Invicta Pro Diver - Don't Swim with a Pro Diver until you see this!

the invicta pro diver one of the most controversial watches in watchdom some people adore this watch some people despise this watch who's right who's wrong and do we keep it or not [Music] the invicta pro diver master of the oceans a dramatic name if ever there was one but first why did i want this watch so i was going on a trip to mexico a beach holiday a resort holiday and what i was looking for was something a little bit different than this which is what i normally go with this is a timex iron man watch great durable watch you can bang it around rough it up and it can take it water resistant to 100 meters so a great beach watch the problem with this watch is it looks like a beach watch so if you wear this watch to dinner or to a nice outing it looks like you're wearing your cheap beach watch to dinner and so what i was looking for was something that was just a little bit nicer that i could wear to the beach not worry about but could also wear it to a nice dinner and have it look in place and online i saw this an ad for an invicta 8926 ob diver to be honest with you i always uh ignored invicta watches previously mostly because of the bad reviews i'd seen about them or the mixed reviews at least but this time i noticed something a little bit different when i was looking at this watch and that's this that it's a now using a seiko movement whenever i buy a watch there's always two things i look at first is do i like the look of the watch and then the second thing is is the movement reliable if the watch looks good and it's built with a reliable movement that takes care of most of my concerns with a watch so the first thing i did was i went to check out the reviews uh over 2600 reviews on amazon alone and what i first noticed almost immediately was that many of the views seem to be quite ridiculous almost to the point of being impossible as far as the negative reviews go for example there was one review that said i bought an invicta watch and i loved it so much i bought 53 more after one year all of them broke invicta sucks i'd say the probability of that review being real are virtually zero posted by a competitor posted by an angry employee who knows but not likely the second type of review were written by people who had actually purchased the watch and meant well but really didn't know what they were doing clearly for example one person wrote this watch is not working not working all in caps lock obviously very uh uh enthused about this response uh and as if to prove his point he posted a video of the watch just sitting there not doing anything so clearly this person thought he bought a quartz watch probably had never owned an automatic watch before and didn't know quite what to make of it so on that note i ordered my invicta watch and it showed up the next day as you can see here the packaging it came in is very basic packaging it came in a cardboard box um and then another box inside this yellow box with uh kind of padding around it nice enough box some people get really uh obsessed with the box that a watch comes in personally i'd rather have it come in a rather plain box because i want especially in this price range my value to be going toward the watch itself and not the box sorry about my camera work i'm trying to do with one hand there's the watch it came with this tag with a qr code on the back i never did check that out but anyway that's the watch and one of the first things i noticed when i took it out was the heft of it this is a very weighty watch i was expecting something a little lighter at this price point but clearly they had put you know a lot of material into this a nice hefty watch they didn't skimp on the stainless steel so the first impression i have to say was pretty good not bad at all and this is the watch on this is a standard uh traditional size 40 millimeter dive watch so fits the wrist very well unlike a lot of watches nowadays which are in my opinion oversized the 40 millimeter is the classic fit and it looks quite good no issues there so again everything so far so good and then this is the dial so uh some people complain that there's too much invicta uh logo on the dial uh there's the invicta logo itself there's uh an invicta logo on the second hand as you can see here invicta inscribed on the side personally i liked all this stuff the last thing i wanted to do is be that guy who pretends to be wearing a rolex when he isn't so i appreciated all the stuff being there to distinguish it and this is the clasp again very impressed at this price point i expected the clasp to be made of aluminum but it's not it's steel as well fits nicely clicks into place well nice solid snap i never had any trouble with it it works very well and keeps in place which is exactly what you want it doesn't have some of the modern slide features but otherwise pretty good the back of the watch shows the seiko nh35a movement uh invicta's added a bit of flare by putting this yellow onto the oscillating weight which is nice the nh35a is a workhorse movement it's not really made to be open case back so just made it something different and next i'm just going to talk about the bezel for a moment so let me say first of all that this watch is not a certified dive watch okay and the reason for a uni-directional bezel is to calculate the amount of time you have left in your oxygen tank before you need to come up for air so no one will ever be using this for its intended purpose yet for some reason or other a lot of people are obsessed with the functioning of the bezel in a dive watch i guess because they think it's an indication of the overall quality of the watch as to how well the bezel moves personally it's not a big deal to me but i'll show you what it's like so as you can see on the bezel there's a little bit of back play about half a minute of back play um but other than that pretty good clicks nicely not too tight not too loose and again you can just see just a little bit of back play there otherwise very good and that's all i'm going to say about that because i really don't care and then the other thing that everyone wants to talk about on a dive watch is the loom again no one's going to be night diving or scuba diving with this watch in dark water it's not a certified dive watch but this one i can