There are lots of dive watches on the market, but choosing the right one for everyday wear can be tricky. You want a timepiece that references its heritage with dive watch hallmarks—features like a rotating bezel. At the same time, you don’t want a watch that looks too utilitarian or weighs down your wrist (it’ll look strange when paired with anything besides a wetsuit). It’s a difficult balance to strike, but the Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue nails it. Part of Tudor’s famed lineup of Black Bay Fifty-Eight dive watches, this handsome blue model combines the best of the brand’s dive watch history with a modern movement and sleek aesthetics that make it perfect for everyday wear.
The Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue has quite a bit of history behind it. The name is a reference to the year 1958, when Tudor released its first dive watch with 200 meters of water resistance: the famed “Big Crown” timepiece, reference 7924. In 1969, Tudor debuted its first diver with a blue dial and bezel, and the color scheme spread across the company’s lineup, leading to the moniker “Tudor Blue.” Those blue watches were also big on performance—the French navy used them as standard-issue equipment for its divers in the 1970s. The late ’60s also saw the appearance of the iconic “snowflake” hand design found on Tudor watches; it’s a detail the company still uses today.
The Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue inherits style DNA from all of these predecessors. Its trim 39mm case evokes the smaller watch sizes common in the 1950s, and its rich navy blue color and snowflake hands are classic Tudor design hallmarks. The modern watch features a tough stainless steel case polished to a satin finish. The domed dial has a grained appearance in navy blue; it features applied hour markers and a matching navy blue bezel insert surrounding it. Like all true divers, the Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue has a rotating bezel for measuring elapsed time underwater, and it also includes Super LumiNova-coated indices and hands for improved legibility in low-light conditions.
Like the rest of the Black Bay Fifty-Eight lineup, this watch is made even more versatile (style-wise) thanks to several strap options: a stainless-steel bracelet, a blue “soft touch” fabric strap, and a blue jacquard fabric strap with a silver stripe. The jacquard option is particularly noteworthy: These straps are woven in France on vintage 19th-century looms. How’s that for heritage?
The Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue features Tudor’s powerful MT5402 automatic movement for highly accurate timekeeping. The MT5402 is COSC-certified for accuracy even in demanding conditions, but Tudor goes beyond those standards and ensures that each watch falls within -2 and +4 seconds’ variation per day once fully assembled. Better yet, the watch has a massive power reserve of 70 hours, so you can take it off on Friday, pick it up on Monday, and it’ll still be ticking.
Vintage looks with modern performance—that’s a dive watch we can get behind.
[$3,800; tudorwatch.com]
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