Introducing: The Wren Diver One Aqua

Back when I began covering the watch industry as a “journalist” (my quotes), you could probably pack all the “microbrand” owners — the folks who founded and ran tiny, sometimes one-person watch companies — into one medium-sized hall.

Indeed, back then our friends at Worn & Wound sort of did pack all these people (and their fans) into a hall at their WindUp Watch Fair. That fair — those fairs, actually, as there are now multiple each year — has grown considerably, and no longer fits into its birthplace of Chelsea Market. These days, there are so many microbrands that I, a “veteran watch journalist” (with a NATO strap and a flak jacket), can no longer name them all from memory. Each year, more and more crop up and vie for my attention.

This is both good and bad news for collectors. Competition, of course, drives down prices. But we’ve also seen a race to the proverbial bottom over the past 10 years or so — one in which opportunists turn out sub-par products at attractive prices just to make a quick buck…and then disappear from the scene. Thankfully, we’ve also begun witnessing the opposite happen: Genuine experts in the form of journalists and designers working at top watch blogs are now designing and releasing their own watches, and the results are sometimes excellent.

Recently I was introduced to a new microbrand launched by Wrist Enthusiast, the watch blog launched as an Instagram account back in 2015 by Craig Karger, a longtime collector and then-attorney who now runs his website full time. Craig is a highly knowledgeable professional who has been buying watches for many years, and he took his time to grow first his social media, then his blog, and only then developed and launched Wren — a portmanteau of “WRist” and “ENthusiast.” (And a type of bird, for those who don’t realize.) His first product, the Diver One Aqua, took over a year to bring to market.

The idea with Wren is to offer a Swiss-made product — with a Swiss movement and top-notch quality control — at an excellent price. (In this case, for under $900.) The Diver One — which will be available in a different dial color once the first 100 “Aqua” pieces sell out — is a fairly typical, vintage-inspired diver common to the microbrand space: Measuring 41mm in diameter and 13.3mm tall, it’s housed in a brushed, stainless steel case without crown guards and features a matching, brushed flat-link bracelet, a domed sapphire crystal and 200m of water resistance via a screw-down crown and caseback.

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However, the devil is really in the details at the ~$1,000 mark: The case, while not colored, is PVD coated for hardness — a feature more felt than seen. Furthermore, while some automatic divers selling for below $1K feature bezels with alignment issues, the Diver One’s bezel features a sapphire insert in dark grey with 120-click action and a lumed 12 o’clock pip that aligns perfectly with the dial indices. The turquoise dial itself, meanwhile, is executed in a dynamic, ombré-like, acid-brushed pattern that fades from light in the center to dark at the edges. The dot and triangle indices, somewhat reminiscent of those on certain vintage Tudor Submariner references, are Panerai-like cutouts — below the main dial is a lume plate that shines through the cutouts to illuminate the dial. The lack of a date display keeps the design clean, while a sword/lollipop handset lumed the same vintage yellow hue as the lower dial plate provides a pop of color against the aqua and dark grey. In short: A handsome, highly legible dial and a reliable bezel with solid action set this piece apart in a sea of similar fare.

Flip the Diver One over, and you’re greeted with a deeply engraved caseback featuring a wren, plus the watch’s individual LE number, water resistance rating and a few other bits of information. Quick-change spring bars secure the watch’s flat-link bracelet — designed like vintage Omega models that once accompanied the Speedmaster, this type is a nice departure from the Oyster-style bracelet that once accompanied seemingly every microbrand (and major brand) dive watch. At the moment, my review model tapers from 22mm to 20mm, but on the final production run, it will taper further from 22mm to 18mm, which should vastly help with respect to elegance. Furthermore, the final bracelet will feature chamfered and polished edges, and the buckle will be a fold-over type with a push-button, plus a 6-position micro-adjust system.

Powering the watch is the Swiss-made Sellita SW-200, an automatic caliber with 38 hours of power reserve beating at 4 Hz. Hand-windable and hackable, it’s Sellita’s equivalent to the famous ETA 2824, a workhorse movement found in thousands of hard-wearing watches from brands big and small. At the sub-$1,000 price point, certain microbrand divers will feature Swiss-made movements, while many others use Japanese calibers. Though many of the latter are perfectly serviceable, having the added reliability of a Swiss-made engine adds a degree of quality and refinement that further elevates Wren to fresh heights.

On-wrist, the Diver One wears like many vintage-inspired, Sub-adjacent watches. Though slightly thicker than my daily-driver Submariner, it still slips under a cuff, and the bracelet is highly comfortable. The dial, as stated earlier, is wildly legible, with bright lume and excellent color. While I didn’t get a chance to dive with the Diver One — yet — it certainly makes for excellent day-to-day fare.

If I had to nitpick the design, I would mention that I’m personally not the biggest fan of sapphire bezel inserts, which tend to smudge easily — however, I also acknowledge that this is a matter of personal preference. That aside, I will say that the Diver One certainly doesn’t rewrite the vintage-inspired, microbrand diver playbook — indeed, there have been many watches like this one that have hit the market over the past decade or so — but I don’t think that’s really the point here. What Wren is offering is a well-made, good-looking, Swiss-powered, automatic dive watch in the first of (presumably) many colorways for under $1,000 — and who would object to that?