Oris is known for making serious dive watches. The Oris Divers Sixty Five is based on a vintage design, and there are several iterations of this watch, each with its own appeal. We’re going to take a look at the latest version, the blue-dial Sixty Five, and you can decide whether it’s worth taking the plunge.
A redesigned classic
Many watchmakers today pay tribute to their past, the styling and details of their new designs evoking a bygone era. The Divers Sixty Five is one such heritage piece, a callback to a popular, decades-old design.
At 42 mm, the new blue-dial version is a bit larger than its 40 mm predecessors. It’s 13.2 mm thick and weighs almost 450 grams. While it’s not a tiny watch, it’s highly wearable and its dimensions are perfect for diving.
Case
The stainless steel case extends 48 mm lug-to-lug and has space for a 20 mm strap. The coin-edge bezel is your standard unidirectional dive type with anti-clockwise rotation, ratcheting with a satisfying click. The outer ring is highly legible (something you always want in a dive watch), glossy black with white numerals and hash marks. It’s also treated with diamond-like carbon (DLC). DLC is a coating that is far more resistant to scratches and abrasion than ordinary steel or PVD coatings.
The anti-reflective sapphire window is domed on both sides, which provides excellent magnification and readability from all angles. Unfortunately—and despite the AR coating—this also produces a fair amount of glare, so there is a tradeoff, but the bubble-like quality of the window certainly has a vintage nautical feel to it.
As you’d expect of a dive watch, the crown is a screw-down type, and it’s quite accessible and easy to manipulate. The caseback is tapered and engraved with the Oris shield logo, but there are no visible screws—a design choice that may have contributed to the middling 100-meter water resistance. This may not be the most robust diver available, but it’s more than enough for recreational dives and certainly enough for your backyard pool, should you find yourself in a round of Marco Polo.
Dial
The watch face is a deep, rich blue and rounded at the edges, which adds to the dome-like quality of the sapphire window. Oversized dots and rectangles serve as hour markers, and along the outer rim of the dial are individual minute markers. The date window is at three o’ clock. It’s slightly trapezoidal, which feels like a slightly whimsical touch, but offers a standard black-on-white display.
This is a three-hand watch. The minute and hour hands are thick and sword-like with plenty of lume, and the needle-thin second hand also contains a dot of luminescence. Overall, this is a very legible watch. The hour markers are all lumed and show up brilliantly in the dark with a warm green. Even the pip on the bezel lights up.
Sixty-Five Movement
The Divers Sixty Five runs on the Oris caliber 733 base, SW 200-1 automatic movement. It’s a highly accurate Swiss movement with a 38-hour power reserve and 26 jewels, vibrating at 4 hertz or 28,800 vph. As movements go, it would be difficult to ask for more precision.
Strap
The blue-dial version of the Divers Sixty Five comes with a coarse-grain brown leather strap with a tang clasp. It looks great next to the protruding silver lugs and blue watch face, but the design is so versatile, you really have a number of choices, both in color and type of strap.
Of course, any 21 mm strap will do, but the official Oris options include (in addition to the brown leather) a black rubber strap, a green-and-black striped NATO strap, and a steel bracelet. Your choice may depend on what you want to do with this watch. So if you truly intend to take this watch diving, you may want to opt for the rubber strap—the standard leather probably won’t do well in the water and may not even fit over a wetsuit sleeve. If you’re wearing it to the office—a viable option with this surprisingly luxurious watch–then a silver bracelet might be more your style.
A stylish, versatile watch with vintage charm
The Divers Sixty Five was already a popular offering from Oris, and the redesigned 42 mm version builds on that success while paying homage to its proud past. While not a deep-sea kind of dive watch, it’s more than capable for your recreational dives and dips in the pool. The accurate Swiss movement ensures precise timekeeping, while the variety of available bands and bracelets ensure a comfortable fit and stylish appearance. The Divers Sixty Five is a sport watch with a luxury watch feel, something you can wear to the beach or to work with equal fashion appeal.
To have a look at Oris’s entire range of mechanical timepiece head over to their official website here.
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