Worn & Wound
Year in Review: the Best Dive Watches of 2025
When I started writing about watches for a living, it seemed like every watch was a dive watch. I’m only slightly exaggerating. Six years ago, we were entering the height of vintage dive watch reissue fever, and things have only begun to slow down on that front in a noticeable way in the last year, or thereabouts. So when it came time to look at the year in divers and pick the five best, surveying the landscape really drove home a few important points. First, dive watches are no longer the center of watch culture. I’m not exactly sure what is (but I have some thoughts, and we’ll get to them in a later article), but divers simply do not dominate the new release calendar or the thoughts and wishes of enthusiasts the way they did a few short years ago. The other realization I had in compiling this list is that the players in the dive watch landscape are shifting. Sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically. The brands represented here (and, more apt, not represented) tell a big part of the story in dive watches in 2025. This year end list (and others you’ll see in these pages leading up to the end of 2025) is not meant to be exhaustive or definitive, but is more of a personal reflection on how I saw the year in a particular category. Don’t worry, you’ll get other perspectives soon from other members of our team. I specifically wanted to write about divers because, well, I’m not really a dive watch guy, and I thought it might be interesting and a fun challeng...
