Review: the Hanhart Aquasphere “Ocean Fade”

It’s amazing the way some watches don’t make sense until they do. That was absolutely my experience of the Hanhart Aquasphere when it showed up on my desk a few weeks ago. I mean, I love dive watches, but the Aquasphere was something entirely outside my realm of comfort, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. At least, I wasn’t sure what to make of it until I realized something fundamental: I was thinking about the Aquasphere in entirely the wrong context.

Sure, on paper, the Aquasphere is a strong addition to the stable of sub $2,000 dive watches on offer today, but in practice, the Aquasphere is nothing like the divers I tend to spend my time with. The Hanhart is a watch that’s big, over-designed, and not at all to my typical taste, but that just may be what I came to like so much about it. In a world where the prevailing trend in dive watches has been to look back into the twentieth century for design inspiration, there’s something fundamentally refreshing about a watch that isn’t meant to compete with the Black Bay even a little.

Instead, the Aquasphere evokes a design language born in the ‘90s and perfected in the ‘00s, one that may not entirely appeal to many enthusiasts, but will hit square on for those collectors whose taste was formed by watch billboards of the era, and who find their minds drifting towards watches like the Breitling SuperAvenger or TAG Heuer Link. That does mean that this watch certainly won’t be for everyone, but for the people the Aquasphere speaks to, it’s hard to think of many other options that would scratch this particular itch, at least once you get the watch on the right strap (but more on that in a minute).

The 42mm case of the Aquasphere (which also measures about 49mm lug-to-lug and just over 12mm thick) is a winner. The architecture of the watch is decidedly modern, leaning away from the vintage-inspired look that defines so much of Hanhart’s catalog, but without leaning too heavily on the ultra-modern (and now oddly dated) look of the Primus collection. There are pleasant nods in each direction — most notably the slightly excavated lugs — but in the end, the Aquasphere feels like its own thing, without veering too far away from what one might expect from Hanhart.

Reinforcing the dive watch bona fides of the Hanhart Aquasphere, a helium escape valve is set into the case flank at ten o’clock. It’s an unobtrusive but fun reminder that this is, in fact, a serious dive watch option, as is the remarkably good 60-click dive bezel. The ceramic and steel bezel, which includes Hanhart’s signature red tick at twelve o’clock, absolutely sits in the same class of bezel action as some of my favorite bezels from the likes of CWC or Vertex, and is one of the best parts of this watch.

Inside the watch, you’ll find a Soprod caliber SOP P024, a clone of the iconic ETA 2824-2. It’s a workhorse movement that more than does its job here. In my few weeks with the watch, the movement never wandered dramatically, and interactions with the crown feel solid. While the P024 does feature a date complication, Hanhart has opted for a full date delete (no phantom position) here, and I think it’s the right choice.

Going Deep

If I’m being perfectly honest, until Zach asked me if I was interested in reviewing the Aquasphere, this was not a watch I had clocked at all. If you’d asked me whether Hanhart made a dive watch, it’s fifty-fifty whether I’d have been able to answer (I probably would have mustered a “probably,” but that would have been the extent of it). Hanhart — though a brand I enjoy and have even recommended at times over the years — is just not where I’d send someone looking for a dive watch. 

This isn’t because I think Hanhart can’t make a good dive watch, but with so many brands out there today that have made diver watches a core part of their brand identity, Hanhart just doesn’t leap to mind when considering subaqueous options. When I think Hanhart, I think monopushers and pilots’ watches, not helium escape valves and dive bezels, despite Hanhart consistently including dive watches in their catalog for the best part of a decade.

That said, the Aquashpere is the most conventional dive watch the brand has produced thus far. Or, I should say, it’s the most conventional offering yet included in the brand’s permanent catalog; last year’s special edition Fly Navy Aerosphere is a slightly more neutral interpretation of the Aquasphere’s format, using the same case and tech specs, but paired with less bold styling. But bold styling is a signature for Hanhart, and the Aquasphere has it in spades, especially in the configuration I’ve been wearing for the last month or so: the Aquasphere Ocean Fade. 

The Ocean Fade follows up last fall’s FreeFall Blue offering of the Aquaphere and swaps the solid blue dial of that offering for a blue to black gradient dial reminiscent of the James Cameron–inspired Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea. The Ocean Fade is offered with either a black or a blue bezel (my review model is spec’d with the black bezel), and each watch is finished with red accents, as one might expect from Hanhart. I don’t think you can go wrong in making the choice between black and blue here, but I do feel that the black bezel emphasizes the gradient dial in a way the blue bezel just doesn’t, and it’s the direction I’d likely lean, were I to commit to this watch fully.

Besides the gradient dial, the standout aesthetic choices here are the stenciled numerals found both on the bezel (where they are fully lumed, but not particularly well — more on that in a moment) and at twelve o’clock on the dial, and the syringe-tipped sword hands and arrowhead seconds hand. These styling choices are proper swings from Hanhart and will be entirely hit or miss for most. The bolded, squared-off, stencil digits in particular will be divisive. They contribute to a utilitarian, toolish, almost military feel the watch is certainly going for, but I do think they will read as inauthentic to some.

