Review: Aragon Divemaster 40 GMT Full Lume

The latest edition to Aragon’s Divemaster stable is the GMT 40. This comes in a host of different colour schemes and choosing your favourite colour just might be the hardest thing about purchasing this watch.

I played it safe and settled on the the Batman variant with full lume dial, which I'd call an off white or cream colour. It has a nice warm feel to it and is well balanced with the indices.

The watch is the smallest in the Aragon collection which they quote at 40mm; however I measured it at 39.5mm. Excluding the bezel the actual watch face is 28.2mm. This is one of the measurements I’d love to see manufacturers quoting as I think it plays a large bearing in a watches wearability, and in particular it’s legibility. One complaint I'd have against some other Aragon watches is that the bezels can be overly large compared to the watch face, but in this instance they've got the specs perfect.

Other key specs are:

• 45.0mm lug to lug

• 13.0mm case height

• It tips the scales at 94.1 grams on the supplied strap although is quoted at 85g on the Aragon website.

As far as the numbers are concerned this one hits all the marks and wears very nicely.

The movement is the Seiko NH34 GMT with 24 jewels. It's a little too early for me to make a call on this but I will say it is quite smooth to wind, comes with hacking seconds, date and GMT functions. All pretty much what you’d expect and so far its not losing any time.

The watch has a sapphire crystal and a sapphire bezel insert with lumed indexes. There is no mention of AR coating on the Aragon website; however it has clearly been applied liberally as there is next to no bounce back from light sources and legibility is excellent.

The watch also has an exhibition case back (again with sapphire crystal) and includes the now standard Aragon blue rotor which I’m a fan of (it’s a simple but a nice addition) and has a nice metallic shimmer to it.

As you’d expect from a 200m water resistance model, it also has a screw down crown and comes standard on a better than expected silicon strap. There’s a video online of Wing (the Aragon owner/designer) dropping one if these in the ocean, so you can see it’s passed a real world test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDqkAMlZ3LM

Getting back to the strap, this is one area I was a little worried about, but it’s much better in person than the website pictures would suggest. I actually pre-ordered an alternative strap from Straps Co, but I needn’t have worried as this is more than sufficient, is very supple and is nice on the wrist. The colour of the blue strap unfortunately is not the same shade of blue as the bezel and there's no quick release, but considering the price I can look past this and with another strap on the way it is not going to bother me one iota.

Case finishing is exactly what I’ve come to expect from Aragon and it's as good as any other dive watch getting around. Everything is finished cleanly and it screams tool watch. No complaints here at all.

Although it already has a good lug to lug size, they’ve also gone for nicely turned down lugs which further aids the wearing experience.

Initial brightness of the full lume dial is excellent, but there is a quick drop off. Despite this initial drop, the lume does hold for quite some time so overall I was satisfied with it. It was still luming away in the middle of the night.

The crown, hands and indices are finished in green; whilst the dial and bezel indexes are finished in blue (or mint as Wing referred to it).

I’ve owned 5 different Aragon's now with sizes ranging from this 40mm version right through to the mammoth 50mm Enforcer, I’ve tried most of the sizes in between and this is the best wearing of the bunch.

If you’ve been considering an Aragon but have been put off previously because of the large sizes of most of their collection, then you no longer have an excuse. At 39.5mm (officially 40mm) this will fit almost any wrist and with the prices on offer, you will be very hard pressed to find more bang for your buck.

This is a watch that wants to be worn and one that you can wear free of guilt for fear of damaging it. I’m more than impressed with this watch and it definitely gets my seal of approval. I might even just go back and get the yellow version I was on the fence about.

Overall I give this 2 big thumbs up 👍👍