Omega Seamaster 300 Summer Blue (234.30.41.21.03.002) Omega Watch Review

Hi, this is Tim at the 1916 Company. Welcome and thanks for logging on. If you love this watch, email me, Tim Masso at the1916company.com for purchase pricing and availability questions. Today, we're discussing a variant launched in mid-2023 for summer. This is the Omega Seamaster 300 Summer Blue. It's based on the vintage inflected Seamaster 300, but with an array of cool summer blue tones. In stainless steel, the watch is 41 millimeters in diameter, 13.6 millimeters thick, 48.1 from lug tip to lug tip if you include the end links of the bracelet. It's somewhat broader, 50.4 millimeters across the wrist with a 21 millimeter spacing between the lugs. Twin trigger release will open up this clasp. Now, we'll put it on my 16 centimeter circumference wrist and it fits well. It is bigger though than the historical watches that lend design cues to it. So, I would recommend it for a wrist of let's say 15 centimeters circumference and up. I think you can get away with this on a wrist just slightly smaller than mine. There's your over the top shot and there's your cuff shot. Very substantial watch. The bracelet's well made. If you're familiar with vintage Seamasters or even just the Seamasters of the nineties, a bracelet design and feel has come a long way. We have a conforming end link, though not quite to the degree you would see on something like a modern Seamaster. And then we have polish and satin as the links taper down towards the clasp. The outer faces are polished. You can see we have many removable links with intermediate size links in the bracelet on each side. So, you can fine tune the fit if you find yourself in between sizes. There's a sliding incremental adjuster. It's about 9.6 millimeters of incremental adjustment. Not a whole lot of adjustability. It's certainly not a dive extension, but it can help with the fine tuning on a hot day. The clasp is thick gauge steel, as is the single swing arm. Twin trigger release. You must press them both for it to open up. You can see a combination of satin finish and polished bevels. It's a good looking clasp. Rolling around to the case, this is really where the vintage style kicks into higher gear. As we have these squared off, minimally beveled lugs, a narrow case band, and a crown with no guards. You can see the Omega logo externally. And then we have this very sharply knurled bezel that's easier to grip than something like a diver 300 meter. The Seamaster 300 has a lot of small knurled edges that makes it easier if your hands are wet, sweaty, or gloved. 120 click bezel. Not the most refined in the world, but if you want a very pronounced click or detent, it certainly has that in spades. Ceramic bezel insert. Of course, the bezel is a combination of different blues. We'll do a loom shot now, so you can see the watch in the dark and how all that blue lights up. Note the use of differential loom for the minute hand and the bezel pearl. So you can see and read these two green elements relative to each other at a glance. We have quarter Arabic numerals, including a wonderful open nine, open six font. And also notice that the seconds hand is luminescent, which is great because I think every dive watch should have that. You should be able to tell in the dark of the depths, whether your backup dive timer is functional. Now you can also see here that we have a lollipop style seconds hand, which is a nod to the early days of Omega's Seamaster dive watches. The dial also features a little bit of a sandwich dial construction, a little bit like Panerai. The design of the indices, the hands, and the numerals taken from the late fifties and early sixties. And of course, we have the depth of the indices and the numerals. This is why I say it's like a sandwich dial where you have the luminescent disc on the bottom, and then the stencil on the top. We also have a gradient fade from light at the center, darker at the edge, and that wonderful Bob style counterweight. So lollipop on both sides of the seconds hand and the broad arrow style hour hand. And Omega did this right. Instead of putting a bunch of advertising on the dial, all of the boasts about the specifications of the movement, coaxial master chronometer, it's all on the back. Notice so too is the depth rating. It says Seamaster 300 on the dial. It doesn't say 300 meters. The ceramic bezel insert makes it very scratch resistant. Then we have this vaulted and domed plexiglass like sapphire curve. And then there's a little metal chimney in between the bezel and the sapphire, kind of like we see on Breitling case constructions. There is a screw down crown. It is 300 meters water resistant. Now we have this upscale feature with a mobile hour hand. The watch is still ticking, and this is great if you're traveling and you're jumping time zones. This is a twin barrel 60 hour coaxial movement. It's not one of the 8800s. It's one of the 8900s. So in addition to twin barrels and a longer power reserve, it gets this ability to move the hour hand independently. Of course, pull the crown out all the way. And now we have the ability to hack the seconds and set against a reference time. By the way, the crown when pulled out is rock solid, something I can't always say of crowns when withdrawn. And Omega makes very solid watches in that regard. Also the dead angle, the amount that I move the crown before the hand moves, it's very minimal. So this is a precision instrument in every sense. Now you can't see the movement here, but it's not an artisanal caliber. So I don't really mind that. Not a whole lot. We have caliber 8912, which is the 8900 without a date. We have Neptune or Poseidon, depending on your preference, along with the Hippocampus, the Seahorses, the Trident, and Seamaster since 1948. In fact, the first Seamaster dive watch came out in 1957, but the Seamaster is a water resistant watch. A general purpose water resistant watch was launched in 48. The movements bidirectional winding, two barrels, 60 hour reserve, 25,200 vibrations per hour, free sprung with a full balance bridge for shock resistance, anti-magnetic, almost to the point of being a magnetic, thanks to an anti-magnetic escapement, balance, balance staff, and Silicon hairspring. The watch does feature the tri-level coaxial, which is a double impulse direct and indirect impulse escapement that uses tangential friction rather than sliding friction to improve power reserve, improve chronometry, and reduce maintenance requirements. The master chronometer certification, and this is a master chronometer, says so on the back. It's a fully assembled watch chronometric test to better than COSC standards. Remember, COSC is going to be a five position, two week, bare movement test with the tolerances being minus four plus six for 24 hours. There are other standards within it, but that's the gist. This is a fully cased up six position test where the standard is minus zero plus five seconds. It also tests winding efficiency, power reserve, water resistance, overall durability, and anti-magnetism to over 15,000 gauss, which is 1.5 Tesla. Deeply impressive. This is a watch that can do it all, and it can do it all on your wrist. Reach out to team also at the1916company.com for purchase and pricing details.