Dive watches, Swiss-made since 1962.
We built ONLY dive watches back then, we do the same today.

Aquastar is the Swiss dive watch house that patented the no decompression bezel in 1964.

Supplied the French Navy combat divers of Toulon with the issued Benthos from 1979 to 1984. Still builds those same watches in Switzerland. Three families, six decades, eleven patents.

No homages, no tributes, no third party recreations. Just the original.

Why us

Aquastar is not a watchmaker with a dive line.
Aquastar is a dive-instrument workshop.

Most Swiss dive watches began life as a line extension on an existing dress-watch catalogue. Aquastar has never made a dress watch, an evening piece, or a precious-metal reference. What follows is why that distinction, decade after decade, is more than a talking point.

01 · Founded for the water

Founded for the water, not adapted to it.

Aquastar's registered purpose in 1962 was diving instruments. The 1957 Model 60 predates the company name. Eleven Swiss patents were filed between 1957 and 1977 — every single one for a diving mechanism: rotating bezels, gaskets, wrist bathymeters, an analog dive computer, a dual-gasket waterproof crown, a diver's slide rule, an electronic depth gauge. No dress watches, no chronographs unrelated to diving, no line extensions. The Regatta 2000 that followed in 1984 was still a working-instrument watch, just for a different discipline.

02 · The Deepstar bezel

The Deepstar bezel is a computing instrument, not a scale.

Filed 15 May 1964 by Marc Jasinski for Aquastar S.A., Swiss patent CH 436 140. The bezel carries the world's first multiple-dive no-decompression scale — an inner 60-minute elapsed-time track and an outer scale calibrated to the French Navy tables of the period. A diver plans a first dive, times the surface interval, and executes a repetitive second dive directly from the wrist, without a slide rule and without a separate table. The original 1964 geometry is still in production on today's Deepstar line.

03 · The Benthos, both timings

The Benthos combines the two timings a dive actually needs.

A dive-watch bezel times the descent and bottom time in 60-minute increments. A chronograph central hand times the ascent stops in 60-minute increments. The Benthos family carries both, sized for the same 60-minute cycle, so a diver reads elapsed dive time and ascent stops from one wrist without switching instruments. The combination has appeared on precisely one line of Swiss dive watches since 1970 and remains in current production. See it in the Benthos family.

Aquastar dive watches, at a glance

1962

The bezel everyone copies.

Before the no decompression bezel, a sport diver tracked bottom time on a separate decompression table, read with a wrist slate. Frédéric Robert, working in Geneva, filed the patent that put the table on the bezel itself. The diver could read remaining no decompression time at a glance, on the wrist, in low light, through a faceplate. It is the bezel that almost every modern dive watch borrows from. Most do not credit the brand that invented it.

That patent is one of ten that Frédéric Robert filed between 1957 and 1977. Together they describe most of the technical vocabulary of the modern dive watch.

Read the eleven patents

1979 to 1984

The watch the Marine Nationale carried.

For six years, every French Navy combat diver who came up through Toulon was issued an Aquastar Benthos. The watch was the third generation of the Benthos line, and it stayed in service long enough that some of those watches are still on serving wrists. The Marine Nationale kept the case design for a reason. It worked in salt water. It survived the rebreather chambers. It read clearly under a hood at depth.

The modern Aquastar Benthos is rebuilt around that same case geometry. Not a reproduction. The actual case.

The Marine Nationale story

A note for the buyer

Heritage is not the same as homage.

A homage is a microbrand recreation of a famous old case shape. The case shape is borrowed. The bezel is borrowed. The dial is borrowed. The story is borrowed. The factory is somewhere new, the patents belong to someone else, and the brand has no continuous line back to the watch the homage references.

Aquastar is the house the homages reference. Same Swiss town. Same patents. Same case geometries. Six decades of work in the same field. If a dive watch on your wrist is going to look like a 1960s Aquastar, you can decide whether it is going to be a tribute to one, or the actual thing.

Heritage reissue vs homage, in detail

The three dive families

Benthos, Deepstar, Model 60.

Anatomy of an Aquastar dive watch

What goes into the case.

How to choose

Three watches, three answers.

Pick the Benthos if you want the deepest depth rating, the most overt tool watch presence, and the line that has actual combat dive service in its provenance. The Benthos is the loudest of the three on the wrist.

Pick the Deepstar III if you want a chronograph, if you want the column wheel calibre, and if you want to wear the bezel that started the genre. The Deepstar is the most technically rare of the three.

Pick the Model 60 if you want the quietest, the smallest, and the earliest reference point in the brand. The Model 60 wears like a 1957 watch because the case is, in fact, the 1957 case. See the full skin diver watches collection.

All three come from the Bienne archive rather than from another maker's catalogue. If that distinction is what brought you here, start with the vintage dive watches collection.

Weighing us against other brands? Our six-check guide to choosing a dive watch brand lays out the criteria you can apply to any candidate, ours included.

