Hello watchfam.
First of all I want to wish all of you a healthy, wealthy and prosperous 2022.
The past year has been challenging to say the least… and I have been very grateful to be a part of the watch community, where I have been enjoying the interaction and connection with people who have the same interest and passion for timepieces.
The first hands-on for 2022 is reserved for one of Aquatico’s best selling models; the bronze version of their Sea Star (V2). If you’ve been keeping up with my previous articles, you’ll know that the Aquatico watch brand has passed by on this channel in the past. The hands-on review of their Dolphin dive watch was a true success and the neat, compact diver still gets a lot of wrist time.
For the people who don’t know the brand; Aquatico is a fairly young brand from Hong Kong. Owner Calvin is a mechanical engineer, designer, and watch collector. He majored in mechanical design at university and became a watch designer after graduation, joining Bulova Hong Kong Co., Ltd. Before establishing his very own watch brand in 2016.
Furthermore, Aquatico uses only Swiss and Japanese high-end mechanical automatic movements, ensuring a robust timepiece which can handle the beating of daily use.
Since 2017, all Aquatico watches are made and tested in-house at the Aquatico watch workshop and offers a 1-year manufacturer warranty for all watches.
One of their best selling timepieces is the Bronze Sea Star.
This bronze beauty of a dive watch is available in several configurations, with a wide variety of colors, bezels, indice layouts and hands sets to choose from.
Ceramic or bronze bezel insert? Snowflake hands and dial layout? Date or no-date? Green, blue, chocolate… you name it, Aquatico’s got you covered. Although that doesn’t make it easier when trying to pick your timepiece to be honest.
As I already own a blue BB/Pelagos homage, I decided not to go for the snowflake variant and placed an order for a green no-date configuration.
My watch arrived in the same, well secured packaging as the Dolphin. A stylish wooden box with the Aquatico logo burnt into the case, warranty card, the watch and a complementary rubber strap made up for a pleasant unboxing experience.
If you’ve been following the blog, you’ll know that this will be my first Bronze timepiece. It’s something that I’ve always been keen on trying out as it really brings some diversity within the collection. In some ways, you could state that bronze can be considered as a budget friendly alternative for precious metal watches, giving the watch a completely different feel and characteristics when compared with mainstream stainless steel pieces.
Do keep in mind that this alloy will oxidize and obtain a certain amount of patina over time.
For me this only adds to the character of the watch, but I can imagine that this will not be the case for everyone.
Let’s talk specs;
The case is constructed out of CuSn8-grade alloy. Without going into too much details, this means that the used copper alloy is of high grade, with less impurities and thus better chemical properties for everyday use/abuse.
Even though the Seastar comes in at 42mm in diameter, 49mm lug-to-lug, 14mm thick and 107g, this watch feels surprisingly compact, wearing more like a 40mm watch once you get it on the wrist. Mostly thanks to the pleasant curvature of the lugs which hug your wrist perfectly.
The case features a brushed finish which has been applied very consistently.
A lug width of 22mm supports a wide variety of straps, which are easily swapped out thanks to the drilled lugs. When taking a closer look in between the lugs, you’ll see the serial number of this limited run (mine 71/88). Something I can appreciate, certainly because it’s placed in a very subtle way.
The bezel is made out of the same CuSn8 material as the case., making sure the bezel and case match perfectly. Thanks to its coin-edge style, the bezel is grippy and ensures a smooth 120-click unidirectional rotation, without any backplay at all.
The ceramic insert features lumed numerals and markers (5 and 10 minute interval), with a lumed pip at the 12 O’clock position, which all line up perfectly!
The dial showcases a mate, dark green background, bronze/rose gold baton hour markers, in combination with a printed (off-)white minute track.
Both the Minute and hour (sword)hands feature the same bronze/rose gold material as the hour markers, where the bright orange seconds hand brings some contrast to the packed
Lume is more than decent, with a good amount of BGW9 SuperLuminova. Lighting up all markers and numerals on both the hands, bezel and dial.
Readability is good, thanks to the AR-coating of the (highly domed) sapphire crystal, although it’s worth mentioning that the highly-domed crystal does distort the view a little bit when viewing at an angle.
The signed screw down crown is easy to use and makes up for a good seal, giving the watch a water resistance of 300m. The signed caseback is made out of stainless steel. A necessary change of material as bronze would react undesirably, causing coloration and irritation of the skin.
This is also the reason why this bronze sea star does not come on a (bronze) bracelet but a sturdy leather strap, with complementary bronze hardware. I like the overall look and feel of the leather bracelet as it really suits the rest of the watch.
Sadly though, the strap does not provide enough holes to size it up for my <17cm wrist.
Luckily, Aquatico also adds a Tropic style rubber strap, which also fits perfectly with the watch.
Even if the leather strap would fit my wrist, I think my preference would still go for the comfort and ‘can-withstand-all’ properties of the tropic strap.
The only thing I would like to have seen changed is matching the hardware of the tropic to the watch by using bronze for the clasp instead of stainless steel.
Powering the Sea star is the well known Swiss made Sellita SW200 with it’s typical properties. Manual hacking and winding, 38 hours of power reserve, 28 800 Beats per Hour and an accuracy of +/- 12 seconds per day.
Final thoughts
Aquatico has delivered an interesting , well specked and priced package with the Bronze Sea Star, which is available in a variety of color-, bezel- and dial options.
– Micheal From Trapped In Time Watches-
Trapped In Time Watches 