UNIMATIC ProDiver Modello Uno Review

Like many brands we feature here on Hourstriker, Unimatic is one of those brands I've known about for years but had never had hands on with during my first 20 years in the watch industry. UNIMATIC has made a strong name for itself in a short period of time by offering classic tool watches that have Italian minimalistic design applied to them. Their watches are extremely functional with robust cases featuring stripped down iconic dials resulting in timepieces that are both timeless and modern.

After we had put up a number of articles on new releases from UNIMATIC, I really started to feel like I needed to see one of their watches in person. I reached out to Giovanni, one of the founders of the brand, and asked if he would be willing to send us a watch to review. Luckily he said he would be more than happy to and a few days later one of UNIMATIC's newest pieces arrived at our door.



Before we get into the watch UNIMATIC sent us to review, let's first go over a brief history of the brand. UNIMATIC was founded in Milan, Italy in 2015 by two friends and designers. Giovanni Moro and Simone Nunziato had a shared vision to create watches that had technical designs but also celebrated heritage. Core to the creation of the brand, was that every step of the process of the production of their watches would take place in Italy, from the initial sketches to the final assembly.

From their first timepieces, UNIMATIC watches were designed to be durable and functional first. The watches blended precision engineering with Italian design aesthetics. It was also very important to UNIMATIC to connect with their customers and build a community that was authentic and allowed brand to take in feedback from their collectors.

2016 was a huge second year for UNIMATIC seeing the incredibly successful collaboration with Parisian concept store Collette in the creation of the U1-C. From that point on, collaborations became extremely important to the brand identity of UNIMATIC. That year also saw the release of the Modello Due, which was inspired by vintage field watches.



The following years saw more collaborations and also the expansion to their core collection of timepieces. In 2018 their diver chronograph was released with a full 300 meters of water resistance. 2020 brought along the Modello Quattro, which expanded upon the original Modello Uno dive watch by adding a fixed monoblock bezel, blending the lines between dive and field watches.

UNIMATIC made a huge shift in 2021, when they brought all assembly and testing procedures in-house to a facility near their headquarters in Milan. That year UNIMATIC also debuted its first watch in their permanent collection, the "Classic" series, after much demand from collectors. The Classic line notably featured stripped down iconic dials that meant the watches would remain timeless and not follow the trends of the day.

The brand continued to expand its collaboration efforts with models created with Hodinkee and Massena Lab. The Hodinkee model introduced highly advanced forged carbon to UNIMATIC models, while the Massena Lab collab saw the smallest yet UNIMATIC model at 36 mm. Recently in 2024, UNUMATIC introduced their second permanent line with the release of their "Toolwatch" collection.





Initial Thoughts

Having gone over the history of UNIMATIC, let's now take a look at the watch they sent us to review. Just a few weeks ago, UNIMATIC released their trio of ProDiver models. One made out of titanium and the other two being stainless steel with either black or orange dials. As soon as I saw the press release on the ProDiver I reached out to UNIMATIC requesting a review sample. Luckily enough they had a black dial stainless steel piece available which they quickly sent.

When the ProDiver arrived, the first thing I noticed about the watch was its seemingly monoblock style of construction. While the case is naturally made out of multiple pieces, the tolerances are so tight that the watch appears to be one solid piece. This aesthetic really re-enforces the idea that UNIMATIC watches are true rugged tool watches. The ProDiver just looks and feels like a tank that can take anything you could possibly dish out to it.



The second thing I noticed about the ProDiver during my initial time with the watch was the excellent bezel. The watch uses a 120 click uni-directional bezel with a matte black ceramic insert. The bezel action might be one of the finest I've experienced in a long time. Each click of the bezel is right on point with absolutely zero back play. It kind of reminds me of the bolt action of rifle with how precise it feels. Even some of my most expensive dive watches have bezels that just feel plain sloppy compared to the feel of the ProDiver.

The final thing that I took note of while looking at the ProDiver for the first time was the usage of lume on the dial and bezel of the watch. The ProDiver has a matte black dial with oversized indices and large fence post style hour and minute hands. Generous amounts of lume are applied to all dial and major bezel markers. The Super-LumiNova found on the bezel and minute hand glows a bluish green, while UNIMATIC had a custom orange emission created for all the hour markers, hour and seconds hands. The result is a truly unique color combination of lume that I really haven't seen before.





Technical Specifications

Having gone over both the history of UNIMATIC along with my initial impressions of the ProDiver, let's now look at the technical specifications of the watch. The ProDiver is crafted out of 316L stainless steel and has a case diameter of 40 mm when measuring the case and 41.5 mm when you measure the bezel that slightly overhangs the case. The lug to lug length of the watch comes in at 48.3 mm. The ProDiver weighed in at 112 grams on the black NATO style strap and at its thickest point was 14.2 mm tall. Taking in to account the strap going over the case back, the thickness then climbs to 16.8 mm.

