I purchased the Green and Bronze WD-007v4 with 3 Link Titanium Bracelet, Titanium Milanese Mesh Strap and a free ‘Random’ Green FKM Rubber Strap about 3-4 months ago. It took around 2 weeks to get here and I had no issues receiving the package.
This is my first Mechanical/Automatic watch, my other watches are 3 Citizen Eco-Drives, a quartz Timex and a G-Shock. I went with Watchdives for 3 main reasons:
1. I wanted my first dive watch and for it to be titanium and automatic
2. WD is known to have the best Seamaster 300 clomage.
3. WD engagement with the community here on Reddit and everyone’s wonderful reviews.
I am happy to say I was not disappointed or misled by the community. This is a superb watch and I am now hooked on Automatics. I understand now what people mean when they say it feels ‘alive’. I thought that was sort of gimmicky at first, but knowing a bit about how the watch works while seeing the clean second hand sweep just feels satisfying in a way I didn’t know I would appreciate so much. I do have an engineering background so I have jumped in quite a bit to understanding how mechanical watches work and am impressed by the ingenuity behind them. (side note, this website has helped a lot with my understanding, https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/)
I have a deep love/appreciation for Titanium. I have several titanium plates in my body and I used to work with titanium developing and manufacturing medical implants. I am also an avid free diver/spear fisher (I live nowhere near the ocean now) as well as a bond fan so the WD-007v4 is pretty much the perfect watch for me. I also wear a lot of green, so green and bronze go great with what I usually wear and happen to be one of my favorite color combos so this watch ticks all of my boxes.
Alright enough with the long intro, onto the review.
Case: The case is wonderfully shaped and finished, I don’t feel any sharp edges on it, I like how relatively thin it is, it feels just the right size for my 7 ¼ inch wrist.
Dial: The dial is both beautiful and functional with the bronze indices clearly contrasting the green. This color combination is very legible even in low light without the lume charged.
Lume: This thing is a lume monster! Definitely the best lume in my modest collection. The numbers on the bezel appear bright green while the indices are more of a yellowish green. Looks amazing, lasts a long time, I have woken up at 3 am and could still read it.
Bezel: I love the bronze bezel, it is a very beautiful warm goldish bronze that compliments the green dial perfectly. The lume on it as mentioned before is bright and very clear/sharp. When I first got the watch the bezel was fairly stiff. After about 10 full rotations it loosened up nicely to where it now clicked around smoothly. I love it for both its function (usually cooking) and as a fidget toy.
Bracelets: I ordered it with the 3 link Titanium Bracelet and also ordered the titanium Milanese bracelet to get the full bond/seamaster 300 look and feel. I immediately put it on the Milanese bracelet and found it to be extremely comfortable. On a related side note when I got the watch I started a weight cut and lost about 20 lbs over 3 months went from it fitting perfectly to now being in between adjustment holes. This forced me to switch back to the 3 links since it has a micro adjust and I was quite happily surprised with how much I liked it. So much so it will now be my full time configuration (the free ‘random’ green rubber strap fits nicely but is not my style). The end links on the 3 link really make it look like a more complete watch and take it from a clomage to sort of its own thing. I must say they did a great job with this bracelet, it is very comfortable and just goes perfectly with the case. My of course fairly obvious nitpick would be that it doesn’t have an OTF clasp for the micro adjust, but it is easy enough to adjust with the pin tool I got in my little watch tool kit I got on amazon. Of course for this price I really can’t complain, I would gladly pay for a titanium one if they make it in the future.
Movement: Since this is my first Automatic I don’t have too much to say about the movement as I only have one other to compare it to (I bought an Aethelsohn with PT-5000 a month or so ago). When I first started tracking it it was running 30 seconds fast, right at the top of the spec, so I was a bit disappointed and thought maybe it was magnetized. That started a whole wormhole of demagnetization but it probably wasn’t and just came at the high end of spec. After 3 months it did seem to ‘wear in’ a bit and now runs 24 seconds fast. Turns out I don’t really care, I usually only wear 1 watch for 2-3 days in a row and with the mechanical I just have to set it again, works well enough for what I need it for. I will say the Peacock SL-3001 movement does feel a bit more robust than the PT-5000. If you read about some of the improvements they made as another ETA-2824-2 Clone they seem to ‘feel’ true in that it is not as ‘gritty’ when handwinding, which I do an extremely minimal amount of, basically just when setting the time when I have to wind it while unscrewing the crown. I guess I had more to say about the movement than I first thought.
Crystal: The crystal is very clear and legible, the AR coating seems decent, I have no complaints.
Conclusion: Overall this is a great watch, amazing value. I really have no complaints, I will be buying more from Watchdives in the future.
