Hat tip to WorldTempus.com
Owned by the Swatch Group, Certina isn’t exactly your typical small independent brand.
For the last decade of the 20th century, Certina was positioned below Tissot in terms of pricing and finish. But over the past few years, the brand has benefitted from a quality increase in design and movements. Now, Certina use amongst some of their collection the Valgrange movement, an oversize ETA calibre family that capitalizes on the construction of the Valjoux 7750.
Most of the Certina collections feature quartz movements, but the brand has gradually been introducting automatic watches motorized by the ETA 2824-2. This year, they are updating their diver’s collections with an automatic model: the DS Action Diver.
Sized at 43.2 mm, this new collection has been built to comply with the stringent ISO 6425 standard. For that reason, the marking “Diver’s watch” is printed on the dial. Needless to say, the indexes and hands are coated with Super-Luminova.
The case construction uses a screw-down crown and a screw-down back. It is impervious to 20 bar (static depth of 200 meters) and the DS Action Diver is available in stainless steel, with steel bracelet (CHF 795) or rubber strap (CHF 770); and titanium with titanium bracelet (CHF 930) or rubber strap (CHF 895).
Certina does benefit from low production costs thanks to mass-production, but in my opinion they made a smart move by deciding to invest a little more into ISO certification. This raises the bar for small diving watches brand, who often choose to invest more in arguably useless features such as saturation-diving valves or super water-resistance.
