To me, blue was the color of choice for dive watches. But watch collecting is, if nothing else, an exercise in evolving taste, and I suppose it was inevitable that something would come along and knock me out of my lane. That knock eventually came courtesy of Tudor and the Pelagos 39. In his Owner’s Review of the Tudor Black Bay ‘Burgundy,’ Zach talked about how the right watch can flip a switch, waking you up to possibilities previously discounted. To steal a line from Zach, the Tudor Pelagos 39 “magically activated” a very specific need for me. After years of collecting, I was not just open to the idea of a ‘basic’ dive watch — I needed one desperately.
I was completely taken by the Pelagos 39 but, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, this isn’t a review of that watch. The Pelagos 39 ignited a clear want for me, but in the end, it wasn’t exactly the right watch, at least not for me. The Pelagos 39 had made it very clear that I had room in my heart for a thoroughly modern, simple, black, dive watch; but as I spent more time with the watch, I wasn’t totally sold.
But even as I moved on from the Pelagos 39, the itch that the watch inspired never quite went away. It was in that context that I walked through the doors of Windup Watch Fair NYC in the Fall of 2022, and it was with newly opened eyes that I encountered — in person for the first time — Vertex Watches. I was smitten.
My Everyday Watch
I’ve now owned the Vertex M60 Aqualion ND for about a year and a half, and I’m not kidding when I say it has transformed how I collect watches. I didn’t buy the Vertex right when I first saw it — I finally picked mine up in the summer of 2023 when the right pieces fell into place — but since I got my hands on my Aqualion, it’s been what I’ve come to affectionately call my ‘home base watch.’
It’s certainly the watch I wear the most. Unless I have something in for review demanding wrist time, I probably have the Vertex on two out of every three days. It’s the watch I reach for whenever I just need a watch, and every watch is considered in relation to the Vertex, to the point that in the weeks and months after I got my Vertex, I cleared out my watch drawer significantly.
Gone were many of the Seiko and micro-brand dive watches, and out the window went most of my rugged, everyday tool watches (though a few of those have since crept back in). Finding a watch I was truly comfortable wearing day in and day out, paired with the admittedly fortunate privilege of getting to experience new watches regularly, made me more comfortable owning fewer watches.
It also, possibly counter-intuitively, made me enjoy my other watches more. Having an easy everyday choice makes the moments when I choose to put something else on feel more deliberate, and with that intentionality comes (at least for me) a greater sense of enjoyment. If I were to offer up an analogy, my Vertex is like a really good 24-70mm zoom lens.
Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, as many photographers will tell you, a great 24-70mm zoom lens is a good choice for just about anything (though not necessarily perfect for everything). When I was getting into photography, the single piece of gear advice I got more than any other was to get the best 24-70mm zoom I could, and then figure everything else out later. It’s the definition of a versatile lens, as easily able to take a wide landscape shot as a handsome portrait.
But for as good and versatile as a 24-70mm may be, it will never be as perfect for portraiture as an 85mm, or the go-to for a street photographer who prizes a wide field of view and compact footprint. Specific tools are awesome (I for one would be lost without a dedicated macro lens), but they often come up short when faced with a situation they weren’t intended for. It’s in those spaces, on those days where you don’t quite know what’s coming, where a great zoom lens shines.
The same is true of the Vertex. In a world where James Bond has convinced us all that we can wear a dive watch with a tux, the Vertex Aqualion is the perfect companion — a watch I can wear just about everywhere, even if it’s not always the most perfect fit. I hate to fall back on a tired trope, but the reality is the Vertex Aqualion is a watch I could wear to the beach in the morning, and dress up for dinner at night.
An Object Lesson In Getting the Details Right
So what is it about the Aqualion that makes it so damned good? Simply put, everything. To the smallest detail, the Vertex Aqualion makes a case for itself as one of the most well-considered and well-executed watches I’ve yet come across, handily competing with similar watches costing many multiples of the Vertex — and it’s hard not to compare it to other watches. The straightforwardness of the Vertex’s design almost demands it because there’s really no getting around the fact that, at least from a distance, the Aqualion could easily be mistaken for any number of immensely popular dive watches. But a faraway look isn’t nearly enough to understand the magic of the Aqualion — for that, you need to get up close.
Spec-wise, the Aqualion is everything you would want from a modern dive watch. Its 40mm stainless steel case is water resistant to a completely unnecessary 600M, its no-date Sellita SW300-1 (with no phantom position) is COSC-certified, and — at 13.88mm thick and 49mm lug-to-lug — the Aqualion is, for a watch of its ilk, perfectly sized. That’s not to say that it wears small; on the contrary, the Aqualion, despite relatively compact dimensions, projects as a big watch. Part of this is down to its bezel, which extends beyond the bounds of the case and measures in at just under 41.5mm on my calipers. It’s also not exactly what I would describe as a thin watch, but it’s by no means thick (it’s thinner than a Pelagos and comparable to a Pelagos FXD with a pass-through strap).
