Omega Seamaster Diver 300M Automatic Stainless Steel / Blue / Bracelet Review

The Omega 2552.80.00 was released in 1996, a date remembered as one of the most successful product placement stories masterfully engineered by a certain JC Biver, then at Omega: the 007 film franchise. I am an eighties boy, so the nineties are my coming-of-age decade, and Golden Eye is its poster child, but I digress; we are to talk about a watch, aren't we? And a bit of context never hurts.

My edition is a midsize model; the proportions are as follows: 36.25mm diameter, 12 mm thickness, 18 mm lug width for 300m of water resistance (as a professional desk diver, I feel sorted). The steel case features a guarded signed crown of the screw-down type, a (controversial according to some, different strokes for different folks) helium escape valve and a replaceable graduated unidirectional silver bezel. The dial is marine blue with a wave pattern and a 3 o'clock date window. The indices are printed but feature lume, just like the famous skeleton hands.

The movement is COSC-certified ETA 2892-A2 or, in Omega's parlance, 1120 calibre. The last time I got the watch checked by my watchmaker, the clock still ran within the imposed parameters (-4 to +6 seconds per day). That is standing the test of time for you people. A quick segue: In my professional world, we prefer to look at assets in terms of total cost of ownership over their cost acquisition. By doing so, we get to make a better-informed decision. Can that logic apply to timepieces? I would argue yes, and my Seamaster proves my point, barring the continuous above-inflation price increases.

The Omega 2552.80.00 is subtle, iconic, and adept at changing guises. I mean, it is a strap monster (a tired bracelet by now and Nato and Milanese mainly) whose accuracy performance after 27 years surpasses that of many modern watches. It is a staple of my rotation and one of the few watches exempt from the risk of being culled at some point. Over the years, I had to service the watch twice. The bracelet looks sorry at this stage, but it is nothing major that won't be solved with some TLC. I have just been a bit busy/lazy lately.