understand a little more because loom actually makes the watch look more interesting even in daylight and the watch that everyone compares when it comes to dials is this the seiko skx really an unfair comparison when you think about it because the skx has huge dial markers full of loom huge wide hands it's just a lot of loom if you compare that to the invicta the dial markers are far smaller the hands are not as wide so of course it's not going to be as bright because there's just simply not as much loom there compared to even something like the marcelo c another rolex homage watch again much larger dial markers much larger hands and simply more loom even compared to the oyster submariner itself the rolex it you can see especially at the six and nine the dial markers are much larger and even the dots are larger on the dial so overall how does the invicta compare well let's just say this for the amount of loom that the invicta has it looks just fine it looks good in daylight looks good in dim light if you're looking for a watch that's as bright as the moon this isn't the watch for you but it does the job and for the amount of loom it has it's actually quite good so the then i kind of came across something that i thought was a real problem that was the crown so i noticed when i was taking out the crown i heard this awful grinding metal on metal noise and i was trying to figure out what it was initially i thought that the crown was scraping against the case here i'm pointing to the area that i thought it was i thought maybe the the crown is scraping against the side of the case because of an ill fit or something but then i realized that it was actually something much much simpler than that which is the lubrication i'd heard that invicta had difficulties with lubrication uh not having enough in this case there simply wasn't any uh but fortunately that's a very simple fix so i got out my silicone grease in this case from innovative scuba concepts uh just like their brand and uh simply got it out applied it to a toothpick and then applied it to the crown on the the threading on the crown and as soon as i did that everything was fine that grinding was gone and everything was good again in fact after having lubricated it i was actually impressed with how good and how tight the threading on the crown was and since we're on the topic of crown let's just spend a minute speaking about the crown so on a dive watch you have to have the crown fully screwed in in order to have it watertight and waterproof and this has been a big issue for invicta users online so this gentleman for example posted a photo of his invicta watch pro diver all clouded up and some nasty comments about the waterproofness of the watch but when you zoom in you can see that the crown is clearly unscrewed or at least partially unscrewed which would be responsible for that this gentleman said that his loom wasn't working anymore which is usually a result of water damage and even though the picture is really fuzzy again when you zoom in there's the crown completely unscrewed and that's not the way it should be obviously so this has been a big deal for invicta they've tried to reduce the amount of this happening but it still doesn't work when you actually get the watch it comes with this card called water resistance how it works and what you should know and on the back it even has the crown highlighted saying when water damage occurs most of the time is because the wearer did not close the crown and yet it still happens so for those who have never had a dive watch before here's how it works you unscrew the crown and it pops open by spring action one click to set the date a second click to set the hands and once that's done you push the crown in until it catches the thread give it a turn then continue turning until it's all the way in to the end and if you do that you will not have any water issues at least through the crown on your watch and since the lubrication was so bad on the crown non-existent really i thought what if the case back's the same i better check that out so i got out my three-prong case back removal tool that looks like this now just a note on this i could have just as easily used a two-prong case back removal tool like this you can buy these on amazon or ebay for a couple dollars each sometimes even just free pay for shipping to take that uh case back off so just unscrew the case back and sure enough same thing horrible grinding metal on metal no lubrication whatsoever from the factory fortunately this is again an easy fix got my silicone grease and a brush in this case and just brushed it onto the threading and that took care of that and since i had the case back open i also applied the silicone grease to the rubber o-ring i've discovered over the years and a lot of experience ruined a perfectly good jungle watch that i loved that by applying a bit of silicone grease to the o-ring it extends the life of the o-ring by a great deal so the o-ring was in place it was fine but by doing this the o-ring won't crack nearly as easily or as soon as if you have that and since i had the case back there's me touching the movement since i had the case back open i was playing around a little bit and i was you know looking for flaws really and i thought i found one which was the oscillating weight it just didn't swing around as freely as i expected it to and i was thinking that this was a flaw for a few seconds but then i realized oh yeah this is a seiko movement and they use the magic lever system in the magic lever system there's this off center wheel with a paul lever which uh winds a ratchet wheel which winds the mainspring so in this video by uh seiko deutschland thank you sakura deutschland it shows how this works so when the oscillating weight swings back and forth this off-center wheel uh moves a one-way clutch they call it which is like a ratchet wheel back and forth so even small movements in the oscillating weight wind the mainspring quite a bit so i didn't have any issues with the watch whatsoever keeping it wound that was quite good but it is you know if you're not used to it a little disconcerting to see that the the oscillating weight just doesn't swing as freely as it does in some other models of watches here i'm just trying to flop it over to get it to work but it was a non-issue it was absolutely