Two Broke Watch Snobs
Explore hands-on dive watch testing and identify which models survive daily use. Get clear insights into durability, comfort, and real ownership trade-offs.
Monochrome
Young, independent Dutch brand VPC (Venustas Per Constantiam) returns with its next release, the Type 39VM, following its debut model, the Type 37HW. Founded by Thomas van Straaten, watch journalist at Fratello, collector, and now the founder of the design-driven microbrand, VPC was created around a beauty-through-restraint approach. After setting a standard with its hand-wound […]
Monochrome
Founded by brothers Alberto and Alessandro Morelli in 2017, the Venice-based brand was initially launched as Meccaniche Veneziane. The company got noticed with the Nereide diver and the Redentore dress line before rebranding in 2022 to strengthen its identity and link to Venetian craftsmanship. The Redentore Utopia II, after the 2024 Redentore Utopia, is the […]
Fratello
It has been nothing but an enjoyable experience to watch Fratello’s Thomas van Straaten build his watch brand. I greatly respect the passion and determination that Thomas puts into VPC Watch Co. Today, VPC launches its second model, the Type 39VM. This new dive watch is nothing short of impressive. The fact that the Type […] Visit Introducing: The Impressive VPC Type 39VM to read the full article.
Hodinkee
From a diver to a very vintage dress watch, Seiko is tapping into its history for a quartet of new LEs.
Worn & Wound
Maen’s latest is an update to their well regarded Hudson 38 dive watch, now in a MK 5 version. It’s hard to believe that the first Hudson launched all the way back in 2018. Maen is a very different brand nearly a decade later, and has radically changed not only their image but the overall quality of their watches. This is perhaps most easily understood through their popular Manhattan line of integrated bracelet sports watches, which are uncommonly well engineered for the price. Over these last few years while they’ve built out the Manhattan collection, you could probably levy the critique that they’d become a bit of a one trick pony. But it feels like with the new version of the Hudson, they are applying much of what they’ve learned with the Manhattan into a watch that probably has a bit more mass appeal and is a simpler and more straightforward proposition on its face. The Hudson 38 MK 5 is, according to the brand, the biggest update to the watch yet. The case has been completely reworked and is much more streamlined, with a thinner profile (11mm thick excluding the crystal – pretty good for a 300 meter diver) and a thinner bezel, that gives the whole package a more refined appearance and leans harder into the vintage adjacent aesthetic. This new edition also features a box domed crystal for the first time in the collection, which fundamentally changes the personality of the watch when on the wrist. Other small enhancements include the addition of a lume pip (...
Monochrome
The resurgence of French brand Yema over the past few years has been marked by a steady, successful effort to refine its heritage designs and by its commitment to in-house watchmaking. Founded in 1948 in Morteau, France, the brand built its reputation through tool watches like the Superman and Skin Diver of the 1960s, watches […]
Two Broke Watch Snobs
A review of the Luminox Pacific Diver Emerald Depths, focusing on tritium visibility, wrist presence, and daily wear experience.
Monochrome
Mido’s flagship Ocean Star collection is a contemporary evolution of its 1940s Ocean Star dive watch family. Often described as an all-round ‘surf and turf’ model, the Ocean Star 200C, introduced in 2021, comes with upgraded features like ceramic inserts and textured, colourful dials and Swatch Group’s latest-generation calibre 80. The new Ocean Star 200C […]
Fratello
Certain watches feel immediately familiar the moment you strap them on - not because you’ve worn them before but, rather, because their story has been written so clearly over the decades that slipping one on is like stepping into a well-loved pair of boots. That’s the sensation I had when the Doxa Sub 250T GMT […] Visit Hands-on With Doxa’s Sub 250T GMT Sharkhunter Vintage to read the full article.
