Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium Blue Review

In the two years since starting Hourstriker I have really been impressed by the releases French watch brand Baltic have put out. Although I've been in the watch industry for well over two decades, most of my knowledge and hands on experience was with the more established high horology Swiss brands. Hourstriker has really opened my world up to extremely interesting brands like Baltic that I otherwise would never have known about.

Baltic is a rather new brand being founded in 2016 by Etienne Malec after discovering the watch collection of his late father. When Etienne's father passed in 2005, he inherited his father's precious watch collection along with his father's journal of the watches that crossed his path during his life. Most of these watches were mid 20th century pieces and this meticulously kept diary served as Etienne's education in the world of watches.



Much like my collecting tastes were honed in the early 2000s, with larger high-tech watches still being my preferred niche, Etienne found his inspiration in the vintage pieces his father wrote about. This would serve as a template for the kind of watches Baltic would later go on to produce. Etienne started his brand as a tribute to his father's legacy and the name Baltic was chosen to honor his father's roots being from the northern coast of Poland on the Baltic Sea.

A year after the founding of Baltic, the world was introduced to the brand by a Kickstarter campaign launched in April of 2017. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, Baltic focused on producing a time only automatic and manually wound chronograph that took inspiration from the 1940s and 50s. The campaign was a huge success and raised over 500,000 Euros with a base goal of only 65,000 Euros. With this accomplishment, Baltic instantly became established in the microbrand space.



Baltic really hit its stride in 2018 with the release of their Aquascaphe collection. The Aquascaphe was the brand's dive watch which took its inspiration from classic dive watches of the 1950s, primarily the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. In no time the Aquascaphe became the flagship model for Baltic and opened up the tool watch niche to the brand which had previously mostly focused on dressier pieces.

More recently, Baltic has kept expanding their collections and now has a full range of timepieces. The Aquascaphe has evolved and seems to get better with each generation. The MR series offers classic design with an amazing micro-rotor automatic movement. The Hermetique has been a huge hit for the brand with a true "go anywhere do anything" field watch design offered in surprisingly fun colors. Finally with their Prismic collection, Baltic has entered into the world of exotic stone dials, which were until recently reserved only for the pinnacle of fine watchmaking.



Baltic has also been able keep the asking price of their watches on the affordable end by selling watches direct to consumer, bypassing fees charged by distributors and authorized dealers. The brand also keeps their production costs low by having some components manufactured in Hong Kong. Most of their straps are made in Europe and Baltic uses either Swiss or Japanese movements inside of their watches. Finally the assembly of Baltic watches is done in Besancon, France, which is the historic heart of traditional French watchmaking.

Initial Thoughts

Now that I've gone over the history of Baltic, let's now take a closer look at the watch I asked the brand to send us to review. Being a huge fan, and owner, of the Fifty Fathoms, naturally I requested an Aquascaphe to review first from the brand. Also with titanium being my favorite case material and preferring larger watches, the 41 mm Aquascaphe Titanium stood out the most to me in their current catalog.



When the Aquascaphe arrived, the first thing I noticed about the watch was just how lightweight it was. On the rubber strap and titanium pin buckle the watch weighed in at just 74 grams. Normally anything less than 100 grams is where I like to be on a larger timepiece, so that the Aquascaphe is 25 percent less that that is awesome. I know a lot of collectors prefer the luxurious weight of stainless steel, but I prefer having a larger watch with no weight penalty that titanium, carbon and ceramic can offer.

The next thing I took note of was the blue coloration of the Aquascaphe. Typically between the blue and black versions of the Aquascaphe, I would have picked the black dial variant. Baltic ended up sending me the blue version, and honestly I'm happy they did. The matte blue ceramic bezel, glossy blue dial and blue tropic rubber strap go perfectly with the grey titanium case. The blue is also fairly dark, so much so that when I opened the watch in a poorly lit room, I actually thought they had sent me the black version.



The final thing I noticed during my initial time with the Baltic Aquascaphe was a small detail. The lugs of the Aquascaphe are drilled, which means when changing a strap you don't risk scratching the lugs when trying to depress the spring bars. Typically removing the spring bars is when damage occurs, putting the bars back in is an easier mostly a risk free process. Baltic does include a quick release system with their straps, but if / when you change over to different aftermarket straps that might not be quick release, it's nice to know the lugs are drilled. I personally feel the blue Aquascaphe would look amazing on a white rubber or Marine Nationale style strap.

