Seiko Arnie Review: Pretty High Tech

Picture this: it's the summer of 1987, and you're at your local department store looking for a watch. You want something of quality, but you feel form should always follow function, no ifs, ands, or buts. You hate those yuppie fuckers who are eating up all the GMT-Master 16758s, Omega Constellations and Concord Deliriums. To them, a fine watch equates to little more than an accessory to their lavish, degenerate lifestyles. You want something that'll work forever, not a toy to show off to uninterested girls at the bar.

Among the many, many watches in the display case, you find one that stands out. It's bigger than most of the other watches, comes on a silicone strap, and has two buttons at 8 and 10 o'clock. It also has a small digital screen that the 11-1 o'clock positions would normally occupy, and comes with a black diver's bezel, along with what seems to be some kind of weird case protector held in with screws at the 9, 2 and 4 o'clock positions. You could've sworn you'd seen it somewhere recently, but you can't quite pinpoint it. But as you jog your noggin, you remember that you saw it on a very certain Austrian bodybuilder's wrist a few weeks ago, in that movie where he fights that weird-looking alien. You grin slightly and ask the attendant to open the case, and you buy the watch with the money you earned working at the local amusement park. It serves you well for many years, being your constant companion for the whole time. It was on your wrist during your snorkeling vacation in Mexico, when you shoveled snow after intense blizzards, and countless 4th of Julys when you made some mean burgers. Even now, in the 2020s, with a faded, scratched bezel, chipped crystal and countless battery changes, you still can't help but love it.

The watch in question, the Seiko H558-5000 "Arnie", wasn't just something people ogled at in Sears; it was one of the seminal watches of the 80s, and was in of itself revolutionary. It was the first dive watch to have both an analog and digital display, which, along with the basic time, came with an alarm and a stopwatch. It even incorporated the Tuna shroud that, along with the Turtle, became synonymous with Seiko and their well-made but reasonably priced sports watches. Everyone from James Cameron to 007 to military personnel to Everest summiteers to (of course) Arnold Schwarzenegger wore one. It went on polar expeditions and military operations; it was simultaneously a movie star and a pioneer, both in what it offered and where it went.

Now, in 2022, the original Arnie is quite a pricey watch. For the most part you'll be paying over a grand for a decent H558, which is a lot for a diver that can't reliably provide 150m of water resistance at all times, or whose alarm doesn't work properly anymore. But Seiko, in the midst of killing off the SARB triplets (017, 033, 035) and the SKX in 2019, decided to reissue this cult timepiece, introducing it at the last Baselworld in 2019. Although some slight changes have been made, the watch largely resembles and functions identically to the original. The one I have, the SNJ025, is the most faithful to the H558, although Seiko also makes a PADI version and one with a gilt colorway, along with some other ones that play more fast and loose with the original design, such as the "Saf-Arnies".

With a diameter of 47.5mm and a thickness of 14.7mm, the Arnie wasn't designed for the skinny-wristed. However, with a stubby lug-to-lug length of 50.4mm, it doesn’t wear Invicta big, if you catch my drift. The shroud and crowns/pushers also take up a lot of real estate, and as such the unshrouded case itself is only about 42mm wide. Consequently, it wears very well on my 7.5 inch wrist despite the intimidating diameter, and is suitable for those with average to larger sized wrists. Even though James Bond did wear an Arnie in A View to a Kill, wearing one under a tight sleeve will prove challenging, provided you’re ballsy enough to wear the Arnie formally like a Seamaster.

Due to the inherent nature of LCD digital watches, the SNJ025 is quartz. Unlike the original, however, the modern Arnie comes equipped with a solar movement, effectively eliminating the need for battery changes. As the name implies the watch’s caliber, the H851, is charged by any source of light. Although you could use something like a lamp or a lightbulb to charge it, doing so takes far longer than sunlight, which charges the SNJ025 the quickest. The capacitor might also burn out at some point in the far future (15-20+ years), although that will probably run you less than a service for a mechanical watch. You could also say that it won't be useful in a billion and change years when the sun is gone, but I think by that point the watch will decompose into its bare elements, and the Arnie-and Seiko for that matter-will be all but forgotten history, like the Minoans, the Maya, and the proliferation of Silly Bandz in public schools.