Fratello
Welcome back to another Sunday Morning Showdown! Daan and I are both stationed in the Netherlands, where winter is hitting hard. The skies are gray, and a layer of slushy, half-melted snow covers the earth. This has us dreaming of summer holidays in faraway exotic locations. We dream of wearing nothing but swim trunks and […] Visit Sunday Morning Showdown: Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium Vs. Certina DS Action Diver Titanium 38mm to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
Every year at around this time, watch publications like to make predictions about what we’ll see over the course of the next twelve months. Personally, I really enjoy this type of content. It sets the stage for the year in an interesting way, and it also reveals something about whoever is making the prediction. Because at the end of the day, none of us really know anything. We’re all just throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping some of it will stick. Here at Worn & Wound we have a truly terrible track record on making predictions about what will come next in the watch industry. If you dig back into our podcast archive and look at our claims, you’ll see that we’ve been very wrong about watches from Tudor, Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and many more brands. Sometimes we’re a bit early – when you make a Pelagos GMT prediction every year, eventually you’re going to be right. This year, I’m embracing chaos. These predictions are kind of wild and don’t really make any sense. But in the spirit of a world where you can bet on literally anything, I’m giving watch enthusiasts who like long odds something to spin a dream or two on. Prediction: the tide finally turns on textile straps in a war torn world Let’s face it, folks: the world is on fire. Watches offer a respite from the insanity for many of us, the same way Sunday night HBO and mom’s meatloaf feel like a warm blanket when things get crazy. This feels like it might be the time when those lingering ...
Worn & Wound
I’m not going to lie to you, I love a bit of intrigue. When I was a child, I would write notes to my mother in invisible ink made of lemon juice. When someone tells me to keep a secret (which is always a surprise, given my big mouth), I can hardly contain my excitement. And, even now, I fancy myself a real James Bond type when I hide the Amazon boxes from my husband before he comes home from work. Luckily for me, Bernhardt Watch Company just announced their Cipher Diver, which sits right at the cross-section of two of my hobbies: watches and subterfuge. Inspired by Thomas Jefferson (and, impressively, made in partnership with Monticello), the watch nods more to the third president’s inventive streak than his political career – including the rotating wheel cipher, a mechanical concept designed to encode messages through a specific alignment of letters across a series of discs. The result is a diver that cleverly allows you to keep a secret message right on your wrist. Beneath the bezel, Bernhardt has included the alphabet printed on UV-reactive ink. By aligning the bezel to a designated hour key and referencing minute markers on the dial, one is able to use the clock’s timekeeping functionality to decode the message. If that’s not some National Treasure type of ingenuity, I don’t know what is. Each diver comes with a UV decoding torch and an initial cipher card, with new encrypted messages released weekly through July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of the Unit...
Fratello
In the second half of 2023, Tudor quietly dropped what would turn out to be one of its most interesting modern dive watches, the Black Bay 54. This 37mm watch instantly became the smallest Black Bay diver in the lineup and slotted in neatly alongside the Black Bay 58 and its standard 41mm counterpart. My […] Visit Battle Of The Black Bays: Tudor Black Bay 54 Vs. Black Bay 58 to read the full article.
Monochrome
Let’s be honest, virtually no one who buys a Rolex Submariner or any 300m dive watch actually dives below 50 metres. In fact, the majority of dive watch owners today rarely, if ever, engage in diving. Most serious scuba divers use wrist computers, so traditional dive watches are often fashion statements as watch enthusiasts like […]
Worn & Wound
eBay Finds is back! This bi-monthly installment will feature a selection of watches currently listed on eBay that have caught the eye of editor Christoph McNeil (@vintagediver). If you come across any hidden gems on the ‘Bay drop us a note at info@wornandwound.com for potential inclusion. Vintage Omega DeVille Starting off this week with a beautiful vintage Omega Seamaster DeVille. The DeVille is of course Omega’s dressy version of their iconic Seamaster line. This example has a 34mm wide yellow gold capped case in nice shape, looking unpolished with crisp edges on the super thin lugs. The caseback Hippocampus medallion is nice and clear. The gold dial has a delightful linen texture, with stick markers and stick hands, and a date window at 3 o’clock. The original crown has nice deep grooves, and is signed with the Omega symbol as it should. The case is a front-loading type and there are no movement pictures, but the watch runs per the seller. View auction here Vintage Bulova with Box and Papers Here is a nice little vintage Bulova, complete with original box and papers. The seller doesn’t state the size, but I’m guessing the steel case is probably 33-34mm wide. The case is sharp, with nice fancy lugs and a relatively broad bezel. The silvery dial has a military style look, with painted lume Arabic numerals and lume filled sword hands. The crown is signed with the Bulova logo. The watch comes on a cool looking steel stretch bracelet that may or not be original...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
Bernhardt Watch Company has announced the Cipher Diver, a new limited edition release created to coincide with the United States entering its 250th year of independence. Founded in North Carolina, Bernhardt Watch Company has built a long-standing reputation within the enthusiast community for producing mechanically straightforward, affordably priced watches with a focus on usability and accessibility.
