Monro has resurfaced with the Ocean Adventure, a well-built automatic dive watch for those on a budget. But what compromises can you expect?
Monro is a relative newcomer to the microbrand watch scene, with the Ocean Adventure being only their second watch to date. A lot of the Monro design language is carried over from the debut watch, the Adventure, so it shouldn’t drive away existing customers. However, the Ocean Adventure is also likely to find a new audience as it ups the ante on specifications whilst adopting a more crowd-pleasing conventional design, doing away with the polarising fixed lugs of the first watch.Also,whereas the Adventure was a cross-over dive watch/GMT, the Ocean Adventure as the name would suggest is more of a true dive watch, with increased water resistance.
Monro Ocean Adventurer Overview
A total of seven variants are available, split across stainless steel and bronze cases. The four stainless steel models come supplied with a stainless steel bracelet and additional colour-matched rubber NATO style strap with stainless steel hardware. Choose from Pacific Black dial with bronze accents, Arctic Silver (white) dial with blue accents, Atlantic Blue fume dial with red accents, or Atlantic Red fume dial. The launch price is £315, after which it will increase to the full retail price of £350.
Each of the three bronze models come with a colour-matched rubber NATO style strap and an additional leather strap. You can choose from a Pacific Black dial with black ceramic insert, Arctic Silver (white) dial with blue ceramic bezel insert, or an Atlantic Blue gradient dial with black ceramic insert. Bronze cased models all have bronze-coloured hands and bezel markings. The pre-order price for bronze models is £405, after which they will be £450.
Each edition is limited to 200 pieces and the warranty period is two years. If you sign up to the Monro newsletter, you can get another 10% any of the models, which brings the stainless steel versions down to just over £280!
My review watch was the MOA-4 Atlantic Red. Of course, red is the colour of love and passion. But it’s also the colour of fury/rage. The Ocean Adventurer will definitely have you hot under the collar, but will it also leave you seeing red?
The Case and Wearing Experience
The 41mm case in 316L stainless steel has a lug-to-lug measurement of just 46mm and an overall thickness of 15.1mm (13.1mm excluding the sapphire). The overall level of finishing is excellent and certainly belies its price. The three-piece case and bracelet are mainly satin-brushed for a tool-like appearance, but beautiful high-polished chamfers flow from the lug tips along the length of the case and bring a level of refinement. The mid-case has vertical sides and is quite thick, making it slab-sided and giving it a true tool watch feel, but the downturned lugs certainly help it wear better than you might think.
The 120-click unidirectional rotating diver’s bezel features distinctive ‘forward-motion’ inspired knurling and the lovely gloss-black ceramic insert is engraved with Arabic numerals at 10-minute intervals and hash marks for every five. Unusually, the inner portion of the bezel insert is white, but glows blue at night and features a black minute track for precise timing. The main bezel markings aren’t coated with any lume, which seems like a bit of an oversight, but the diver’s triangle at 12 o’clock and the white minute track are filled with Swiss grade Superlite Luminous SBLC1, which really is incredibly powerful and glows blue. The bezel and glowing blue inner track look so phenomenal at night that I expect lots of buyers to be getting busy beneath the sheets (take your mind out of the gutter, you know what I mean lume-lovers!)
Sandwiched between the bezel and the mid-case is a colour-matched inlay, a lovely little detail. The bezel is taller than most dive bezels and overhangs the case fractionally. Whilst the height and deep knurling make it very easy to grip, the functionality comes with the downside of adding to the overall thickness of the case. The bezel action is good with little-to-no back play. It’s has quite a high-pitched ratcheting sound, but bezel acoustics are something that’s very personal, so you’ll have to decide for yourself if this is a good thing or not. Alignment is just the tiniest fraction off at the 12, but it’s within acceptable tolerances given the price point.
Protecting the dial is a double-domed sapphire glass with three layers of anti-reflective coating. I’m conflicted about the use of a such a high double-dome on a dive watch. I love the character it adds, especially when combined with the inward sloping bezel of the Ocean. But again, it adds depth to an already thick watch and suffers from more reflections than a less dramatic dome or flat sapphire would, which in certain lights does affect the legibility slightly.
The three-link quick-release bracelet has female end links, tapers from 20mm at the lugs down to 18mm at the buckle and has beautifully generous polished wrap-around facets that completely encompass each of the outer links. The quick-release mechanism works well and makes changing straps easy. Another detail that only comes to light on close inspection is that each link has a slight downward curve to its profile. There’s some great attention to detail evident here, especially given the retail price. The polished facets continue on the twin-button, milled fold-over diver’s clasp, which has on-the-fly adjustment with four positions and is engraved with the Monro logo.
The watch is also supplied with a colour-matched double-pass rubber military-style strap, with bespoke stainless steel buckle and keepers. It looks great on the watch and is a thoughtful inclusion. However, I wouldn’t personally wear it much as I feel the watch head is too thick and heavy for it and I’m not keen on how the metal hardware is locked into place at an angle. However, for non-NATO lovers like me, the standard 20mm lug width means you’ve got plenty of aftermarket alternatives!