The Arnie is also the only way you can (technically) buy a Tuna-shrouded chronograph/dual timer. Like all Tunas, you can use an Allen wrench to undo the shroud's screws and remove it. This allows you to replace the stock black plastic shroud if it becomes too damaged, and if you so desired, you could replace it with an aftermarket one that comes in a different color or material. Although Seiko does make fully analog display Tunas with both solar and automatic movements, none of them have an additional dual time or chronograph function, and I suspect that they made the Arnie to fill that niche. Seiko does make some serious cash from their products, but I don’t think they’d wanna spend money designing an awkward-looking automatic chronograph Tuna that costs more than a 2008 Honda Accord, in which only 4 people will purchase a year.

Since the Arnie is ISO-6425 compliant, it has all the necessary features that you’d find in any professional diver’s watch. It has a 120-click unidirectional count-up dive bezel with a lume pip at 12, a second hand with a lumed counterbalance, a Hardlex crystal, and a screwdown caseback, along with exceptional Lumibrite lume and even a backlight for the digital screen, although you can’t use it underwater. In addition, the ISO certification ensures that it’s tough enough for serious scuba diving, not to mention everyday life. If you want a truly durable Prospex diver from Seiko, I think the Arnie would be a better choice than one of its mechanical brothers like the Samurai, Monster or Turtle, given that the movement housed inside of the SNJ025 has far fewer moving parts than a 4R36 or 6R35, which means far less things can go wrong inside of it when it’s on the receiving end of some cold, hard Newtonian physics.

Like the original H558, the Arnie comes with two pushers at the 8 and 10 o'clock positions, along with the traditional crown at 3. While the crown is screw-down, the pushers are actually screw-up; in order to actually use them, you have to screw down the crowns towards you, which will then allow you to use the buttons. When unscrewed the buttons will have a black stripe near the top which indicates they are open, thus wholly compromising the water resistance. This is one of the biggest differences between the original Arnie and the H558; whereas the reissue has the secured pushers, the old one had no such protection, basically meaning that you had to know not to push the buttons when in water, or else the H558 would be sent to Davy Jones' locker. When you’re done you just do up the buttons again by turning the crowns away from you, and you’re good to go.

The buttons allow you to select and toggle between modes and, in conjunction with the crown, allow you to adjust the time (both what the analog face displays and the second timezone) and the alarm. The SNJ025 is packed full of useful features; the digital display can display the analog time, the day and date (which also take the month and year into consideration up to 12/31/2100, presumably so you don’t get February 29th on your watch), a second time zone which isn’t slaved to the hands, along with an alarm and a chronograph. The button at 8 usually switches between modes, while the button at 10 activates the backlight and, if held down for a couple of seconds, shows the battery life. These take on different functions when the crown is fully pulled out; for instance, the button at 8 selects the year, month, day, hours, minutes or seconds when you set the main time, while holding down the button at 10 for a few seconds causes the hands to go into alignment mode, which allows you to perfectly align the hands with the indices. Pressing down the two crowns in any mode but the alarm simultaneously allows you to preview the alarm and turn on the hourly chime, and doing so while in the alarm mode turns it on or off. You can also fully reset the watch by pulling out the crown in time setting mode and pressing both pushers at the same time for several seconds, which’ll reset the time to 12:00am on 1/1/2019 and erase your alarm and second timezone. Further still, in chronograph mode, you use the pusher at 10 to start and stop the timer with a quick push, while holding it down resets the chrono. This effectively prevents you from using the backlight in conjunction with the chronograph, which kinda sucks, but is in no way a dealbreaker for me.

