Mido Automatic Diving Watch Ocean Star GMT Dark Blue M026.629.17.051.00

Product Information

And everyone else usually offers the office GMT from using the exact same movement, the ETA 2893-2. Last year, Mido, one of the brands under the Swatch Group umbrella, released the Ocean Star GMT. Our very own Thor Svaboe has a great write up of the watch that you can find here in which he talks about the amazing value it presents within the category of Swiss-made automatic GMT’s.

Suppose you are going to be consulting the time in two time zones frequently. The priority of the dial must be legibility, and the Ocean Star GMT delivers just that. The hour and minute hands have a semi-skeletonised format, a distinctive feature of many Mido Ocean Star watches. They are polished on the sides and brushed in the centre to ensure legibility from any angle. The soft blue colour of the dial provides a perfect base for the rectangular applied indexes with their mirror-polished contours and lume-filled interiors. The red GMT hand has a white tip; the same colour combination is used for the central seconds hand, but it is much more subtle and slimmer, so there is no confusion reading the GMT data.

Technical Details

The latter? Everyone else. Well, everyone apart from a few Omegas, and their recent innovation, a non-GMT complication in the calibre 8500 movement family, which offers timezone-setting (1-hr increments) on 3-handed watches.

The lume quality seems good too, with a strong glow as you transition from light into dark, and long-lasting readability. It is easy to differentiate the hands in the dark, as well as orientate the dial. The chamfers on the case corners, the castellated edge of the bezel, the crown, the surface of the ceramic bezel insert, the facets of the hands and indices.Will this be the second watch from Mido which can inspire me? The Mido Ocean Star Chronograph was one of the big surprises for me at the beginning of this year. This was not only due to the interesting hybrid concept, consisting of diver and chronograph. Also the good workmanship, the excellent choice of materials and the moderate price made the timepiece a real top watch for me. So now it’s on to the GMT variant, a distant sister. The Mido Ocean Star GMT expands the diving collection of the Swiss traditional manufacturer with an interesting world time watch, whose time zone information can be found in a very unusual place. GMT and diving watch in one – I will show you this and all other exciting details in my review! What the Mido Ocean Star GMT promises… In honor of the Baroncelli collection's 30th anniversary in 2006, Mido released a new collection of classic, minimalist timepieces inspired by string instruments. The addition of the Belluna collection in 2008 marked Mido's first line of Art Deco watches. While the Ocean Star GMT is a big watch at 44m, one aspect of it received a universal fanfare. That was the movement. A movement Swatch quietly developed and released years ago that could completely change the landscape of GMT watch offerings. I like the little details touches when in motion too. The end of the hour hand just hovers over the inside edge of the date window as it passes 3. The minute hand tip reaches the inner edge minute indices. The ends of the second and GMT hands are at the outer edge of minute indices too. The widest part of the second hand’s lume passes perfectly over the inner edge of the hour indices. These are intentional and pleasing things to see.

For clarity, the two look and function in an identical manner, with 4 hands, usually with all of them centrally mounted. Hours, minutes and seconds of the time, displayed on a 12-hr dial exactly as almost every other watch out there. And the 4 th hand is the GMT hand. It rotates a single time every 24 hrs to indicate a separate timezone. If you just wound them and watched them run, both types would seem to be identical. Right up to the point where you rub together your thumb and index finger before releasing the crown to set the watch.

I should say that Mido are not active in the UK market. They have no dealer network or even an agent over here. Nor will they sell direct to customers. I did ask Mido directly, but they refused. Mido specifies the water resistance up to 200 meters depth. That should be more than enough for 99.5% of us. Enduring like no other movement: the Caliber 80 The Mido uses rectangular indices all round, apart from double squares at 12 and 6, and a single square to accommodate the date at 3. Even the 12-marker on the bezel is a square, albeit with a round lume pip within. The hands are folded, with a brushed centre section and polished edges. The H and M hands have rectangular lume sections on the outer ends, and empty windows on the pinion end. Both the GMT and the seconds hand have blue arrow heads. When feeling the case surfaces, the Mido Ocean Star GMT makes the usual good impression. Everything feels very high quality. The Mido Ocean Star GMT on the wrist This is not an indictment against the Swatch Group. They, after all, created the movement, and should be applauded for developing a caliber that’s truly useful for so many at an affordable price point. But it’s an interesting commentary about what we value, as enthusiasts, versus what’s important to much larger, more commercial brands and the behemoth groups, and underlines the importance of the continuous community discussion we, and many others, try to foster here, and on social media, and on watch forums , where these watches were recently discussed, beating the American press to the punch by more than a week.

This can also be felt on the wrist, where the diver’s watch sits very comfortably. A case diameter of 44 millimeters is a real mark, even for diving watches. Such a watch stands out; you should be aware of that. However, compared to the 44 millimeters in diameter, the Mido Ocean Star GMT measures just 13 millimeters in height. So, the watch sits quite flat on the wrist. The additional very dynamic design of the case sides give the diver a sporty look. These elevate what could otherwise look a little utilitarian into something smarter and even perhaps dressier. One of the Swiss company's earliest successes came in 1934 in the form of the Multifort. This model remains a staple of the Mido catalog to this day. The release of the Ocean Star followed in 1959 and was a smash hit. It features a single-shell case and a crown sealing system that would later become known as the Aquadura. At the time, the Ocean Star was one of the most robust and water-resistant watches on the market. Today, the Ocean Star's direct descendants are found in the Commander collection, while the Ocean Star name has been given to a new series of diving watches.A look through the specs, though, had us wondering what exactly was up with this thing. The spec sheet lists the movement as the Mido Caliber 80, which is based on an ETA C07.661 caliber, part of the next generation of ETA movements with extended power reserves (this one goes up to 80 hours on a full wind). We had heard rumblings of a new GMT movement that ETA would be introducing with a jumping local hour hand, and suspected this might be it. Leave it to a worldwide pandemic to prevent us from getting one to go hands on with to prove it (and the Mido provided press material didn’t explicitly state whether or not this was a feature of the watch). The Traveller GMT is often seen as being a more functional and exclusive complication. Some people even refer to it as a “true” GMT movement, but I think it is unhelpful as it adds a layer of unwarranted snobbery to the argument. It is also true that some of the Seiko watches that have this setting method use the Kinetic family of movements and are very modest, so the snobbery is unjustified. And that’s why the introduction of the C07.661 is so interesting. While it’s unlikely that small brands will get a hold of this new caliber anytime soon, it seems to be almost a sure thing that other Swatch Group brands will have access to it. Imagine the possibilities of true GMTs from the likes of Hamilton, and Longines, and you start to see that the C07.661 could be a game changer for the enthusiasts who have made 2893-2 and SW330-1 watches so popular these last few years. By some reports, these movements are so widely used that they’ve become genuinely scarce (comparatively speaking), driving up the price of watches equipped with these calibers.