Today, there was a watchfair in Houten/Netherlands. There is currently nothing on my ’shortlist’, but it is only a half an hour drive from the city where I live in, and it’s always nice to meet up with some other watch fanatics. It seemed that the whole Dutch Rolex Forum crew was there. I also shook hands with a few of my forum sponsors, including JK of JK Watchstore.

He showed me this new Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea, a.k.a Rolex Dipsy (ref.116660). Although Rolex is catching up with the orders of this watch, it isn’t a watch that you’ll see often for the coming months. The watch is BIG. At first sight, a lot bigger than my regular Sea-Dweller (ref.16600) and my fairly big IWC Ingenieur (3227-01). However, after trying it on, it actually suited my wrist quite perfectly. This also could be a sign for me to keep a bit more control of my weight ofcourse.

Anyway, the watch looks big and is big. But if you can, try one on to be sure if it suits you or not. On the Basel 2008 pictures and photos (see below) I had seen till now I reckoned that the lettering ‘Original Gas Escape Valve’ and ‘Ring Lock System’ on the innerbezel would annoy me. It didn’t. I actually didn’t even notice it at first, only when I studied the dial/face a bit better. Too bad the photos on the official Rolex site are focussing a bit too much on this lettering. Well, perhaps some people DO like it.

The thickness of the watch suits the large diameter of 43mm. The bracelet is the same as the ‘old’ Sea-Dweller bracelet, until you flip it and see the clasp. The new clasp system is a 100% improvement over the old clasp (that probably wasn’t too hard to achieve). The micro adjustment can be done with minimum effort but pulling the middle part of the GlideLock(r) clasp and re-adjust it. Very nice. The only con I can think of, is the size of the bracelet. In my humble opinion, the bracelet should be a straight bracelet (everywhere the same size) instead of a tapered model. Perhaps a nice rubber diving strap will do the trick I don’t know if the Panerai OEM rubber strap will fit, but that will probably look very cool.

Here are some pictures from JK’s website:

The price of this watch is 7060 Euro (BNIB, 2008) at JK’s watch store.

Additionally, JK sent me some more pictures of the GlideLock clasp.

Tags: 116660, DeepSea, Diver, Rolex, Sea-Dweller

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 15:15 and is filed under WatchTalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.