanese quartz watches hit the streets. Add to […]
Hodinkee
An afternoon of Japanese horology with Grand Seiko Brand Curator Joe Kirk, Designer Akira Yoshida, and Hodinkee's TanTan Wang.
Monochrome
Credor, a high-end division of the Seiko Group, was founded in 1974 with a focus on refined, ultra-thin timepieces that emphasise artistic and artisanal techniques. Originally catering to the Japanese domestic market, Credor has begun to expand internationally only recently (mostly with the Locomotive, based on a Genta design) and will make its debut at […]
Worn & Wound
Travel watches have been on the absolute rise in recent years. Where dive watches were once the default option for a first sports watch, GMTs, dual times, and world timers have been making a credible play for wrist time with enthusiasts of all strata. There are practical reasons for this - movements like the Miyota 9075 and Seiko NH34 have made including a GMT complication in a watch more affordable than ever - but I think practical reasons only scratch the surface of this precipitous rise. To tell the whole story, you have to look for the romantic. There’s an inherent appeal in travel watches. They’re optimistic and remind us to stay interested in the world even when we’re stuck at home, or work, or in the myopia of day-to-day life, when the little things around us stop us from looking further. I think this appeal was only reinforced by a mandatory two-year stay inside, at home, and I don’t think it’s by chance that our collective release back into the world post-COVID coincided with the rise of the travel watch. I mean, sure, in a world where our phones automatically adjust to new time zones, and most people’s preferred travel watch is an Apple Watch, mechanical travel watches (or, really, analog - there are some pretty stellar quartz offerings to be had, you don’t need to look further than the Timex Q Continental GMT for evidence of that) may be more talismanic than necessary, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. So, with all that ...
Monochrome
A mechanical watch is a true work of miniature engineering, regardless of the expense. A sub-€300 Seiko 5 Sports has the same basic mechanical elements and wonder as a four-figure IWC, and is just a bit less detailed and accurate day-to-day. Almost self-sufficient and independent of electricity, a mechanical watch simply needs to be wound […]
Teddy Baldassarre
Japan’s Grand Seiko has become, in a relatively short span of time, one of the world’s most prestigious and collectible high-luxury watchmakers, competing for connoisseur attention and dollars with well-established maisons from Switzerland and Germany. And while its success is a 21st century phenomenon, Grand Seiko is not really a “new brand” in the strictest sense. The first Grand Seiko watch (below) debuted all the way back in 1960, part of the much larger product portfolio of Japanese watchmaking giant Seiko, which was founded in 1881 and achieved its worldwide fame by embracing the mass market with timepieces at accessible prices with wide distribution. The Grand Seiko, by contrast, was positioned as the megabrand’s exclusive “King of Watches,” with standards of accuracy, beauty, durability, and legibility that could meet or surpass its Swiss competitors. Today we'll take a look at the Grand Seiko SBGN003, a recently discontinued Quartz GMT that thankfully seems to have a solid heir apparent. Until 2010, it was also Japan’s best-kept horological secret, not exported to markets outside the country. Seven years after its international expansion, having cultivated a loyal and avid audience worldwide, an entirely new and distinct customer base apart from mainline Seiko’s, Grand Seiko firmly established itself as an independent brand - albeit one still intrinsically tied to its parent company through shared history and technology. In fact, just about a d...
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
Teddy Baldassarre
Teddy Baldassarre is an authorized luxury watch retailer of brands like TUDOR, OMEGA, IWC, Grand Seiko, Breitling, Blancpain, Glashütte Original, Zenith, Longines, ORIS, MIDO, Tissot, Hamilton, NOMOS Glashütte, Baume & Mercier, and more.
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