Something interesting also happens when you set the main time on the Arnie. Instead of being able to finely manipulate the hour and minute hands like a normal watch, the whole movement stops until you’ve set the time on the digital display and pushed down the crown. After doing so, the three hands on the dial move on their own accord to their respective positions, right down to the second. It’s something I personally find very satisfying, and despite what mechanical watch fetishists say about quartz movements, it's something that would otherwise be impossible with an automatic or hand-wound watch, unless Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin or Patek Phillippe comes out with some absurdly expensive flex piece that costs more than an entire street in The Villages.

In addition, if the Arnie is exposed to minimal light for 2 hours, it enters sleep mode in order to conserve battery life. In sleep mode, the Arnie does display the time, but only through the hour and minute hands; the seconds and all the digital display functions turn themselves off. The watch will then wake up after being exposed to light for a few seconds, with the second hand and the digital display reactivating.

The Arnie’s general layout resembles a prototypical Seiko diver, albeit with a few changes that carry over from its action hero dad. For one, the indices at 12, 3, 6 and 9 lack the little outlines that the SKX has, and the hour and minute hands lack their syringe tips. In addition every indice from 2 to 10 o’clock has the 24 hour/military time inscribed on the chapter ring (1400 to 2200 hours to be precise), something that was actually on the original H558. Although it wasn't explicitly made for the military like a Marathon MSAR/GSAR, I'm pretty sure the Arnie would be right at home with those watches, so it's cool Seiko printed the military time on the dial.

The caseback isn't anything too special, but it gets the job done. Like other Seiko divers it comes with the wave logo engraved in the center with other pertinent information circling it, such as the caliber, reference and case numbers, water resistance, certifications and so on.

The SNJ025 also comes with a remake of another Seiko legend: the GL-831 strap. Appearing on the original H558 along with the 6306, 6309 and 7548 divers, it's famed for its comfort and rarity; due to the age of the original straps, finding an original one in good condition is about as rare as finding a Discord moderator who's showered in the past week. However, Seiko sells all the Arnie reissues with a new and updated version, which now has a metal keeper, instead of a rubber one like the original. It's also quite long, since it's meant to be worn over wetsuits; I can just about wear it on the 5th hole on the strap, and even then I have a bit of material loose. If it is too long for your wrist, though, you can remove the strap easily using the drilled lugs, and replacing them with something else. In a weird way the Arnie is a rugged strap monster; I wouldn't go as far as putting a lizard grain strap on it but the SNJ would look great with a NATO or even a leather Zulu strap. Personally I think you'd be hard pressed to find a strap that suits the Arnie as well as the GL-831, so I reckon you should invest in Uncle Seiko's version of it, which comes in shorter sizes for a less tooly, more day-to-day fit.

Although I love the SNJ025, it isn't perfect. There is a bit of a learning curve to all the functions of the watch, even if you're more intimate with digital watches. It's also not nearly as versatile as some of the other divers in its price range; for $25 less than the SNJ's MSRP, you can get a Lorier Neptune, a classy, vintage-inspired diver with the same amount of water resistance (in theory, according to who you ask). Some people also might take offense to the presence of Hardlex in a watch that costs $525 on Seiko's website, and at least $375 at most other Seiko ADs (even though Hardlex is technically better for professional divers than sapphire). The bezel action, while more than competent, doesn't feel as reassuring as some of the other external bezel Prospexes.

Even with these problems, I still feel that the Arnie and the Tissot PRX are the best affordable reissues you can buy. Whereas the PRX gives you essentially everything that's hot in the watch market right now for less than $1000 (save for that weird one with the fluted 14 karat gold bezel), the Arnie brings back a cult classic Seiko without skimping on what made it great to begin with. Even though it looks like it came straight from the 1980s, Seiko made sure that it was tough and bursting with all sorts of modes and functions, not a delicate watch box queen like an original H558 is today. They designed today's Arnie so that it'll be just like its dad: a great, functional watch that'll last for years, even decades; it's basically a G-Shock for people who don't like Casio's design language. And in an age where we know all the tech and gadgets we'll buy will inevitably see a dump or a recycling center, that's wholly reassuring.