Land Diver Society

First impressions of Timex’s upgraded automatic GMT in the Batman colorway

There is a dirty little secret in the Land Diver Society. Dive watches are our favorite style of watch, but for our normal lives the GMT is a much more practical and useful complication to have.

Tracking the different time zones of friends and family across the world, work applications like knowing vendor times in other countries, tracking Zulu time for coordination, or easily tracking local and home time while traveling—the list of reasons goes on and on. This can all be done on a phone, of course, but to be honest, being able to quickly glance at your wrist and have that information available is much easier and more practical.

Recently, I have become a big fan of what Timex has been doing with its lineup and the upgrades the company has been making. For even longer, I have liked the Deepwater line. This year Timex upgraded the Deepwater Meridian GMT lineup with a 42mm case, an automatic movement, sapphire crystal, and a ceramic bezel insert. They offer it in three flavors: the black and grey “Bruce Wayne,” black and blue “Batman,” and black and green “Sprite.”

I was recently convinced enough that I wanted to try one out and quickly placed an order through Timex’s website. $549 later, the watch was on its way to me, and I figured I would be waiting a few days to get it. Surprisingly, FedEx moved faster than I have ever had them move, and I had it the next day. I sized the factory Jubilee-style bracelet, set the watch, and threw it on my wrist to get my first 24-hour impression.

Opening the box, you are greeted by a standard grey Timex box with the watch wrapped in plastic around a pillow. Timex may be upgrading the watches, but it has yet to upgrade the packaging. To me, this is a bit disappointing for a company selling some watches at increasingly serious price points. For a watch costing over $350—and especially one approaching $600—I would like to see a little more effort put into the entire ownership experience.

The argument can be made that maybe they spent all of the money on the watch, but my counterpoint would be that, yes, the cost of the watch and its components likely increased, but not enough to justify an almost $600 watch arriving in essentially the same presentation as a much cheaper Timex. First impressions matter. Packaging may not seem important to some people, but for others the first interaction with the watch is opening that box. If the packaging looks and feels cheap, it can immediately make a price that was already difficult to justify feel even harder to swallow. You want the packaging to make someone feel like you cared about the entire product, not just what was strapped around the pillow.

The first impression when pulling the watch out of the box is much better: it is a very pleasant-looking watch. The case is polished nicely without being overly reflective or throwing a ton of glint off the wrist. The bezel transitions well between the black and blue, and the numerals are cut deeply enough that they do not feel like something you are going to wear down or off easily over time.

The dial is a beautiful dark blue that takes on a different personality depending on the lighting. Instead of being traditionally signed, the crown has a red arrow on it. I assume this is meant to tell the user which direction to screw the crown down, but it looks weird and out of place on the watch. The cuts on both the bezel and crown appear to be done well and make them easy enough to grip and operate without being overly sharp.

On the dial, the indices have polished surrounds that again are not overly polished, but look right at home around the white centers. The chapter ring is applied nicely and lines up well with the bezel. The hand choice was good and allows for easy reading without being overly large. The GMT hand uses a red shaft with a silver arrow, which is a good touch and helps clearly delineate it from the other hands.

Dial text is small and not overbearing. The red Deepwater logo is a nice touch that adds a little pop to the dial. At 3:00 you have a date window, which I like. The older I get, the less I find myself liking the day-date complication found on many watches, so a simple date works well here.

The crystal is sapphire, as previously mentioned, and has a date cyclops. I am not generally a fan of cyclops magnifiers on watches, but this one is done better than some others and does not sit overly high. I would still prefer no cyclops, and if this watch sticks around I may eventually remove it. Time will tell. Hell, maybe this is the watch that finally convinces me to like them again.

The bidirectional rotating bezel uses a ceramic insert and is of the 24-hour variety. Mine is the Batman colorway, which looks good and has been becoming one of my favorite color combinations for a while now. At the 24-hour position is a triangle with a lume pip.

The bezel action lands right in the middle of the road for me. It is 100% usable, but the action just does not feel or sound as good as I would expect compared with some other watches in the category and at this price point. The bezel does align with the chapter ring, which is nice to see. They clearly spent time making sure this happened, as opposed to some other brands out there.

If I compare this to the Seiko 5 Sports GMT for a second, I will say that choosing a clicking bezel is a very nice move compared with the friction bezel Seiko uses. Overall, the Meridian’s bezel insert, action, and general usability are still spades ahead of what I would consider one of its closest competitors from another large manufacturer. The Meridian may not have perfect bezel action, but it is still completely usable, and I am not inclined to think I will hate it as the review cycle goes on.

Bracelets are something it is well known I rarely wear on my watches, but I still like to have them. The Jubilee-style bracelet Timex chose for this watch is done well. The outer links are brushed with polished inner links. A push-pin system is used to remove the links, and there are plenty of them.

My wrist is 6.75 inches as of the date of this writing, and I had to remove five links to size it properly for me. With the other five links installed, this should comfortably fit someone with an 8-inch wrist and potentially larger. The spring bars are quick-release and seem fairly stout, which I appreciate since there are no drilled lugs on this watch.

A butterfly deployant clasp is utilized. That will be good for many people and will be fine for me, but it could be an issue for anyone who actually chooses to dive with this watch because there is no diver’s extension and no micro-adjustment at all. That also means getting the fit exactly where you want it can be more difficult depending on your wrist.

The bracelet does not feel cheap. It actually feels like good quality, with free movement and no binding that I was able to find anywhere. The watch also has 20mm lugs, which means finding different strap options will be a breeze. I have a few straps I am testing it on, but I can already tell you this watch looks good on a variety of different options.

The movement manufacturer is not listed on Timex’s website; Timex only states that it is a 24-jewel automatic movement. Without opening the watch and doing more digging, I have a strong suspicion about what movement family may be inside, but I am not going to state that as fact until I can verify it. What matters more for this first impression is how the movement is actually performing.

After wearing it for a while and allowing it to get fully wound, I put it on the timegrapher. As of now, it is showing approximately +7 seconds per day, which is completely acceptable and usable for me. There is also little to no rotor noise that I can hear coming from the movement, which is a blessing.

Wearing it for the first day was a pleasant experience. It is not so bold that it stands out and screams for attention, but it does enough to draw your eye. The thickness is bearable and does not seem to have a magnetism toward bashing itself into everything around me. It wears comfortably thanks to a relatively compact lug-to-lug dimension, which also helps the watch feel smaller on the wrist than its 42mm diameter would suggest.

While wearing it out and about running errands, I had quite a few people mention the watch. When they found out it was a Timex, they were shocked. I think that reaction says a lot about where Timex is trying to take portions of its lineup. The name still carries expectations of inexpensive, accessible watches for a lot of people, while watches like the Meridian are clearly trying to push beyond that perception.

Overall, these first 24 hours with the watch were interesting. There are things I am not crazy about from the first impression, and there are other things I am absolutely loving from the get-go. At $549, I am going to judge it like a $549 watch, not give it a pass simply because Timex is printed on the dial. That price puts it into a competitive part of the market, and the little details start to matter more.

Only time will tell how I feel after spending more time with it, but the first 24 hours have me intrigued to say the least. Stay tuned for the final review in the near future.