Advertisement
Manufacturer: Oceaneva | Price: $949 USD (£760 GBP, €845 EUR approx)
Introducing the Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer Pro Diver. A bit of a mouthful (that’s what she said) I think you’d agree. Anyway, here we have a 1000m diver that will take you down deep enough to say, “Oi!! ya ugly bugger!” straight to the face of the Loch Ness monster. So if you fancy a chat with Nessie, this diver will continue keeping time no matter how deep you try and dive down. Off topic,* If you’re into diving, I’d suggest watching The Last Breath on the BBC iPlayer. 
Advertisement
Specifications
- Dimensions: Case Diameter – 42mm, Thickness – 14.8mm, Lug to Lug Length – 49.5mm, Lug Width – 22mm
- Movement: SW200-1 Automatic, 28,800vph (4Hz), Quick Date Function, Hackable, Self Winding, 38hr Power Reserve
- Case Material: Brushed 316L Marine Grade Stainless Steel with Polished Accents
- Weight: 192g on Bracelet Extras: Custom Pelican Case, Strap/Bracelet Tool, Rubber Strap with Signed Buckle
- Bracelet: Brushed 316L Stainless Steel with Polished Accents, Diver Extension, Milled Clasp with Push Button Release
- Crystal: Domed Sapphire with AR Coating
- Bezel: 120 Click Unidirectional Blue & Black Ceramic, Fully Lumed
- Water Resistance: 100ATM / 1000m / 3300ft
- Lume: Swiss Super Luminova® BGW9
- Crown: Signed, Screw Down Caseback: Signed, Screw Down, Triple Sealed, Individually Numbered Limited Edition
- Warranty: 4 Years Where to Buy: oceaneva.com
- Options:
Black & Green / Black & Blue Batman / Blue / Black / Black & Red Coke / Blue 2 Tone Stainless & Yellow Gold, White Mother of Pearl / Black Mother of Pearl / Blue Mother of Pearl – All with Black Ceramic Bezels
Delivery & Packaging
Delivery of the Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer took just 2 working days to arrive in the UK from the USA. Extremely fast delivery from Oceaneva. Incidentally, Oceaneva actually offer free worldwide shipping via UPS with their entire range of Deep Marine Explorer Pro Divers. The packaging is great by the way, with everything contained in a very nice looking pelican case.
The case itself is extremely well made with the Oceaneva logo on top. It has a intricately cut foam insert that securely contains the watch itself on a cushion, a spare rubber strap with signed polished buckle, a rather nice strap & bracelet tool, a cleaning cloth and the warranty card. Talking of the warranty, the Deep Marine Explorer Pro comes with a rather generous 4 year warranty with 30 day returns. Can’t really complain about that and just shows how confident Oceaneva are of their watches. Very nice indeed!
Advertisement
The Case
The Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer Pro is a watch that is a bit of a behemoth of a thing. It does sit at a manageable diameter of 42mm, however, it’s right on the edge of what I’d call wearable with a lug to lug length of 49.5mm. In my opinion, the lug to lug length is a far more important measurement when it comes to selecting a watch. With my 7″ wrist I generally stick to a lug to lug length of 48mm but as previously mentioned, I can pull off this Oceaneva, but only just. I’m actually wearing the Deep Marine Explorer while I write this review and I have to say, it is very comfortable and not top-heavy at all as my initial impressions thought it would be.
The case, bezel and crown are all stainless steel of the usual 316L variety. The overall height, with the inclusion of the domed sapphire crystal I measured at 14.8mm. The signed crown at the 3’oclock position has a great feel to it, nice and smooth when in use with no cross-threading. There’s also a helium escape valve at 9 o’clock. Normally these are pointless, especially when added to a “desk diver” but on a 1000m pro diver it is definitely a useful addition.
The case itself is entirely brushed with only the bezel being polished. It is quite slab-sided though with not much curve to the lugs. There is no chamfered edges either, nothing fancy like that on this watch, but that’s the point, it’s 100% designed to be a diver / toolwatch first and foremost. Nothing more.