fine so with the watch back together it was time to take out the links and size it so standard links in this watch band just press out the cotter pins in the direction of the arrow and that takes care of the resizing in my case i had to take out three links to get it to fit properly and uh put it back together after that and uh i've mentioned it already but i'll say it again the the links in this watch are absolutely standard links in every way with standard cotter pins and you push them out in the regular direction of the arrows the reason i mention this is because there's a lot of crazy stuff online about watches just falling apart for example i was walking down the street minding my own business and all of a sudden the watch fell off smashed and hit the ground and it's terrible invicta sucks well there's nothing unusual about these watch links whatsoever i think what's happening here is that because of the price point of this watch being low people are trying to save money by instead of taking it to an actual watchmaker or a jeweler maybe taking it to a shopping mall or a kiosk and try or trying to do it themselves and they're getting into trouble so just in case that's you here's what to look for when you get it back from the shop if the cotter pin is sticking out at all this is an exaggeration but if it's sticking out at all your watch will fall apart sooner rather than later same thing with this if the cotter pin is flush it will also fall out sooner rather than later in this case it may take months it may take a year but eventually that pin will work its way out and the wrist band will fall apart so here's what it should look like each cotter pin slightly countersunk and if you flip it over on the other side the cotter pin should be countersunk on that side as well if both sides are countersunk you won't have any trouble so now that the watch was back together and it was sized it was time to pack up for mexico so a few clothes snorkel gear a few uh bottles of suntan lotion and good to go so i have one full week in mexico to test this watch out how was the pro diver in the water were the reviews right was it waterproof was it not waterproof there was one way to find out and really what i should have expected would happen happened which is absolutely nothing the watch was just fine i didn't just spend a few minutes in the water with it i spent hours in the pool every day with this watch and didn't have any issues with it whatsoever it was just fine and it was no trouble whatsoever didn't fog up in the slightest no issues with the crown no issues with the casing everything was perfect as it should be but that's the swimming pool how about the ocean with the occasional rolling wave with diving down to the bottom how would it stand up to that again only one way to find out so here's diving down did you see oh do you see that big fish swim by right there no me either well the visibility was terrible but nonetheless the watch performed like a trooper as expected no trouble whatsoever no leakage just fine i spent a lot of time in the water and everything was good and in the following days nothing left to discuss and that's the accuracy of the movement sure the seiko nh35a is a reliable movement no question there but how about the accuracy so the first thing i have to look at is what are the expectations of this watch from seiko and from seiko as you can see here the accuracy is minus 20 to plus 40 seconds per day but this is seiko this is a japanese brand and japanese people are very modest so i expected this watch to do better than this so how did it do well i'm pleased to say that after one week of wearing this watch every day at the end of the week it was running fast by 14 seconds that's not 14 seconds a day 14 seconds for the week that's swiss chronometer accuracy in this watch and a seiko nh35a so overall i was very impressed with the accuracy i went on bumpy boat rides kayaking swimming you know different water sports moving my arms around all the time and didn't have any trouble with the accuracy at all going from hot to cold i was very impressed with it so what do i think of this watch what's the final verdict well in case you haven't already guessed i think it's a great watch it's a low price point it's solidly built lots of metal good glass reliable workhorse movement there's really nothing not to like about it and one of the things that i really do like about it in particular is the fact that rolex watches i love relics watches rolex submariner is an absolutely beautiful watch but the problem is because of the price point these days on rolex submariners a lot of people don't use the rolex submariner for the adventure watch that it's meant to be you're more likely to find a rolex watch in a vault unfortunately than diving in the ocean and even when i was filming this video there were moments where i had sand in between the links and i could hear the grinding of the sand and the links and i thought to myself if this were a rolex i'd be panicking right now but because of the price point of this watch you can use it as the beater watch you can take a diving you can take it during your water sports you can take it doing all that stuff and yet it still looks great even at a macro level as you can see here the detailing is pretty good the branding was also very good for the watch some people might say it's too much but in fact when you're wearing it it's actually quite subtle and it's just the right amount so that you don't look like you're wearing a rolex this uh short clip here you can see the silvery color of the steel in bright light the steel has a really beautiful silvery color very nice so overall great watch at this price point it really has nothing against it at a higher price point sure i could dig for flaws but at this price point i think it's a very well done watch by invicta the pro diver so that's my review of the pro diver there are more reviews coming up so if you like it please subscribe and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Wonders of Watchdom

Views: 1,555,647

Keywords: Invicta, pro diver, 8926OB, rolex, submariner, budget dive watch, budget diver's watch, best value, best budget, watch, timekeeper, seiko, nh35a, detailed review, thorough review, review

Id: HXCOWOhuLf8

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 08 2019