Tissot Sea-Touch: A Review

Separate Or Combo: Choices…Choices…

The dive watch market is a fickle beast; one moment it’s completely fanatical about massive digital displays and chunky boots, the next it’s idolizing the inconspicuous, sleek watches that would pass for a formal timepiece should you forget to take it off on your way from the dive site to the evening gala (which is a real problem for me, I’m always in such a hurry rushing from my private yacht to those pesky evening balls…gosh life is hard being a secret agent! Ahem, I mean online journalist…yeah, just a normal, run-of-the-mill journalist…).

I have always tried to keep my dive watch and dive computer separate, I enjoy having the redundancy of two time keepers and it gives me an excuse to purchase two individual wrist adornments! It’s strange though, because of late I’ve been more and more enticed by the lures of a combo watch-dive computer. I don’t think it’s because I am actually keen to buy a watch/computer, I think I’m just so impressed by the different ways that watch manufacturers are able to overcome the technical and spacial constraints that are innate when attempting to engineer that much technology into such a small package. The real problem however, is not that they can’t fit the computing power into the little unit, but that the designers struggle to find a clear and concise way for the user to view and manipulate the information. How do you ensure that the massive amount of data that your clever little watch has collected about its environment is easily displayed on a two centimetre wide screen without it turning into a solid lump of black colour for those of us without superhuman eyesight? The answer, my friends, is that you don’t just use the digital display…you use the watch hands too!

Tissot Sea-Touch: Features

I am going to warn you now, you should ensure you swallow your food and drink fully before you read the rest of this article, otherwise you risk covering your computer in juice and sandwich – you will spit it out in awe of this James Bond watch!

Coffee Swallowed? Good, Because This Watch Will Blow Your...Em...Hat off!

Analogue Hands: For More Than Just Time!

This ingenious watch from the country that brought us the Swiss Army Knife (Switzerland…for those of you that are reading this in the morning and haven’t had your coffee yet) has managed to fully impress a jaded gear-junkie that thought he’d seen it all. In terms of information presentation I was sure that the best any designer would ever manage would be to increase the resolution on digital displays so more information could be displayed, I never though they’d use the mechanical hands to display the data!

There are a few watches out there at the moment that have a mechanical depth gauge built into the facia which adds an element of scuba chic to any outfit, but doesn’t really do much more than provide a minor element of convenience and back-up redundancy for your standard pressure gauge. The Sea-Touch however, uses the two hands from the analogue watch and electronically swivels them to correspond with the appropriate markings on the bezel. Watching the hands of a watch quickly and smoothly rotate to certain points on the facia was cool enough to have me drooling over this piece of Swiss magic!

The Hands Swivel Quickly To Point To The Setting You've Just Selected, Which Is Extremely Cool!

A Bloody Touch Screen!

The Sea-Touch is the aquatic member of Tissot’s “Touch” collection of watches. They are all well built and robust watches with a very impressive party-trick – in addition to having three conventional pushbuttons on the side of the watch, the glass screen is touch-sensitive as well! It’s not touch sensitive in an iPhone sort of way (with a computer screen and icons), instead there are clearly marked areas for you to touch around the outside of the dial that, when touched, will change the watch mode. Even the centre is touchable, adding further functionality to the menu system.

The touch system is remarkably un-gimmicky because there is a very restrained air of practicality and functional design. It’s as though the designers wanted to impress us with the capabilities of the product rather than the lights and fanfare that usually obscures functionality on electronic devices…what a novel idea! The screen itself is unmarked, because the touch sensors are somehow invisible (more voodoo). The touch aspect can be switched on or off to ensure that you don’t end up launching a missile somewhere or deleting the national bank records by accidentally bumping the watch off your thigh.

Amazing Touchscreen, Refined Yet Practical

Dive Computer

The Sea-Touch is a peculiar instrument because it has all the features of a dive computer, and yet the manual recommends that you dive with a separate dive computer because the Sea-Touch is only to be used as a back-up. I believe this is because Tissot have realised that the watch’s instruments are not nearly as precise as a fully fledged dive computer, though I must confess that if I had the chance to own one, I’d almost certainly use it for day-to-day diving, and only take my proper computer for deep dives.

