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 powered by a mainspring. It’s a truly insane accomplishment in terms of chronometry, and Grand Seiko has put everything they’ve learned about Spring Drive through decades of production into this caliber. That essentially boils down to minimizing the influence of external factors on the movement at every possible pass, which means vacuum sealing crystal oscillator that in turn reduces the impact of temperature, humidity, static electricity, and light. The notable difference between the new 9RB1 and the 9RB2 is that the new movement has moved the power reserve indicator to the dial side, a necessity given that these new divers have closed casebacks.
The other aspect of this watch that’s sure to get a lot of attention is the case. Grand Seiko has finally given us a diver that, at least at a high level, feels like a proper alternative to dive watches from their biggest competitors. At 40.8mm across and 12.9mm tall, the Ushio Diver is quite simply a normal sized modern dive watch, where previous Grand Seiko divers have been decidedly “oversize” by any reasonable standard. The case is water resistant to 300 meters, and should be largely scratch resistant given the use of High-Intensity Titanium for both the case and bracelet. The clasp has micro-adjustment built in, as well as a clever locking mechanism that should be well suited to diving and other strenuous activities.
There are two references available at launch, the SLGB023 in blue, and the SLGB025 in green. The dials have a wave-like texture that has been part of their dive watch design language since 2022. The dials are accented by color matched ceramic bezels, and simple rectangular hour markers that are lume filled. As with all textured Grand Seiko dials, there’s a lot of subjectivity involved in what’s appealing, too much, too subtle, and so forth. We would expect that over time Grand Seiko will expand on this platform and offer a broader range of dials suit a variety of tastes, including, hopefully, options that are a little more subdued and free of texture completely. That would be a real shot across the bow of their Swiss competitors in the dive watch space.
Retail pricing for the SLGB023 and SLGB025 is set at $12,400. Grand Seiko
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