BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
IWC has been on a roll in 2023. They’ve remade the Ingenieur for the modern times, they’ve worked with Mercedes-Benz’s road and Formula One team and their G-Wagen. To close out 2023, IWC has released two intriguing editions of their diving watch the Aquatimer for the newly released blockbuster Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. These new watches, the Aquatimer Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month watches, have put a modern twist on the classic model which, honestly, has lagged behind other diving models in recent times.
The watches are designed for the movie’s human villains, Dr. Stephen Shin (played by Randall Park) and Black Manta (portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). While the movie shows prop watches, IWC’s clientele will most definitely be receiving the real deal with these pieces. They’re full-on diving watches measuring 49mm x 19.4mm and presented on rubber straps. The cases are made of Ceratanium, which is IWC’s proprietary blend of ceramic and titanium for a super durable black finish; the water resistance of the watches is 100m.
100m may not sound much, at least when compared to the watches we’ve written about that have their water resistance in the thousands. 100m is the minimum requirement for ISO standards to be considered a diving watch, and we don’t expect anyone to really dive with it, but it would be cool if they did. This is a diving chronograph with a flyback function and a perpetual calendar with large digits and a leap year indicator.
The self-winding calibre is the in-house made 89802, which has a 4Hz beat rate and 68-hour power reserve. This movement has been used in the Aquatimer before, but only a couple of times, and it’s also been used in the previous generation Ingenieur. Hopefully, we’ll see the new Ingenieur receive this movement (or a more refined version of it) soon.
I love the technical looks of these watches and I’m sure they’ll find the right buyers, but that’s going to be a small club as IWC is only making 25 of each of these and they cost $57,600 each.