Fratello
When you talk about dive watches rated for the sort of depths only a handful of human divers - let alone cameras, regulators, or submersibles - will ever see, you cross the border from sporting gear into mechanical heroics. Dive watches are built to match these endeavors. In this article, I’ll explore five extraordinary timepieces […] Visit Which 1,000m-Rated Dive Watch Is Right For You? to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
Our annual Watch of the Year post is here, and as always it’s a celebration of the diversity and strength of the enthusiast community. There’s a little of everything represented here, from the platonic idea of the Seiko diver, to highly experimental and ultra-modern, to emerging microbrands offering incredible value. But it’s not just about the watches themselves – every year has individual watches that are successful in the ways that get them onto lists like these. It’s the way our team assesses them, and gets to the heart of what makes a watch great, or interesting, or challenging. We hope you enjoy our roundup of our team’s favorite watches of 2025. Let us know yours in the comments below, and Happy New Year! Christoph McNeill For my Watch of the Year this year, I of course went with a Seiko. I know, no surprise there, but consistency is a good thing right? What can I say, I absolutely love Seiko. And I’m not just a homer, they really do put out killer stuff year after year. I nearly picked one of the amazing and beautiful Grand Seikos (the SLGW007 ‘birch’ dial), but I’ve written about the Grand Seikos a lot, and as stunning as they are, I’m a dive watch guy at heart and there is one Seiko diver that really blew me away this year. I’m talking about the Seiko Prospex Marinemaster SLA081 Limited Edition “Shinkai” diver. For brevity’s sake I’ll just refer to it as the Shinkai from here on out. The Shinkai diver is modeled after the OG ...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
The new Synchron Ti300M SEALAB is a titanium dive watch with serious tool-watch credentials-and a $990 pre-order price that’s hard to resist.
Time+Tide
Plenty of dive watches made a splash in 2025, but here's what we thought were the best - and we've put our money where our mouths are!The post Going swimmingly: our favourite dive watches of 2025 appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Hodinkee
It's a true Sub (for your desk), and you won't believe what's inside.
Fratello
Pink is a fun color, regardless of how we feel about whether or not it’s purely feminine. Recently, I had the chance to spend some time with the pink Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Automatique ref. 5007 12B44R NAFA. Here are some thoughts. When I first encountered the new 38mm Blancpain Fifty Fathoms with the pink mother-of-pearl […] Visit Hands-On With Blancpain’s Pink Fifty Fathoms “For Women” to read the full article.
Teddy Baldassarre
The versatile sports watch is probably the most difficult category to do one of these year-end roundups for simply due to how many releases can qualify. The editorial team here at Teddy decided to choose our favorites that push the category forward while retaining what we all love best from some of the best sports watch collections out there. It was an excellent year for iterating some of the most well-loved collections from Oris, Tudor, Seiko, and others. So, let’s not waste any more time and get into our favorite sports watches of 2025. [toc-section heading="Seiko Samurai"] Seiko updated their Samurai in 2025 by delivering on one of the most persistent pleas by enthusiasts and housing it in a smaller case. The previous iteration of Seiko’s more obscure (yet no less respected) dive watches came in a big 44mm wide case that has been shrunk down to a manageable 41.6mm wide and 12.6mm thick with a 49mm lug-to-lug height. Naturally water resistance is still a solid 200m. The new Seiko Samurai is one of my personal favorites of 2025 though I know a few people still have gripes with the choice of an aluminum bezel rather than ceramic. But past that, the sleek angular aesthetic and nice tapered three-link bracelet (which has a much more manageable 20mm lug width down from 22mm) make for a fantastic sports watch priced under $600. - Bilal Khan [toc-section heading="Oris ProPilot Date"] This year, Oris rounded things out with one of its most compelling releases in recent mem...
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