The Prometheus Ocean Diver GMT (~$800) is a Swiss Made timepiece with a rather interesting history – the plan was to produce the watches in Asia with Chinese movements, to keep the price affordable. When the samples came back, they were not up to specs, so the watch was completely redesigned and production moved to Switzerland, using ETA movements. The result is fantastic timepiece with prices that are still surprisingly affordable. There aren’t many nice internal bezel GMT dive watches below the $1000 price point, so I was enthused to have the chance to give this one a review.

Review:

The case of the Ocean Diver GMT is 316L stainless steel with a very smooth satin bead blasted finish.  The lugs use screw-bars, my favorite type of arrangement. Spring-bars tend to break or weaken over time, and hex lugs, while novel, are not as easy to switch out because I always have a screwdriver set.  Hex, not so much.

One interesting aspect of the case is that the bezel area is actually slightly flared outwards, a nice design addition which adds a little flash and character to the side profile of the OD. There are eight drilled “portholes” along the circumference of the bezel area which add to the design and give it a solid ocean-fairing look. The slightly thicker bezel of the watch also affords the crystal some protection for clumsy people like me who accidentally bash their wrists when walking though through doorways.

The caseback uses Rolex style coin edge impressions with a slightly raised center area on which the various specs of the watch are engraved. Part of the case-back has a polished finish, to give the engraving a contrasting appearance – its very unique and helps the watch cling to the wrist a little more firmly.

The internal bezel is probably the most interesting feature of the whole watch. The moment I took the watch out of the box, I started spinning the top crown to find out how the bezel works – and it feels great! There are 120 distinct clicks and there is very little freeplay – you can literally count out all 120 clicks as you turn the crown.

Both crowns are large, easy to grip, and have a nice crosshatched pattern on the flat surface. The winding action is very smooth with the second crown, and the bezel clicks are firm and distinct with the first crown.

The highlight of the timepiece has to be the cool dial – I love how the GMT markers are shown in darker red text towards the outside of the ring, so that they do not crowd the inner part of the dial. The 12-9-3-6 markers are a nice breakup from the multitude of hash marks on the dial, and the round dots on the other markers match well with the round index marks of the bezel.

The hands are very easy to read and can be distinguished easily from one another – the hour hand isn’t too stubby and the minute hand is long enough so that one can easily tell hour from minutes. The red second hand is a nice touch since matches the color used on the bezel and GMT markings. I also noticed the length of the hands are well matched to the dial. The hour hand reaches almost halfway up the hour markers, the minute hand reaches about halfway into the minute markers, the second hand reaches just to the edge of the minute/second markers, and the GMT hand is a little longer to reach the GMT ring.

The OD GMT does not disappoint when it comes to lump – the dial and hands use C3 lume and it’s easy to read at night.

An ETA 2893-2 GMT movement in a watch at this pricepoint is unheard of – this is the same movement used in many high end GMT watches! The movement has everything I love in a proper dive watch – winding, hacking, a high beat – I can’t think of any negatives to say about it. When setting the GMT hand, the intervals jump in 1hr increments which makes it fantastically easy to set.

Being an internal bezel watch, the OD GMT has a rather large crystal. The crystal is sapphire glass and it has an inner AR coating. I have no problems reading the dial even at an angle.

The watch ships with two rubber straps – one black and one red. They use a vintage tropix pattern and are very comfortable and pliable. One nice feature of these straps is they are very long – definitely wetsuit capable.  Personally I think the watch really shines on a nato strap.

Overall, I haven’t got a single negative thing to say about the Prometheus Ocean Diver GMT.  It’s a fantastic diver at an incredible price.