A Closer Look

The Baltic Aquascaphe has a case crafted out of grade 5 titanium. Grade 5 titanium is a titanium alloy that is a bit stronger than pure grade 2 titanium and offers better scratch resistance. Grade 5 titanium doesn't have the pure grey look of grade 2, but it does take to finishing better. The case diameter of the Aquascaphe is 38.8 mm with an overhanging bezel which measures exactly 41 mm. The lug to lug length is 46.9 mm, and at its thickest point the Aquascaphe is 13.5 mm tall.



The Aquascaphe has a highly double domed sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating applied to the inside of the sapphire. This is desirable for a dive watch that might get banged into foreign objects since the anti-reflective coating scratches easy if it's on the top, exposed, portion of the sapphire. Under the crystal clear sapphire is the glossy deep blue dial. Around the outside of the dial is a white printed minute track with each minute being represented by a small white hash mark. Each five minute interval then gets a slightly longer hash mark.

Baltic uses a generous amount of luminous material on the dial of the Aquascaphe. The hour markers are covered with Super-LumiNova BGW9 that appear white in normal lighting and glow a strong blue in low light. The 12 o'clock hour marker is a triangle with 3, 6, and 9 represented by rounded batons. The other hour markers are round dot style markers. I really like the three different shape markers since it gives the dial a fairly unique look. I also love that Baltic did not include a date window on the Aquascaphe. For non-calendar watches I'm really starting to like date windows less and less. Since I rotate watches frequently, I always have to set a watch before I wear it, and having a date just makes that process longer.



The dial of the Aquascaphe has three centrally mounted hands being the hour, minute and seconds hands. The hour and minute hands are pointed baton style hands with a matte finish and are covered with matching Super-LumiNova to the hour markers. The running seconds hand has a small round counter balance and a large oval shaped tip once again covered in matching lume. Finishing off the dial is Baltic branding at 12 o'clock and "Aquascaphe Titanium 300M" at 6 o'clock.

Moving on from the dial is the nicely scalloped titanium bezel with a brushed blue ceramic insert. The pointer at 0/60 is represented by a triangle with 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 getting an Arabic numeral. Each five minute marker between is then set with a dot marker. The bezel markers are fully lumed and match what is found on the lumed dial elements. The bezel is uni-directional and takes 120 clicks to complete a full rotation. The bezel feel is amazing with each turn resulting in a nice audible click and ratcheting right into position. There is plenty of grip on the bezel and it shouldn’t be an issue to operate with dive gloves on.



The case of the Aquascaphe shows off its true tool watch nature. The case is fully brushed without a hint of a polished surface. Looking at the profile of the watch you can see that the mid case is extremely thin and also the true height of the domed sapphire. The lugs gently slope to follow the curvature of your wrist and the less than 47 mm lug to lug length means the watch will fit a host of wrist sizes.

On the right hand side of the watch is a once again nicely scalloped screw down crown topped with Baltic's "B" logo. The screw down crown helps with the impressive 300 meters of water resistance offered by the Aquascaphe. Un-screwing the crown allows you to manually wind the automatic movement in the resting position. Since there are no calendar complications on the Aquascaphe, there is only one additional crown position. Pulling the crown out to position one stops the seconds hand and lets you set the time. Pushing the crown back in causes no jump in the minute hand and screwing the crown back in takes no additional care to get it to catch.



Flipping the watch over shows off the solid titanium case back which is screwed into place. Important information about the watch is engraved on the case back including water resistance and case material. Underneath the case back beats the Japanese made Miyota 9039 automatic movement. The movement beats away at 28,000 vph (4Hz) and has 42 hours of power reserve. We haven't tested too many watches with a Miyota movement powering them, so I was very curious to see how the 9039 performed. On our timegrapher the Miyota 9039 showed an accuracy of +5 seconds per day when averaged out over several positions and had a beat error of 0.0. Overall that is a great result for the movement and shows it to be super accurate.

