Buyer's guide
Are dive watches everyday watches?
Yes. A dive watch is built for 200-metre water pressure, shock, and salt, which is exactly why it survives daily life. Six reasons, a five-point buying checklist, and the Aquastar patents behind the modern standard.
Collecting
Heritage brand, microbrand, or homage: which dive watch keeps its value
Heritage brand equity survives ownership changes and trend cycles. Microbrand value depends on the founder still being there. Homages have no floor. How the three tiers compare on long-term dive-watch value.
Editorial
Heritage reissue vs homage
Why a watch built by the original house, on its own patents, in its own factory, is a different object from a third-party tribute. The case for heritage over imitation.
Buyer's guide
Best Swiss dive chronographs under $3,000
A short list of Swiss dive chronographs that actually earn the name. Column-wheel calibres, real lume, and the heritage to back the dial.
Buyer's guide
Best vintage-inspired dive watches under $2,000
Skindivers, super-compressors and 1960s case shapes from manufacturers that actually owned those designs the first time around.
Buyer's guide
Aquastar in the Swiss dive watch landscape
Where Aquastar sits among Swiss dive-watch manufacturers: the only working brand with a no-decompression bezel patent, three Marine Nationale contracts, and a workshop that still builds its own calibres.
Movement
Automatic vs. manual dive watches
Which power reserve actually matters, which is more accurate, which is easier to service. A frank comparison from a Swiss workshop that builds both.
Editorial
What is a tool watch?
A tool watch is a wristwatch designed for a specific working profession, diving, flying, racing. Aquastar made tool watches before the term existed.
Movement
Inside the column-wheel chronograph
The column-wheel calibre that powers the Deepstar III, rebuilt in the Valjoux 23 tradition. What changed, what it inherited.
In the field
Working divers wearing Aquastar
The In the Field gallery, divers and photographers with the watch on the wrist, on the boat, underwater.
Heritage
The 1959 Aquastar Navigator
Before the dive bezel, there was the Navigator, Frédéric Robert’s 1959 analog dive computer that calculated decompression on the wrist.
Marine Nationale
The Benthos II and the French Navy
The Aquastar Benthos II was issued to the Marine Nationale in 1979. A short film on the civilian version and the Navy-issued variants.
How to
The Deepstar no-decompression bezel
A close look at the Deepstar bezel, the geometry, the original use case, and what to know about reading it on the wrist.
Collaboration
Fratello × Aquastar Deepstar II
The ice-blue Deepstar II Limited Edition on BOR bracelet, in collaboration with Fratello. See the watch and order.
Editorial
Depth-charge watches, and the Jason Heaton canon
The books, the divers, and the watches that Jason Heaton put on the map. Aquastar in the depth-charge tradition.
How to
Dive watch vs dive computer
Where the watch still earns its place on the wrist, and where the computer does the work. The honest split.
Heritage
A short history of dive watches
From the 1953 first mission-issued Swiss diver to the 500-metre saturation era and the modern reissue wave.
Editorial
The most iconic dive watches
The dive watches that mattered, why they mattered, and where Aquastar sits in the canon.
Definition
What is a dive watch
The definition, the six features, and what separates a real dive watch from a swim-friendly watch.