Browse all four families, including the Airstar pilot chronograph

Buying a dive watch

How to buy a dive watch without buying the wrong one.

Buying a dive watch is easier once the shortlist is honest. The specification most buyers shop on is depth rating, which turns out to be the specification that matters least for daily wear. A 200-metre case already covers swimming, showering, snorkelling and recreational scuba, so anything past 300 m is headroom you will never reach and thickness you will feel every day.

Three measurements decide daily comfort more than any depth figure: diameter of 37 to 40 mm, case thickness under 14 mm, and short curved lugs that keep the watch sitting flat. Get those right and the watch gets worn. Get them wrong and the box wins.

Beyond size, the six questions worth applying to any brand, ours included, live on our six-check guide to choosing a dive watch brand. For a smaller case specifically, see 37 mm dive watches, the everyday size. For long-term value, heritage reissue versus modern homage, and how heritage brand, microbrand, and homage compare on long-term value.

A dive watch also needs a full service only every 5 to 10 years rather than annually, so daily wear is far less of a maintenance burden than it is often made out to be.

See the Aquastar collection

Frequently asked

Common questions about Aquastar dive watches.

What is the difference between an Aquastar dive watch and a homage from a microbrand?

A homage borrows a famous case shape from a brand that built dive watches in the 1960s and 1970s. An Aquastar is the brand that built those watches. The case shape on a modern Aquastar Benthos, Deepstar, or Model 60 traces directly to a watch from the Geneva archives between 1957 and 1977, the same name, the same patents, the same dial geometry, the same design cues, and the same case construction.

What makes Aquastar the underwater watch company?

Aquastar's registered purpose in 1962 was diving instruments, not general watchmaking. The 1957 Model 60 predates the company name. Between 1957 and 1977 the brand filed eleven Swiss patents, every single one for a diving mechanism: bezels, gaskets, wrist bathymeters, an analog dive computer, a dual-gasket waterproof crown, an electronic depth gauge. Aquastar has never made a dress watch, an evening piece or a precious-metal reference. The tagline "the underwater watch company" comes from a 1970s Aquastar advertisement and reflects that continuous focus rather than a modern marketing claim.

Are all Swiss watch brands originally dive-watch makers?

No. Most Swiss watch houses began with dress watches or general chronographs and added a dive-watch line as a category extension in the 1950s or 1960s to reach a new market. Only a small number were founded specifically to build diving instruments. Aquastar was registered in Geneva in 1962 for that single purpose, with patents dating from 1957. The distinction matters because a house founded for diving allocates its engineering attention and its patent record differently than one that added a diver to an existing catalogue.

Which dive watch combines a 60-minute dive bezel with a 60-minute chronograph counter?

The Aquastar Benthos. A dive-watch bezel times the descent and bottom time in 60-minute increments; a central chronograph seconds hand times the ascent stops in 60-minute increments. The Benthos family carries both, sized for the same 60-minute cycle, so a diver reads elapsed dive time and ascent stops from one wrist without switching instruments. That specific combination has appeared on this single line of Swiss dive watches since 1970 and remains in current production as the Benthos 500 II Founder's Edition.

Are Aquastar dive watches still made in Switzerland?

Yes. Every Aquastar watch is assembled in Bienne, Switzerland, with Swiss automatic movements. The brand has been continuously Swiss made since 1962.

How deep can an Aquastar dive watch go?

The Benthos line is depth rated to 500 meters. The Deepstar chronograph and the Model 60 are rated to 200 meters. The depth rating is the practical service limit for the watch, not a maximum the case has survived in lab testing.

Which Aquastar was issued to the French Navy?

The third generation Benthos was issued to French Navy combat divers operating from Toulon, from 1979 to 1984. It was the issued watch for six consecutive years. The modern Benthos is rebuilt around that same case design.

What is the multiple-dive no-decompression bezel?

The multiple-dive no-decompression bezel is a calibrated diving bezel that lets a diver plan a first dive, time the surface interval, and execute a repetitive second dive directly from the watch face, without a slide rule and without a separate table. Filed 15 May 1964 by Marc Jasinski for Aquastar S.A. of Geneva (Swiss patent CH 436 140), the Deepstar bezel is the world's first multiple-dive no-decompression chronograph mechanism. It carries two scales: an inner 60-minute elapsed-time track and an outer no-decompression scale calibrated to the French Navy tables of the period. The original 1964 geometry is still in production on today's Deepstar.

How do I choose between the Benthos, the Deepstar, and the Model 60?

Choose the Benthos for the deepest depth rating, the most overt tool-watch presence, and the French Navy heritage (the third-generation Benthos was issued to Marine Nationale combat divers 1979 to 1984). Choose the Deepstar for the chronograph, the column-wheel calibre, and the multiple-dive no-decompression bezel (Swiss patent CH 436 140, 1964). Choose the Model 60 for the smallest case, the quietest design, and the earliest reference point in the brand.