This Sporty Automatic Dive Watch Packs Two Crucial, Frequently Excluded Features

Hanhart may be new to the dive watch space, but its trademark blend of high-performance design and graceful aesthetics is on full display in the Aquasphere.

Of course, the revered German tool watch brand included two crucial features often excluded from dive watches that are extremely helpful under the waves.

Hanhart

Introduced less than a year ago, in the fall of 2024, Hanhart is already expanding its maiden dive watch with a subtle but alluring new dial, a new bezel option and two new straps.

Hanhart deserves credit for nailing it on the first try with the Aquasphere. The design got just about everything right regarding both looks and performance.

Hanhart

Fortunately, this expansion to the collection was performed with a delicate touch. The fundamental blueprint remains the same, and the visual updates are as pragmatic and appealing as the original blue-on-blue.

Diver down

The Aquasphere may blend in with the vast sea of dive watches available today, but its serious SCUBA-ready performance puts it on the short list of the best divers in the $2,000 range.

Hanhart

The 42mm brushed stainless steel case has curved lugs, a screw-down crown and a helium escape valve at 10 o’clock, which is requisite for a true 300m water resistance.

It has a simple three-hand dial with large, syringe-shaped hour and minute hands and a harpoon-tipped seconds hand. The dial is marked with large rectangular applied hour markers and a single stencil-stylized 12, and a 60-second track is applied to the chapter ring.

Hanhart

The hands and hour markers are filled with Super-LumiNova, which is standard practice. But Hanhart also filled the dive scale on the bezel, including a 15-minute graduation, with lume, an often neglected feature critical for actual diving.

Hanhart

Another frequently excluded diving feature, even at this price tier, that Hanhart included is a diving extension on the steel bracelet and rubber strap. This mechanism quickly enlarges the strap to fit over a wetsuit sleeve.

The third strap option, Hanhart’s woven elastic Hook Strap, doesn’t require a dive extension because it is designed to slide over a wetsuit sleeve.

Fade to black

The new Ocean Fade expansion triples the size of the Aquasphere collection with six new references. They all share the epynomous dial texture that vertically fades from royal blue at 12 o’clock to deep black at six o’clock.

Hanhart

The Ocean Fade is available with the original blue ceramic bezel insert, featuring a red zero marker that wraps around the bezel’s coin edge. This detail is a stand-in for Hanhart’s signature red chronograph pusher.

A new black ceramic bezel insert is also available, although it only comes on the Ocean Fade dial, not the original FreeFall Blue.

Two new rubber dive straps, a blue and a black, with folding clasps and dive extensions, have joined the collection. They are signed with the Hanhart script logo.

Hanhart

The Ocean Fade references add a touch of nuance and some variety to the Aquasphere collection, but they don’t fix anything that wasn’t broken. It is still a remarkably capable and beautiful dive watch for a brand’s first go at the genre.

Selling for just over $2,000, it is also an excellent bargain for the amount of watch that you get.

Availability and price

The Hanhart Aquasphere Ocean Fade is available now for $2,290 with a steel bracelet, $2,155 with a rubber dive strap and $2,019 with Hanhart’s elastic woven Hook Strap.

It is worth noting that Hanhart now has a webstore in the American market. Until earlier this year, the clunky WatchBuys was the only authorized online dealer for Hanhart and other German watches in America.

Hanhart

Hanhart Aquasphere Ocean Fade

Specs

Case Size	42mm
Movement	Soprod caliber SOP P024 automatic
Water Resistance	300m

• $2,290 at Hanhart

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