The lug width of the Aquascaphe is the industry standard of 20 mm, meaning the watch can accept an endless amount of aftermarket straps. As I mentioned earlier, the lugs of the watch are also drilled which makes removing straps much easier and safer. The Aquascaphe does come on an extremely supple tropic style strap made out of blue FKM vulcanized rubber. The strap was extremely comfortable from the first wear and didn't require any break in period. The top end of the strap tapers down from 20 mm at the lugs to 16.5 mm at the titanium branded pin buckle. The bottom side of the strap has a more aggressive taper down to 12 mm.



On The Wrist If you've read many of my reviews you know that my sweet spot when it comes to watch sizing is right at or just over 50 mm of lug to lug length. The lug to lug length of the Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium is only 46.9 mm which made me a bit nervous that the watch would feel small on my wrist. In practice on my 7.25 inch wrist with a 55 mm flat area, the watch wore surprisingly well. The rubber strap did a great job of keeping the watch centered on my wrist and there was a decent amount of wrist visible on each end of the watch. My wife who is about a foot shorter than me and has a much smaller wrist was able to comfortably wear the Aquascaphe as well.

Another important aspect of a personal watch to me is the weight of the watch. I just can't do heavy watches, especially those on full metal bracelets. With the Aquascaphe only weighing 74 grams including the strap and buckle, the watch definitely fits the billing of a lightweight watch. While on wrist, the Aquascaphe completely disappears, the watch only makes itself known when you want to check the time or look at it. Even on multiple hour wearing sessions, wrist fatigue never became an issue.



Running boring everyday errands with the Aquascaphe on was a real treat. I could see the watch being a great daily wrist companion for pretty much all tasks since it never gets in the way or becomes burdensome. The very dark blue aesthetic of the Aquascaphe didn't clash with my normal dress of a black t-shirt, shorts and sneakers either. I do think the watch would just sing on a bright white strap through, which would bring out the blues and greys of the Aquascaphe nicely.

To test the legibility of a watch, I use a very simple test where I try to see how easy it is to tell the time at just a glance while driving. In this test dive watches with their high contrast dials and large markers do the best, while complicated and skeleton watches do the worst since they favor design over legibility. Not much to my surprise, the Aquascaphe aced my legibility test. The dark blue dial contrasts nicely with the bright white hour markers and hands. The only thing that would have possibly have lowered the amount of time it took me to decipher the time would have been if Baltic would have used Arabic numerals on the dial. This might have altered the look of the watch negatively though. Also with the amount of lume used on the dial and bezel, low light time telling was also about as good as it gets.



When I wore the Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium out and about running errands and out to dinner and drinks I noticed that the watch flew pretty much under the radar. This can be expected by a watch that is mostly dark blue in appearance on a rubber strap. Like I mentioned earlier, having the watch on a white strap might get the watch more looks if that's something you're after. I did still get a couple of comments on the watch and showed it to a few of my friends while out. Most people were really impressed by how lightweight it was and also commented on how nice the blue dial and bezel looked. Most everyone was also blown away with the price Baltic is asking for the Aquascaphe Titanium.

Value and Position in the Market

Speaking of price, Baltic offers the Aquascaphe Titanium for around $850. For that price you're getting a great looking dive watch which honors the legacy of vintage divers like the Fifty Fathoms. The watch also boasts a very well done full grade 5 titanium case topped off with a brushed ceramic bezel. The Aquascaphe is rated for a more than passable 300 meters of water resistance and the automatic Miyota movement proved to be very accurate in our testing. Now is the time in the review where we look at other watches that have similar features and specifications to see how the Aquascaphe stacks up value wise.



First up we have the Ocean Star 200C Titanium from MIDO which has a 42.5 mm case made out of titanium. The Ocean Star has slightly less water resistance at 200 meters and runs on an ETA automatic movement with 80 hours of power reserve. The Ocean Star also has a day and date display which might be divisive. The Ocean Star is a good deal more expensive than the Aquascaphe at $1,400.

Next up is the DS Action Diver from Certina which has a 43 mm case crafted out of titanium. The DS Action Diver has the same 300 meters of water resistance as the Aquascaphe and has the same ETA movement found in the Ocean Star with 80 hours of power reserve. The DS Action Diver is also much more expensive than the Aquascaphe at around $1,400.

Moving on is the Aquis Titanium Date from Oris which has a 43.5 mm case made out of titanium. The Aquis also has the same 300 meters of water resistance and is powered by an automatic movement with just 38 hours of power reserve. The Aquis is much more expensive than the Aquascaphe at $2,500 though.



