A Heritage Brand Just Launched the Perfect Affordable Mid-Century Dive Watch

Most watch enthusiasts are pretty familiar with the brands that established the modern dive watch category in the 1950s and ’60s, namely Rolex, Blancpain and Doxa.

One brand that probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves for the role it played in helping to popularize the dive watch in its early days is Squale. Founded in Italy in 1959, Squale patented a waterproof dive watch case that same year and spent the next two-plus decades producing not only its own dive watches, but also providing rugged dive watch cases to over a dozen other brands, most notably Blancpain and Doxa.

Today, Squale, which is now based in Switzerland, has a catalog full of highly capable dive watches, including many that are vintage-inspired. However, none have captured my attention like the newly unveiled Sub-37 Legend. Not only is this my favorite Squale watch, but it’s one of the most perfect vintage-themed dive watches I’ve ever seen.

Squale

Take my money

Look, I get that a lot of people are over vintage-inspired dive watches. I thought I was too, honestly. But there is no denying the beauty of this new Squale. I mean … look at it! I don’t know that you can make a better-looking diver.

The case is in stainless steel and built to 1959-inspired proportions, with a diameter of just 37mm and a lug-to-lug measurement of 45.5mm. That sounds small, but it’s thematically correct for the vintage styling, and the Tudor Black Bay 54 has already proven that a 37mm dive watch is perfectly wearable in today’s modern world. What’s more, the Squale should wear a bit larger than its dimensions suggest, given that the bezel actually measures 38.5mm across.

Squale

Speaking of the 120-click unidirectional bezel, it’s my favorite design detail on the watch. It’s fully graduated for a more symmetrical, mil-spec look, with a triangle at 12:00 and Arabic numerals for 15, 30 and 45 minutes. Every five minutes is marked in Super-LumiNova Old Radium lume, with the individual minute markings in white. The bezel has a coin edge with a K1 mineral insert for an old-school, bakelite appearance. I’d prefer to see sapphire here, but the mineral crystal helps keep the price down.

Going back to the case, it’s mirror-polished with straight, faceted lugs and has a screw-down crown with no crown guards. It has a solid, screw-in caseback and is water-resistant to an impressive 300m. Despite this, the watch measures just 11.2mm thick, which is quite svelte for a diver boasting such a robust depth rating. That thickness includes the box sapphire crystal (it’s just 10.7mm without it), which features a blue-tinted anti-reflective coating that gives the watch a luxe look.

Squale

The dial is simple, classic and highly legible. It’s matte black with traditional dive watch indices in Super-LumiNova Old Radium, with a free-floating minute track in white. The indices almost look like they’re applied, but they aren’t; the lume is just piled on really thick. The fencepost hour and minute hands and lollipop seconds hand have fauxtina lume too, and the dial is double-signed with Squale’s modern logo at 12:00, and its vintage shark logo at 6:00. Above the shark are two lines of text in cursive — “Automatic, 30 atmos” — which also looks very retro.

The movement inside is the Sellita Cal. 200-1, a no-date spec of the everyday Swiss automatic workhorse. It’s nothing to write home about, and the power reserve is only 38 hours, but it’s a dependable movement that’s common and easy to work on, and it keeps this watch way more affordable than it looks.

Finally, there’s the strap, which again Squale got right on the money for a ’50s/’60s-style diver. It’s black rubber, but rather than going for a typical Tropic strap, the brand went the extra mile with an Italian-made Bonetto vulcanized rubber strap. It’s a ladder style with oversized ventilation holes and a huge taper, terminating in a steel pin buckle.

Squale

Availability and pricing

Um, can you tell I love this watch? This is really everything I want from a vintage-inspired diver. It’s backed up by real history, it’s astoundingly beautiful and its compact size perfectly matches the aesthetic.

I love the lack of a date, the lack of crown guards, the full lume and full graduations on the bezel, the unique strap, and while many decry fauxtina in all its forms, I think the Old Radium lume looks fantastic here. It just gives a much warmer appearance than white lume would. I even love the polished case, as I think it amps up the Blancpain Fifty Fathom vibes and is a better match for the design.

Thankfully, the Sub-37 Legend is not a limited edition, though each piece is individually numbered on the caseback. Presumably, this marks the start of a Sub-37 collection, which is pretty exciting … though hard to see how Squale will improve from here after hitting a grand slam its first time up to bat.

The price, by the way, is extremely reasonable at just $1,750. I can’t think of a diver I’d buy for even twice that amount.

Squale

Squale Sub-37 Legend

Specs

Case Size	37mm
Movement	Sellita Cal. SW200-1 automatic
Water Resistance	300m

• $1,750 at Squale

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