The team managing Mido is doing a great job. They started interacting with their customers on Italian communication channels two years ago, and the brand owns, among its pros, a spotless and no-frills image based on a very few inspirational principles, like a reference to modern and neoclassic architecture and much substance, including top-class technical features.
Regarding mechanical watches, Mido has quickly become the new entry-level brand of the Swatch Group and uses the same new-generation automatic movements developed by ETA expressly for Hamilton, for example.
Mido’s image is closely and historically linked to the Mido Multifort Chronograph Special Edition that I was lucky enough to try on for an entire week some years ago, and let me tell you that I loved the feeling of good quality and overall simplicity of that watch’s design, considering it is a sporty chronograph after all.
The month of May is when many of you will start looking around in search of a new diver’s watch for the summertime, and, at the same time, it is also the time when hundreds of ads for this type of watch will start popping up on newspapers, websites and TV screens.
Mido has sported a diving watch on the catalogue since 1944 called the Ocean Star, and, 74 years later, the brand has shown everybody that it can craft an accessible diving watch featuring some characteristics that, up to 10 years ago, could more often be seen on premium timepieces.
The Mido Ocean Star Captain Titanium Caliber 80‘s case measures 42,5mm, and it interprets perfectly well that classic formula that has always bolstered – and still does – the fortunes of all watchmakers; the classic three-hands-architecture style that features a unidirectional rotating bezel, a crown protected by shoulders and elongated and narrow lugs on the wrist band.
On this base, the use of titanium keeps the whole structure’s weight within a mere 123gram range while a grained dial – one of Mido’s trademarks that are also featured on the Mido Baroncelli Heritage – and the typical orange colour – the official brand’s hue (as well as Hamilton’s one it seems) – complete the work.
The 200m-depth rating is, at least for me, not so much relevant detail; what I find much more interesting is the presence of a calibre with a power reserve of up to three days housed within the case. If compared to the ETA calibres that many of the brands outside the group still adopt, the Mido Ocean Star Captain Titanium Caliber 80’s mechanical movement is somehow one step ahead, and thanks to its mere 5,22mm–thickness, this timepiece is one of the most elegant and easy-to-wear sports diver’s watches currently available on the market.
If you are one of those people who want their diver’s watch to protrude over the wrist, be bulky and feature quite a thick ring on the bezel, I would suggest you look somewhere else for your new timepiece because the 42,5mm–diameter–case was designed to increase the dial’s width while the matted aluminium ring with orange hues is so cool you don’t look for a ceramic-made one.
The Mido Ocean Star Captain Titanium Caliber 80 retails at 1,060 euros and is available in different versions, including one on an orange rubber strap a team of professional Italian kite–surfers put under its paces last summer. It could be yet another diver’s watch of a new series of timepieces and the one you will probably wear most often, the Swiss alternative in a niche market usually dominated by Japan-made watches with the exact positioning.
The Mido Ocean Star Captain Titanium Caliber 80 will be available in other combinations of materials and colours, including some new liveries and material variations introduced at Baselworld this year. Still, I can say that no other option can boast the same identity as this Captain Titanium, a watch that reminds me of the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Master Chronometer 2016 released two years ago at Baselworld.
(Photo credit: Horbiter®)
Gaetano C @Horbiter®