Zooming out, I think it’s fair to say that the watch is well-designed and broadly good-looking, but will likely miss the mark for many, who will read the brutish aesthetic as slightly forced. Still, if you can get past that feeling, or if you just don’t care, you won’t be dissatisfied with the Hanhart Aquasphere.

Fatal Flaws

Where you will be dissatisfied with the Aquasphere is in its strap and bracelet options. Each colorway of the Aquasphere is available with three strap options: a bracelet, a bezel color–matched rubber strap with a deployant clasp, and a Nick Mankey Designs Chrono-grip elastic strap. Of the three options, the Nick Mankey strap (the least expensive option) is by far the best strap offered with the Aquasphere, but it should really be a throw-in extra, not a spec choice. I also don’t think an elastic strap is the best match for a large dive watch, but I admit that is just personal preference (I prefer the locked-down feel of a NATO-style strap).

At the other end of the price spectrum, the three-link, Oyster-style bracelet is fine, but it’s just fine. It’s robust and well finished, with a solid clasp and an easy-to-use dive extension, but I’d have preferred a less traditional bracelet that better matched the aggressive styling of the watch; something more along the lines of the slanted link bracelet Breitling uses would have been welcome here. The offered bracelet here just feels mismatched, and brings with it enough irritation that I’d be inclined to ditch it the moment I got the watch.

Infuriatingly, the two biggest issues with the bracelet technically are both implementations of features I generally love to see included in any bracelet: a quick-release system and single-sided screws for sizing. The Aquasphere bracelet uses double-tabbed spring bars to achieve its quick-release status, but it doesn’t seat them fully in the end links. This makes sense to me from a manufacturing perspective — the bars can be fully removed from the bracelet, making repairs far simpler and cheaper if something goes wrong, and making assembly presumably simpler on day one, but the knock-on effect is that the spring-bars slide around when you go to seat them between the lugs of the Aquasphere. This may seem like a small quibble, but it can quickly become infuriating.

Similarly infuriating are the single-sided screws, which demand a smaller diameter screwdriver than any other bracelet I’ve encountered in recent memory. Not the end of the world if you’re a professional watch nut with a full set of watchmaking screwdrivers sitting in a drawer under your desk, but a real issue for the day-to-day collector who may have one or two freebie screwdrivers lying around from old watches or an Amazon watch tool set. Sure, with three positions of micro-adjustment in the clasp (not tool-less), you may only need to add or remove links once in the lifetime of the watch, but that’s only a maybe, and it’s easy to imagine the need to source or find a screwdriver that fits the Hanhart’s bracelet being a real irritant.

All that, however, is better than the rubber strap, which I have a feeling will likely be the best seller of the three. From a design perspective, it is the best match for the watch that Hanhart offers, and it looks great. The rubber compound used is pliable and (seemingly) durable, the deployant clasp is exceptional, and I think the price is right, too. But it, like the bracelet, has a fatal flaw, and it’s one I just can’t look past. As with the bracelet, Hanhart has opted to fit double-tabbed quick-release spring bars to this strap. This was a mistake, not because they don’t do their job well (though they oddly don’t, they’re tough to get a grip on), but because — at least on my wrist — they scrape against your wrist, and they do it constantly and shockingly aggressively.

Now, I’m not saying this is the Crown of Thorns or anything so dramatic, but I found wearing the rubber strap to be deeply unpleasant, made more frustrating by the ease with which the problem could have been solved by leaving just a little more breathing room between the lug-end of the strap and your wrist. In the end, I left all the included strap options in the box for the whole of my time with the Aquasphere and instead took to wearing it on an Artem sailcloth strap I had lying around, which was a perfect match for the watch.

Beyond the general struggle with straps, the only other issue I really noticed with the Aquasphere had to do with the lumed bezel of the watch. For the most part, the Aquasphere is really well-lumed. It has plenty of the stuff, glows bright, and mostly does all the lume stuff you could ask of a dive watch, but take a look at the watch under a UV light, and it becomes incredibly obvious just how poorly the lumed numerals on the bezel are filled in. On the example I have for review, the “0” in the “30” is particularly egregious, but there are issues throughout the bezel. I’d hope the QC process would catch these for watches intended for customers, but this is the watch they gave me to look at, and it’s a detail that’s hard to ignore.

Where Do We Go From Here

Okay, I know that all got a little harsh for a minute, but I want to be clear about something: I do like this watch. A lot. I’ve really enjoyed my time with the Aquasphere Ocean Fade, and I’ll be bummed to ship it back to Germany now that my time with it is over. If they can iron out a few of the QC issues, and maybe offer the watch on a slightly better strap, the Aquasphere makes for a really compelling sub-$2000 option for any collector looking for a dive watch slightly outside the current norm for the genre. I’m not sure it’s ready to supplant the 417 Chronograph at the heart of Hanhart’s lineup, but I do feel it’s a strong brand expansion, and I’m certainly excited to see where the line goes from here.

If any of you reading do decide to pick up the Aquasphere, which is available now directly from Hanhart’s website, my recommendation would be to save some money and buy the watch on the Nick Mankey strap, and then go spend the 200 Euro difference on a third-party strap like the Artem that can really make the watch sing. Hanhart