By Dhananjay Pathak
One of the challenges that almost every watch brand faces in today’s competitive market is, how to make their watches stand out amidst its rivals. Though not an easy feat to achieve, that’s partly where the beauty of watchmaking lies. For Swiss brand Franck Muller, one of the defining feature of their watches has been their beautifully designed Tonneau shaped cases, but with the Franck Muller master diving watch, the brand is taking a slightly different design direction. Featuring a new stainless steel case along with a more traditional looking vintage inspired dial, this diver chronograph is one of the new Baselworld 2018 releases from the brand.
The new case on the Franck Muller master diving watch might not possess the refined silhouette of the Tonneau shaped case, but it does feature a bold new design with a raw and industrial look. Being 46.33 mm wide and 55.4 mm long this is certainly a large watch and would give people with a smaller wrists a tough time. Having said that, looking at the case profile in the press renders, the curved case design should for sure provide some wearing comfort once you have the watch strapped on your wrist. Being a diver there is a 60minute diving bezel on top of the case and the lumed bezel insert should help time those dives quite easily. The right side of the case is flanked by a screw down crown at 3 and chunky looking pushers at 2 and 4 to control the chronograph functions of the watch. Water resistance is marked at 100 meters, which given the screw down nature of the crown might be more than adequate for most of the people out there, but is definitely on the lower side of the scale , especially for a “Master” dive watch.
Franck Muller watches are known for their dials sporting distinctive enlarged Arabic numerals, but for this watch the brand has opted for a more conventional design approach. The hour markers on this watch are a mix of applied Arabic numerals and rectangular indices which also seem to have been lume filled for better low light visibility. Being a chronograph, the watch features a tricompax layout, with registers at 3, 6 and 9 representing the 30minute counter, the 12 hour counter and running seconds respectively. On the outer periphery of the dial is a sloped chapter ring which has the minute markings printed in white and can read easily through the nicely proportioned lume filled sword hands. But here’s the thing, even though there is nothing wrong with the dial layout of this watch, I personally feel the execution could have been better. For one, the size of the Arabic numerals should have been bigger as they look quite dainty for a watch of this size and secondly there are way too many markings on this dial making it a little too busy.
Although we aren’t sure, the FM 7750 naming convention suggests that this watch would be powered by a modified Valjoux 7750. This is a reliable workhorse automatic chronograph movement that operates at a frequency of 28800 bph and offers a power reserve of around 44 hours.
All in all the Franck Muller master diving watch is a decent sports watch, with a modest set of specs, but it fails to bring anything new to the table which is certainly expected from a brand like Franck Muller. The watch would come fitted with an integrated rubber strap and would be available in five dial colors; black, blue, white, orange and red. As we do not have the prices these as yet we will update this space as and when we hear back from the brand. For more info, visit Franck Muller online.
