Quartz / Swiss
Luminox Watches, a US-based watchmaking brand that, besides virtually dominating the segment of “casual activity timekeepers,” also supplies its timepieces to the U.S. military and law-enforcement agencies, has updated its model range with the new Essential Gear series of watches.
Delivering the usual mix of an inexpensive “Swiss Made” quartz movement secured in a mildly oversized plastic body, the watch doesn’t look terribly awe-inspiring, but clearly gets the job done. The secret is, of course, in its winning combination of a high-contrast dial and those classic tiny tritium-filled tubes that allow all three hands and twelve hour markers to glow brightly even if you have spent the last 48 hours in a dark-dark cellar without moving much, your index finger close to the trigger of your M4.
Unlike guys from the Expandables franchise, thousands of professionals that work either for all sorts of government agencies or for private military companies rarely wear expensive timekeepers from Panerai and Richard Mille. When there are so many pieces of heavy hardware around you, when you must always be ready to duck on a pile of broken bricks, spending 10k for a tough-looking watch is not the best idea.
Starting at a ridiculously low price of $295, the Luminox Essential Gear Sea diving watch sports a rugged-looking 44 mm case made of a carbon-based composite material, which is both durable and lightweight. At the price, it is also, um, expendable: you can slam it into a concrete wall and order yourself a new one on eBay as fast as you can get to the nearest computer.
However, losing the gadget due to a suddenly shattered glass is not the best imaginable thing either, so Luminox has made sure that its mineral crystal has also undergone some special treatment that made it less prone to scratches and strong enough to withstand water pressure of up to 20 BAR.
Like the rest of Luminox watches, this diver features a set of LLT tritium tubes that provide the instrument with adequate backlighting and are generally good for about 25 years. While there are still a lot of folks that deem the mildly radioactive gas ‘dangerous’, the watch is basically as safe as a microwave oven: as long as you don’t boil eggs in it, you are as safe as it gets.
To make the watch even more readable at night, Luminox has logically differentiated the colors that the LLT tubes glow with in darkness.
The hour hand, as well as the central seconds hand and the main hour marker at 12 hours are green; while the minute hand, the other 11 indices on the minute track and the “00” mark on the rotating bezel are colored in a shade of violet.
Such color differentiation must be very convenient, when you are under a severe stress from a sudden ambush and reflexively want to check the time.
The watch comes with comfortable-looking the nylon Velcro fast-strap sporting the company’s logo on one side and U.S. Navy SEALs insignia on the other.
The American watchmaker says nothing about the movement that powers the watch, besides that this is some kind of a Swiss quartz, so there is a good chance that the watch will be both very accurate and reliable.
WWR Verdict
Originality 4.5/5
Build Quality: 5/5
Usability: 5/5
Overall Legibility: 4.5/5
Nighttime Legibility: 4.5/5
Value for Money: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
See also: Argonaut 1000 TQ diving instrument by CX Swiss Military Watch
Photos: Luminox
Luminox Essential Gear Sea diving watch specification
Price range: $295 (MSRP)
Movement: Swiss quartz
Complications: Date
Power reserve: A couple of years
Case material: Carbon-reinforced polymer
Case shape: Round
Case size: 44.00 mm
Case height: No data
Dial: Blue
Hands: White
Water resistance: 200 meters
Strap: Black nylon Velcro fast-strap
Crystal: Mineral, scratch-resistant