Since its rebirth in 2020, Aquastar has been churning out faithful reeditions and reimaginings of the dive watches the brand cut its teeth on in the 1960s and ’70s.
Earlier this year, the brand launched the Benthos Heritage II — a scaled-down, up-spec’d version of the company’s flagship mid-century diver that imagines how the original watch might have evolved had it never gone out of production.
Now, Aquastar is once again retooling the classic Benthos 500, this time cooking up a tougher, more purpose-built take on what was already a very legitimate tool watch.
Going pro
Aquastar’s latest diver is the Benthos Professional, which the brand says it spent years developing based on feedback from professional and commercial divers. Despite that, it’s not too far removed from the brand’s previous efforts and largely comes across as a hybrid between the original 1970 Benthos 500, the aforementioned Benthos Heritage II and a contemporary professional dive watch.
The watch features the same basic design and case size as the 1970 original. It’s 42mm across the case and 47mm lug-to-lug, but it is slightly thinner than the original at a still relatively beefy 13.7mm thick. This makes the watch feel like a more rugged tool than the Benthos Heritage II, which aimed for more of an everyday-wearable size of 40mm x 44mm x 11.9mm.
