As someone with both Swedish and British citizenship I have had as a goal for a while now to have at least one British watch and at least one Swedish watch in my collection. I’ve got the British side well covered with watches from Christopher Ward, Studio Underd0g, Farer and Clemence Watches, but have not had much luck getting a Swedish one that I wanted to keep. I tried watches from Malm, Tusenö and E. C. Andersson, but for one reason or another the watches just didn’t work for me, nothing overly bad about them, they just weren’t for me. Then in October 2023 Watches of Scandinavia set up the first Stockholm Time exhibition where watch brands from all over Scandinavia came to display their watches; I found Epoch Stockholm, a brand I hadn’t spent a lot of time looking at, and this Deep Diver. I was really taken with it and when I turned 40 that following January this was the watch I wanted and my amazing wife got it for me. I’ll attempt to explain here why I wanted it and why I’m happy that I went with this watch.

Specifications

• Diameter 43mm

• Lug to lug 53mm

• Thickness 16.5mm

• Lug width 22mm

• Weight 140g

• Sapphire Crystal

• Water Resistance 1000m

• Helium escape valve

• Screw down crown

• Stainless steel case

• Stainless steel unidirectional bezel

• Sellita SW200 movement

Brand

Epoch Stockholm are an established Swedish independent having been created in 2002 by Mikael Sandström, one of the founders of another Swedish brand Sjöö Sandström, a well known Swedish brand that specialises in luxury type pieces. Epoch's stated aim is to take inspiration from 200 years of Swedish watch making history and create new lines of Scandinavian elegance and innovation with modern engineering methods, and they work with Swiss movement manufaturers in pursuit of these goals.

Epoch sells their watches directly to the end user through direct online sales as well as sales through trusted AD's such as Watches of Scandinavia and claim that their aim goes beyond 'simply' creating high quatlity watches, but is also intent on creating watches that can be used throughout everyday life whether that is partying, working, training or other daily tasks as well as creating lineage pieces that can be passed down though the generations. Epoch are generally well regarded by those who know them and their watches are generally thought to be of a high quality.

Positive Points

As you'd expect with a brand with the stated aims of Epoch this is a very well made piece. As with any Deep Diver, this watch is not a small one, and with that size that a 1000m depth resistance craves there is a risk that this watch could be uncomfortable and look overly bulky and unwieldy. This watch manages to pull off a level of elegance with some nice lines to the case, such as the curved lugs, sloping bezel and perfect circular form. I say this as someone who is not a fan of cushion case watches such as the Seiko Turtle line or the Circular Watch I reviewed before, and I do feel that this case shape lends itself to a more comfortable shape, but that is a personal opinion of mine. And I know that helium release valves are not popular with everyone but I think it looks great, I know it's a useless feature for someone who can't go down to a depth any more than 18m, but I also don't need a gmt function and I love my gmt watches.

The dial is a thing of beauty, with it's depth emphasised with the large applied indices, sloping outer ring with circular applied hour markings, and attractive helium escape valve text printed at the 12. The grooves, both circular and horizontal; nice coloured text, applied logo; black date wheel minute markers adds a to the interesting look of the face while not looking overly busy. The muted green colour doesn't detract from the other features of the dial, without looking washed out and boring, and I like the hands.

l also like the ergonomics of this watch. The crown protrudes well from the watch and is easy to manipulate, and I love the bezel action, as something of a fan of dive watches generally I enjoy a good bezel and it was the bezel of this watch that finally sold it to me at the Stockholm Time Event. I was perusing all the stalls with a fellow enthusiast from my watch forum Watch Crunch and when we got to the Epoch stall, not one of the ones I was particularly interested in before the event I tried the watch on liked it but when I tested the bezel I was sold. With the grooves in the bezel it's very twistable and the 120 click clicking sounds fantastic.

Negative Issues

Whether it's the Omega Seamaster Ultra Deep or the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Deepsea there's no getting away from the fact that deep sea watches are large watches, while this Epoch can't compare to the other two mentioned in either size or depth rating (the Omega has a depth rating of 4000m and the Rolex just under at 3900m, best not to bring this up with Rolex people as it's a bit of a sore point) this is a very big watch. As stated previously the watch is surprisingly elegant to my eyes despite the size (I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that) but the size needs to be brought up. This watch is not going to fit under any cuff, it'll stand proud on any wrist, not one for dress watch afficionados.

The other issue I have with this watch is the lume. For a dive watch particularly a deep diver I'd class the lume as poor. This has the worst lume of all my dive watches even my affordable Orient Kamasus have better lume. For a dive watch with a price point north of $1000 I'd expect better lume. Is it essential? No, but neither are mechanical watches and if I'm going to spend a substantial amount of money on one I'd like to get the full package.

Movement

This watch comes with the Sellita SW200, the standard Swiss movement for watches at this price point with Swiss movements with a need for a simple date complication. There is a reason that this movement is so popular with brands that want third party Swiss movements. First of it's not overly expensive but also it's a good movement that works as advertised and when I check the accuracy of this watch on my WatcheePro app, the movement in this watch is the most accruate of all my mechanical watches (I won't try to compare a mechanical watch to a quartz one) even beating my COSC certified pieces. Now this accuracy can not be guaranteed with all these watches, indeed the stated accuracy of the standard SW200-1 (the elaboré wasn't an option) is +/-12sec/day to +/-30sec/day. But it's interesting to see what it's capable of.

Conclusion

If you've got this far, first of thank you for reading this, and as you can no doubt tell I like this watch. My wife asked me what watch I'd like to get for my 40th birthday and this was the one I chose. I wanted a Swedish watch, as someone originally from the UK who now lives in Sweden and has dual citizenship I want at least one watch from both countries. I had the UK covered and this was the Swedish watch I wanted for my collection. Because of that this watch is most definitely a keeper, and my first Swedish one. It is not a watch that is going to be for everyone a lug to lug of 53mm and a thickness of over 16 is going to be too big for many. For reference I have a very average 7inch/18cm wrist and it is bordering on too big for me, and it's not a watch that's going to fit every occasion either. So I won't wear it to a wedding, one of the few times I wear a suit, however, as someone who doesn't need a suit this watch is just fine for me, and if you're wanting a deep diver, but do not have the budget or wrist size for the larer options from more luxurious brands, I can happily recommend this one.