Bracelet
The rather long bracelet comes fitted to the watch with a spare 22mm rubber strap supplied in the box. The rubber strap seems nicely made, comes with a matching signed buckle and looks like a decent pairing to the Deep Marine Explorer. I didn’t fit it to the watch though, as we’re all about the bracelet here!
When I first took the watch out of the box and lifted it up to have a good look around it, my first words were when I seen the length of the bracelet was, “Who the f**k is this for, Dwayne Johnson? The Hulk? Arnold Schwarzenegger maybe!!?” I actually thought I could get both of my wrists in there. 
Resizing the bracelet was easy enough, with it being equipped with the normal push-pins. However, for me, I had to take out a load of links to get the thing to be anywhere near to fitting my average size wrist. An excellent bracelet too, with great fit & finish but let down by poor adjust-ability. No half-links and no micro-adjustment either. Shame really, as I really like the general aesthetic of it.
One more niggle for me is the way the bracelet attaches to the watch head. That first mid-link that you can see in the above image is huge and makes the overall length of the watch much bigger than it needs to be. The watch would fit a lot more people if they reversed that link to like a male-female set up if you get what I mean. Oh yeah, one last thing, I’m not a fan of the polished center links on the bracelet either, I can see those getting scratched pretty easily over not a lot of time. OK, sorry guys ‘n’ girls, that’s my wee mini-rant over.
Movement
The chosen movement for the Deep Marine Explorer is the Sellita SW200-1 automatic. An excellent calibre that is a 28,800vph, 4Hz smooth sweep, 26 jewel movement with self winding, hacking and quick date function. Checking the accuracy after running the Deep Marine Explorer, mainly on my wrist and occasionally in my watch winder, I was more than happy with the accuracy, with it showing an average of +5.9 seconds per day. Sweet!
The movement has an anti-shock system that will protect its inner workings during a ton of different activities or impacts. The movement also has a 38 hour power reserve meaning a fully wound Deep Marine Explorer will last for almost 2 days while off the wrist. The Sellita SW200 movement is by far my favourite compared to competitors. It’s very accurate from my experience, very quiet, reliable and easy enough to get serviced when the need arrives.
Dial & Bezel
The Deep Marine Explorer has a 120 click unidirectional bezel with a ceramic insert. It is of superb quality with everything lining up perfectly. The bezel action is absolutely fantastic too, if a little stiff when new but has zero backplay. No complaints at all, just observations.
The dial itself has very neatly applied indices all around with loads of BGW9 lume as do the minute and hour hands. The text is all very neatly printed. There is also a date complication at 3 o’clock, although I wish they’d have put the date at 6 o’clock, with a black background instead of a white one.
Conclusion
A fantastic watch that does tick all the boxes in the specification department. I really do like this diver from Oceaneva. It is extremely well made with great fit & finish and it is worth the $799 USD asking price. However, it’s the lack of adjust-ability when trying to resize the bracelet that slightly ruins it for me.
Aside from the issue with the bracelet, I can thoroughly recommend the Deep Marine Explorer Pro. Definitely a superb effort from Oceaneva. The watch would have got a 9/10 if only the bracelet had at least micro-adjustments. The bracelet doesn’t take away though from what is an excellent watch.
8.5/10
This watch looks great, in fact it appears to be a clone of my Neymar with some minor modifications to the clasp. That said, my Neymar has the ETA movement instead of the SW200. The band has push pins like the Neymar and for a$399 watch that is fine, but for $700+ it seems a bit much. I’d love to know if this watch is indeed any different than my Neymar.
Hello Jonh,
The Neymar does not use ETA movement, it uses Seiko NH35. The Oceaneva has more built quality in my opinion.
I need another watch like I need a case of the clap (know what I’m sayin here guys?)
I just purchased a NOS one on greedbay for $395 (too good a deal to pass up), haven’t gotten it yet but am certainly looking forward to receiving it!
I have several different Japanese dive watches, a Rotary Super 7 (my main go to), as well as several TAG/Heuer & Seamasters and although this is pretty much a different kind of tool than the TAGs and Omegas I’m looking forward to comparing this to my current stable.