Despite the overall thickness of the watch, the wearing experience is surprisingly good, thanks mainly to the finishing. There are no sharp or poorly-finished edges, the bracelet articulation is good and the rounded and polished facets on each link help it feel great against the skin.
The screw-down closed caseback is circularly brushed to the outer but features a central section that is bead blasted and embossed with a polished ‘M’ for Monro logo. Between the two is a polished band engraved with the brand’s tagline, ‘where will time take you?’ and ‘limited edition xxx/200’.
The 7mm knurled crown features the same forward-motion inspired pattern found on the bezel and crown guards help protect the crown and stem from damage. The crown guards, which integrate seamlessly with the case, have tight engineering tolerances with very little space between the crown and the guards. This is something I really appreciate as I hate big gaps between the crown and guards. Water resistance is a healthy 200m.
The Movement
The Ocean Adventure features theJapanese Seiko NH38A Automatic calibre, a popular movement choice for watches pitched at this price. This 24-jewel calibre isn’t known for being particularly accurate (-20/+40 seconds per day), but it’s reliable and robust, has a 41-hour power reserve, you can hand wind it and hack it to set the precise time against a reference time.
The Dial and Hands
Look at this dial! Isn’t it the perfect shade of red? Well, to me it is.It’s a lovely deep, rich red that I’d describe as somewhere between crimson and scarlet with a gradient effect, that gets darker towards the outer edge of the dial. There is a very deep rehaut between the sapphire crystal and the dial itself. A minute track, printed in white runs around the permitter. The large silver-coloured applied hour markers have a nice height to them and are generously filled with Swiss grade Superlite Luminous SLC1 which glows green. I’d loosely describe the cardinal hour markers (12, 3, 6, 9) as teardrop in shape, but withstraight-cut angled inner edges that come to a point. These are inspired by the Monro ‘pin drop’ logo. The remaining hour markers are all round.
The Ocean Adventure retains the signature polished and facetted hands of the original Adventure along with the clever concentric alignment of feature ‘dots’. The lume dot of the seconds hand lands squarely in the centre of the skeletonised dot on the minute hand, which in turn encompasses the lume dot of the hour hand when it passes. I love little design flourishes such as this as they really bring a smile to your face when you catch it just at the right moment.
The hour and seconds hands use Swiss grade Superlite Luminous SLC1, which glows green to match the indices, whilst the minute hand uses Swiss grade Superlite Luminous SBLC1 which glows blue. The lume strength appears to be slightly better on the bezel than it does on the hands, but it’s not that the lume on the hands is poor, more that the bezel lume glows like the North Star on a clear night! Above the pinion at 12 o’clock is the Monro pin drop logo, and beneath the pinion above the six marker is four lines of white text comprising ‘Ocean’ in stylised italics and Adventure, Automatic, 200m/656m.
All-in-all, the dial is everything you’d want in a genuine dive watch, legible, uncomplicated and with powerful lume!
Final Thoughts
Rather than delivering the usual proverbial s#@! sandwich, I’m going to get the ‘bad’ out the way first in this review. The reason being that the ‘bad’ will only be a bad for some. However, it could be a major consideration in the decision-making of some potential buyers. For those who haven’t already guessed, yes, I’m talking about size! At 15.1mm thick and with a substantial mid-case, the Ocean Adventure has certainly got some heft to it. Whether this is a negative will depend largely on your wrist size and how you like your tool watches to wear. However, if you’re buying a dive watch with the intention of it being an all-purpose watch that you wear to the office, as well as for more casual wear or heaven forbid, actual diving, you might have to consider re-stocking your wardrobe with some work shirts that have loser fitting cuffs!
Shirts ‘sitch’ aside though, whilst it is a thick watch, it’s certainly not uncomfortable. The mid-case has a nice, curved profile and the lug-to-lug is short. The bracelet is also comfortable and very well finished. And of course, you have the on-the-fly adjustment which makes getting a perfect fit easy. That said though, I’ve rarely heard people complain about a watch case being too thin, so for the MK3 I would love to see Monro reduce the case thickness. I think it could be easily achieved, whether that’s by using a Miyota movement, reducing the height of the bezel, using a flat sapphire, thinning the chucky mid-case, or any combination of the above!
Right, with the elephant in the room out of the way, if you’re still in, the only other slight negative is that the choice of a such a high double-domed sapphire does come with added reflections. However, it must be said that dial legibility remains excellent even with these reflections. But it’s a bugger to photograph, so you’d better get to love those ‘flecto’ shots for your Insta! If neither the thickness nor flecto are a turn-off for you, then the Ocean Adventure makes a compelling case as one of the best dive watches you can buy for the launch price of just £315. It offers truly incredible value for money, so much so that I’m left scratching my head wondering how on earth they make any money! I mean, come on, an attractive dive watch from a British brand that has interesting design touches, a reliable Japanese movement, sapphire crystal, ceramic bezel, lovely finishing, great bracelet and truly outstanding glow from the powerful lume. I doubt I need to convince you any more than that…!
Let us know what you think of the Ocean Adventure in the comments below, especially if you’ve bought one. We’re genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading and stay tuned. We’ve got some exciting reviews coming up!
