By Meor Amri Meor Ayob
Apart from my Rolex Deep Sea Sea Dweller which I reviewed earlier, I do own another extreme dive watch with a depth rating of 3,000 meters. From the brand Deep Blue, the Depthmaster 3000m Green is cheaper, bigger, heavier and more tool-like when compared to the Rolex DSSD.
This watch is designed with a singular purpose; to enable extreme divers make it their first choice watch for diving. Deep Blue went on to make its creation tool-like and affordable for the normal Joe.
The Deep Blue Depthmaster is water resistant to a depth of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet). The 49 mm case is made out of 316L stainless steel with thick domed sapphire crystal and unidirectional rotatable bezel with sapphire insert.
The dial is simple emerald green coloured surface with just a date window at the 3 o’clock position. The hands and simple markers are covered with luminous paint.
Covering the dial is a thick Sapphire crystal. The crystal is domed with 5 mm of thickness.
The domed bezel have Arabic numberings but not lumed. Made out of stainless steel, it is unidirectional with 120 clicks with Sapphire inserts. Shaped like a ‘man-hole’ cover, the grooves helps to manipulate the bezel when wearing thick gloves.
The crown, a triple o-ring screw down type is situated at 3 o’clock position while the manual Helium escape valve is located at the 10 o’clock position. The special crown at the 10 o’clock position needs to be manipulated manually if the user feels the pressure require equalization. Although this potentially puts the Depthmaster at risk if users forget to engage the valve when required, the assumption is that only professional divers will ever be in that position anyway and training will make them do the necessary to ensure all their equipment are protected.
The watch sits high on the wrist. With a height of 19.5 mm, it is not possible to hide this watch under the cuff of one’s shirt. The size of the bracelet which is 26 mm with gives an illusion that the watch is ‘normal’ in size. However, it is substantial.
The solid deployant clasp has the Deep Blue brand and logo etched on it. Overall, the watch weighs in at 300 gm (10.5 oz).
Instead of stamped metal sheet as a bridge between the two halves of the bracelet, strong looking machined metal pieces are used instead. This gives a very good impression of ‘class’ to the watch.
This particular shot shows the sphere-like shape of the watch case and the thick bracelet links. The need to protect the mechanism from enormous pressure requires such a design.
Deep Blue is contented to use the typical one-size only extension mechanism in the clasp. Deep Blue provide a typical solid diver extension that extends to a additional 23 mm. In the picture below you can see the extension piece tucked into the clasp.
The case-back is solid and has nice etchings. It is a screw-down type with a double o-ring to protect from leakages.
Deep Blue chose the Miyota company to provide the engine for this watch. Under the Citizen group, Miyota has been producing their own movements for many brand. The particular movement of Miyota that Deep Blue chose is the Miyota 9015 Caliber. A 24 jewel unit operating at 28,800 v/h. It is automatic with hand winding and seconds hand hacking capabilities. The power reserve available in the springs is approximately 42 hours. There is a date complication with that caliber.
Accuracy of the Miyota movement is good. There is no obvious handicap in that department. For more information about the movement visit: citizen.co.jp
The wearing experience. This watch is a heavyweight and the weight is obvious to the wearer (if you do wear it often, it’ll become natural after a while). Like I mentioned earlier, this is a tool watch hence cannot be used in all occasions. Contrary to popular believe, the Depthmaster cannot be used properly if you are wearing tuxedos or suits. The height of the watch is too high and can never slip pass the cuffs (if you decide to use a wider cuff, it can disappear in it but then you won’t look good – style wise).
Interestingly, despite the extremely domed case-back for the Depthmaster, it does not drastically affect the ride of the watch on one’s wrist.
Meor Amri Meor Ayob – Contributing Editor
Meor Amri is a passionate watch collector from Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Having bitten by the horology bug in 2010, he has written extensively about the watch scene and has assembled a large collection of watches (excessively!!) on his own free time. Read his articles here.
His blogs on the same subject are: Eastern Watch & Western Watch
