[VIDEO] Owner’s Review: Omega Seamaster Professional Diver 300M 2220.80.00

“That makes perfect sense, since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men who’d give little thought to sacrificing others in order to protect queen and country. You know, former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches — Rolex?”

“Omega.”

I’m not James Bond. I know it may come as a surprise, but I don’t spend my time playing in high-stakes poker games (or baccarat, if you prefer the books), I don’t chase terrorists across European cities, and I don’t save the world from a colorful megalomaniac every few years. But I do have a bit of a crush on Eva Green, and I do wear an Oh-meeg-uh, so I guess I can forgive the confusion. Specifically, and for about the last half-decade, I’ve been wearing a reference 2220.80.00 Omega Seamaster Professional Diver 300M, the same watch worn by Daniel Craig in the infamous train car scene of Casino Royale quoted above, and, for my money, the best Seamaster to come out of Bern, maybe ever.

I don’t make that claim lightly. The Seamaster is, by the standards of a ‘luxury’ watch, remarkably ubiquitous. I see Seamasters a lot — on the wrists of my bartenders, on the subway, and almost every time I move through an airport. A lot of that is thanks to one thing: Bond. But while most people know the Seamaster thanks to its starring role in three decades worth of Bond films, the name goes back far further — all the way to 1946. 

Granted, those first Seamasters have very little to do with the dive watches we most associate with the name today — early Seamasters were handsome, everyday, water-resistant watches much closer in ethos to the modern Aqua Terra — but they laid a solid foundation on which Omega has built a hell of a lineup. Seventy-seven years on, the name has proven resilient, and persistent. Put another way: there have been a lot of Seamasters.