Seiko continues to build amazing watches on top of their innovative new Spring Drive system. One of the latest is the Seiko Marinemaster GMT. I almost posted nothing but a picture of this watch because I think the mere sight of it says it all: it is big, beautiful, durable, and simultaneously both modern and classic.
I have an old Seiko titanium Kinetic Scubamaster which is one of my favorite watches in the world, and one of the things I really like about this family of watches is the amount of functionality Seiko packs into them. The Marinemaster has a 24-hour hand for tracking time in a second time zone, but rather than putting the hours for the second time zone on the bezel like most GMT watches do, the numbers are actually inside the bezel, around the perimeter of the dial. This leaves the bezel free for your standard dive time functionality, which means you get a GMT and a diver all in one. Of course, this makes the watch slightly less flexible purely as a GMT watch since the hours are typically marked on the bi-directional rotating bezel so that you can easily check times in other time zones (rotating the bezel clockwise takes hours off the second time zone while rotating it counterclockwise adds hours), however if you don’t need the additional GMT flexibility, it’s nice having the diver functionality, instead.
Features of the Seiko Marinemaster GMT:
- Spring Drive movement accurate to about 15 seconds per month or better with a 72 hour power reserve and automatic winding.
- 24-hour hand for GMT functionality.
- Date.
- Power reserve indicator.
- Bright titanium construction with a screw-down caseback.
- Titanium bracelet with a double locking clasp and diver extension.
- Sapphire crystal.
- Water resistant to 600 meters (almost 2,000 feet).
- 45mm in diameter, 17mm thick.
The bad news is that you can’t waltz down to your local mall to pick one of these beauties up (unless you live in Japan). The good news is that you can still get them for about $2,950 from some Japanese retailers who are willing to ship to the US.