Finally we have the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe from Blancpain which has a 43 mm case crafted out of titanium. The Bathyscaphe compares better to the Aquascaphe than the larger full sized Fifty Fathoms in my opinion. The Bathyscaphe has 300 meters of water resistance and is powered by an in-house movement with 120 hours of power reserve. The Bathyscaphe is many times more expensive than the Aquascaphe at $15,100.

Looking at these above four watches you can clearly see how great of a value the Aquascaphe is. It offers similar specifications to the other four divers and manages to come in well under what the other brands are asking. Remember in 1953 when the dive watch genre was started by Blancpain and later Rolex, these watches were not expensive luxury timepieces, but rather affordable tool watches with one intended purpose. I feel the Aquascaphe really embodies that principle in the modern area. It's not even a joke, but if I wanted a rubber strap and titanium buckle for my Fifty Fathoms 500 Fathoms, it would cost more than the entire Aquascaphe.

Closing Thoughts

So in the end is the Baltic Aquascaphe for me? It's interesting this week I've had two conversations about how my more expensive dive watches will never see water due to the fact that I'm petrified that something would fail and water would get into the cases. I've also thought a lot about after acquiring my three "grail" watches that now I've really become much more interested in less expensive watches that I can wear and just enjoy. Since dive watches are my favorite niche of watches, I've really been enjoying some of the more approachable dive watches over the past year. These are watches that I have zero concerns about taking on vacation and getting wet.



A watch like the Baltic Aquascaphe fits into my love of these kinds of dive watches perfectly. The fact that it is also made out of titanium is a huge plus for me as well. I've been shoehorned into thinking that a watch has to have a lug to lug length of 50 mm or larger to work for me. I'm starting to pull back on this a bit since not every watch has to meet all my criteria to be for me. While the Aquascaphe has a lug to lug length a few millimeters short of 50 mm, it wears very nicely on my wrist. It also helps keep the weight of the watch extremely low. An added benefit is that my wife can wear the watch as well. With a lot of my 44mm plus watches, the lugs just fly over each side of her wrist.

If I was blindly shopping on Baltic's website, I would have probably picked the black version since I'm not a huge fan of blue on watches. After getting to experience the blue variant in person, I actually really like it. The blue adds a bit of personality to a very serious dive watch and isn't "too blue" if that makes sense. The omission of the date complication is also very welcomed by me. The watch just looks great and makes me think of what the Fifty Fathoms would have become today if Blancpain didn't go more up market with the brand. So yeah, all things consider, the Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium really is for me.



So would I then recommend the Aquascaphe to somebody looking for a titanium dive watch that is more tool centric? I would 100% recommend the Aquascaphe to a collector looking for that type of diver. Regardless of the price, the Aquascaphe is just a great watch. The biggest downside to the watch is the somewhat short power reserve of 42 hours. I feel the Aquascaphe would be either worn frequently or only on the weekends / trips, so that power reserve would be fine for a daily and even if the reserve was 72 hours, would still need to be set and wound in the second scenario. Otherwise the Baltic Aquascaphe Titanium is just about everything you could ask for from a dive watch. If you're looking for a diver like this, I'd highly suggest you put the Aquascaphe on your short list.

I'd really like to thank Baltic for sending us this Aquascaphe to review. Until now I had only seen the brands watches at watch shows and didn't spend much time with them. The Aquascaphe served as a great extended introduction to the brand and really proved to me that Baltic can produce top tier timepieces. Now that we've got our first Baltic in for review, I can't wait to see what the brand sends us next.

For more information about the Aquascaphe Titanium please visit : Baltic

Technical Specifications

Reference Number: NA

Retail Price: $850

Case Size: 38.8 mm Case / 41 mm Bezel

Lug to Lug: 46.9 mm

Thickness: 13.5 mm

Weight: 74 grams

Case Material: Grade 5 Titanium

Bezel: Grade 5 Titanium with a Brushed Ceramic Insert

Strap: Blue Tropic FKM Rubber Strap with Titanium Pin Buckle

Movement: Japanese Made Miyota 9039 Automatic Movement

Functions: Hours, Minutes and Seconds

Power Reserve: 42 Hours

Water Resistance: 300 Meters