Tissot have been very clever with their use of the rotating hands as they’ve managed to employ them to display the two most important pieces of information when on a dive; the depth and the ascent/descent rate. On the outside of the bezel is the depth (denoted in meters or feet, depending on what model you buy) which the minute hand points to, and on the left side of the facia there is a scale of metres per minute which the hour hand uses to state your speed as you move vertically in the water. The depth gauge is marked in such a way as to give you more precise readings for the first fifteen meters, any deeper and it becomes less easy to define your precise depth.

The digital screen is not left out of the action as it provides the diver with the elapsed bottom time in hours and minutes. This dual format display allows the diver to quickly glance at the information they want, rather than scrolling through digital menus or trying to decipher which number means what.

The log book is necessarily simple, though it covers all the aspects that you really need. It can be a little frustrating accessing it, with limited display to aid your navigation, but with a little time spent with the instructions you’ll get the hang of it. Obviously the memory is much more limited than a dedicated dive computer, but it is more than sufficient for the average diver.

Compass

This is a really innovative feature that I am so impressed with because, unlike most other dive computers that have an integrated digital compass, the Sea-Touch’s compass is actually worth using. Instead of displaying a crappy digital heading on a screen, the Sea-Touch uses a very familiar and effective way of displaying north – it points an arrow towards it. To put it simply, Tissot have integrated a digital compass into the computer but instead of using the digital display to show where north is, they use the minute and hour hand to make a long arrow that swivels just like a conventional fluid-filled compass. This is a feature that really has to be observed to be really impressive, but by using the physical hands to display direction Tissot have managed to overcome the nasty and lengthy “relearning process” that most divers have to endure to be able to operate their digital compass effectively.

Dive Mode Is Automatic (@ 1.5m) And Can Be Manually Set For Snorkelling.

Thermometer

Like all good electronic devices, you can always make it more desirable by adding a thermometer, the Sea-Touch is no exception, and it becomes especially useful when you are diving (a dunk of the wrist in the sea will let you decide what exposure protection to wear before you get in the water).

Pros

Build Quality – The Tissot has a very reassuring weight to it which provides an immediate sensation of robustness. It is a solid timepiece that will endure several years of diving flawlessly. There's A Whole Lot Of Metal In This Watch, Which Reassures Me...

Ingenious – There are many people who will decry this watch as a gimmick-laden toy, but I see real, functional design that has finally managed to push the boundaries of how we interact with our watches.Easy To Read – This is a big draw for some folks who hate digital displays. The hands are big and defined which allows for quick glances rather than extended reading, which is handy when you’re on a tricky cavern dive! The Excellent Display Is Made Even Better By The Backlight.

Full Featured – This watch packs more features than a huge range of other dive-orientated watches, and yet it somehow remains a viable dinner timepiece. Truly an exercise in exceptional design.Excellent Compass – I am very disappointed in most of the integrated digital compasses that are on offer with dive computers, this one however, has really grabbed my attention. It combines the size of a digital unit with the ease of use that comes from a mechanical offering, with very little drawbacks!

Cons

Price – So, all these features will be cheap will they? Um…no…sorry. This is a seriously expensive item of gear that will be far beyond most diver’s pockets. Though this doesn’t bother me in the slightest because things like this are not meant to be owned by everybody, they are meant to inject excitement into the atmosphere when it turns out a diver has one on the boat – it is a spectacle to behold like a Ferrari or a pair of Prada shoes at a party. Watching one in action makes my mind boggle, which is precisely the effect it’s meant to have.Accuracy – As mentioned above, there are small issues with the accuracy of the instruments (especially at extremes) which Tissot have warned might make it unsuitable for using as a solo computer, though for the average diver it is more than sufficient (who needs to know how deep they are to the centimetre anyway?).Depth – This is a two-fold criticism because the Sea-Touch is waterproof to one hundred metres which makes me a little nervous (I know divers that have dived to seventy metres on air…which is a little too close to the watch’s maximum depth for my liking) and the depth gauge is only marked to fifty-nine metres which means that it is only suitable for recreational divers – Tec divers will have to look elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

I’ve pathetically gushed enough for you to realise that I am thoroughly impressed by the features and design of this watch. It has made me reconsider what other manufacturers are offering and has raised the bar for ingenuity in wrist-top computing considerably. I hope to see a more hardcore version of this watch come out in the near future, regardless of price, because ultimately I’ll just be reviewing it…not buying it!