But honestly, I don’t really care about any of that stuff. Sure, I like that the M60 is as water resistant as I’ll ever need and that its movement keeps as good (if not better) time than just about anything I own without a quartz movement or a radio antenna, but these aren’t things I consider on a day to day basis — I had to look up the watch’s movement just to get through writing the last paragraph. And as for the size, I know this won’t be a watch for everyone. I know plenty of people who will say this watch is too big, and I even know a few who will argue it should be bigger, but this is my watch, and to me, on my wrist, the Aqualion is perfect.
Besides, where the Aqualion really sets itself apart from the pack isn’t on a spec sheet. As I’ve already mentioned, it’s all in the details with this watch. The 60-click bezel, with its aggressive knurling pattern taken off the rear sight adjuster of the WWII-era British Bren light machine gun, is easily among the best I’ve ever encountered. It’s precise, easy to grip, and moves effortlessly while still managing not to slip. Plus it sounds amazing — seriously, the click on this thing is incredible. I use the bezel on my dive watches pretty constantly through the day, and a year and a half on, it’s still an absolute joy. And did I mention that the matte ceramic bezel is fully lumed?
If I haven’t, I really should, because lume is one of the killer features of the Aqualion (hell, it’s one of the killer features of any Vertex. I’ve never owned a watch that glows so brightly, and so consistently. It feels like a second in the sun brings with it a soft green glow that lasts for hours. The markers are made of solid chunks of X1 Grade Super-LumiNova — both the brightest and longest-lasting grade of Super-LumiNova — while more traditional implementations are used on the hands, bezel, and even on the bracelet. This welcome overabundance of lume has been a Vertex signature since the brand relaunched nearly a decade ago, and it’s hard to put into words how excited I still get when I see this thing lit up.
The three-dimensional luminous markers also help to add a welcome bit of depth to the watch’s dial. The layout of the Aqualion’s dial is relatively sterile, with just three lines of dial text (including a red depth rating), and little else besides the markers and the minute track. The Aqualion drops the full Arabic numerals found on most other Vertex models and instead opts for Arabic numerals paired with small triangles at the cardinal positions, and baton markers at every hour. All this is rounded out with a pair of modern sword hands, and a teardrop seconds hand.
Out of the box, the Aqualion presents you with a few options for how to wear it. The watch comes with three strap options: a brilliant and robust three-link bracelet, an extra long navy-blue single-strand nylon woven strap, and an absolutely spectacular black rubber strap. The bracelet and nylon strap are both great, but for my money, the way to go is the rubber strap. As I’ve spoken about before, once I find the right strap combo for a watch, I’m not really one to swap out straps, and the rubber option included with the M60 works so well, I’ve not yet come up with a compelling reason to wear it any other way.
That said, if you do choose to change straps, that’s where you’ll find one of the Aqualion’s sneakiest and best tricks: dual mounting holes for spring bars. Until I got the Aqualion, I had no idea how good an idea this was, but it’s an absolute game-changer. So much about how a watch wears comes down to how its strap is positioned relative to the case. Watches whose mounting points are too high and tight to the case make pass-through straps a challenge, while the inverse is true for two-piece options. By including both on the Aqualion, Vertex has effectively solved the fitment problem for straps, while also essentially adding micro-adjust to every strap in your strap drawer.
Put all this together, and there’s not one thing about the Aqualion I would change. Actually, that’s not true, there is exactly one thing I would change. The clasp of the bracelet is really hard to use. This may sound more like a compliment than a knock, but the tolerances are just too tight, and it’s hard to open the bracelet clasp. But Vertex has since introduced an updated clasp, one far kinder on its users’ fingers, and Don Cochrane, the brand’s re-founder (and great-grandson of the brand’s original founder) has assured me that the new clasp is compatible with my existing bracelet — it even has micro-adjust. I’ve gotten to try it out on several occasions now and can assure you that it easily solves what was the M60 Aqualion’s only pain point.
A Historically Great Diver
In the 18 months or so since I’ve owned my M60, I’ve gotten to see a lot of people experience a Vertex for the first time, and, without fail, the first thing they notice is — quite simply — nothing specific. Most every time I’ve taken the watch off my wrist and handed it to someone, their immediate response has been “Oh wow, this thing is really good.” And when they do finally get around to noticing something, they all seem to notice something different; with the Aqualion, everyone’s eyes seem to be drawn in a different direction.
Some call out the lume, while others notice the bezel. Still others call out the cohesiveness of the watch or the comfort. For my money, my favorite thing about the Aqualion is how well it synthesizes lessons learned from over half a century of dive watches into a sleek and contemporary package.
It’s hard to deny that the Aqualion owes a lot to dive watches that came before it. The layout of the dial itself reminds me vaguely of early Seamaster divers, and the teardrop seconds hand and Aqualion motif on the caseback do little to shake the Omega connection. And in general, there’s a lot of Submariner and Sea-Dweller at play in the design of the Aqualion. But while the M60 Aqualion ND owes a lot to all these watches and more, in the end, it feels like entirely its own thing. It’s like Don took a Sub, a Pelagos, and a Planet Ocean and rolled them all into one watch, before adding a bit of his own flair and care to the mix.
I can’t say for sure that the Aqualion will always be my home base watch — I know enough to know that my tastes evolve too much for that — but I can say that after a year and a half on my wrist, I’m not even a little bit tired of the M60 Aqualion. Vertex
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