The ProDiver uses a double domed sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating applied on the underside. This is a great design choice, since anti-reflective coatings can scratch easily and having the coating on the exterior is asking for problems when talking about such a serious tool watch. The crystal sits slightly raised off of the bezel making it appear that much more domed.



Underneath the crystal clear sapphire lays the matte black dial. Around the outside of the dial is the minute track printed in white with slim hash marks for each minute and slightly thicker marks for each five minute interval. For 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11 UNIMATIC has round hour markers. 3, 6, and 9 use block hour markers with 6 being set horizontally instead of vertically. Finally 12 o'clock is represented by an oversized triangle. All these markers appear white in normal lighting, but in low light the Super-LumiNova glows an amazing orange hue. This color of illumination is custom done for UNIMATIC.

The ProDiver has three centrally mounted hands being the hour, minute and second hands. The hour and minute hands are oversized fencepost style hands that have a black border around them. The seconds hand is done in black and has a circular counterbalance and ends in a lumed tip. All three hands appear white in normal lighting, with the minute hand glowing a bluish green and the hour and seconds hand lighting up orange in low light.



The no-nonsense dial is finished off with the UNIMATIC branded and "Made in Italy" along with "300m=1000ft" found at 6 o'clock. The dials of the stainless steel variants of the ProDiver differ from the titanium model by not having a date window at 6 o'clock. In all honesty, I'd prefer the watch to not have a date window, since more often than not it just adds time to setting a watch and I hardly ever use the complication.

Moving on from the dial is the awesome bezel I spoke about earlier. The bezel is rather thin but is really nicely scalloped and offers way more than enough grip. 120 clicks are needed to complete a full rotation of the bezel with each click resulting in a very satisfying click. The bezel action is even more rewarding with each turn slotting precisely to the next position. There is absolutely no back play on the model we reviewed and I can say the bezel ranks up there with the best feeling bezels I've used before.



The bezel features a matte black ceramic insert and has the traditional dive time scale. Every minute is represented by a printed white hash mark with each ten minute interval having an Arabic numeral and then each other five minute interval being done in a slightly thicker mark. 0/60 has been replaced with a dot that still has a partial hash mark underneath it. Under low light all the 5 and 10 minute markers are coated with Super-LumiNova which glows a matching bluish green to the minute hand. This of course is important since the minute hand works in conjunction with the bezel markers to time a dive. Having different colored lume for non-dive related markers just makes sense.

Looking at the case of the ProDiver you can once again tell that this watch is a pure tool watch. Every surface of the ProDiver has a brushed finish with nothing being done in a high polish. The profile of the watch has a very slight curve to it, which follows the curvature of your wrist nicely. From the profile view you can also tell that the bezel does slightly hang over the rest of the case. Between the lugs you can see an engraving for "UNIMATIC U1" as well.



On the right hand side of the watch is large screw down crown flanked by crown protectors that completely shield the crown from getting snagged. The screw down crown aids in the 300 meters of water resistance seen on the ProDiver. Un-screwing the crown allows you to manually wind the automatic movement in the resting position. With the dial featuring no date window, there is a phantom date position at the first position. Pulling the crown at to position two stops the seconds hand and allows you to set the time. Pushing the crown back in causes no jump in the minutes hand and getting the crown to catch to screw back in takes no extra care.

Flipping the case over shows off the solid screw down caseback complete with a large engraving. Important technical specifications about the watch are engraved here along with Made in Italy. The individual limited edition number out of 300 is also found on the case back. Finally there is a handy conversion table engraved on the caseback as well, which can be vital for converting feet and meters before a dive.



Underneath the solid caseback beats the Japanese made Seiko NH35A automatic movement. This movement is a workhorse and is known for its reliability, durability and reparability. The NH35A runs at 21,600 vph (3Hz) and has a power reserve of around 41 hours. Seiko quotes the accuracy as -20 to +40 seconds per day, but in reality we've never tested an NH35A that was anywhere near as bad as that. As expected, the NH35A inside of the ProDiver showed an accuracy of +2 seconds per day when averaged out over several positions. This is extremely accurate and even within chronometer standards.

The lug width of the UNIMATIC ProDiver is 22 mm and the watch comes on a black NATO style fabric strap. The strap doesn't have any taper to it and features a blackened steel pin buckle. There are also two matching keepers done in blackened steel. The strap is nice and supple and required zero break in to be comfortable. With the ProDiver being a fairly large watch, the strap did a great job of keeping the watch centered on my wrist and also kept the watch head from feeling top heavy.





On The Wrist

During my time with the ProDiver I wore it extensively. Typically I'm not a huge fan of NATO style straps since they add height to a watch. I normally wear larger watches, so this has always been an issue. Since the ProDiver isn't too thick, the two layers of strap between the caseback and my skin didn't make the watch too tall or top heavy on wrist. Overall I found the black fabric strap really suited the watch and made it a joy to wear.

The ProDiver fell just short of my goldilocks dimensions of 50 mm lug to lug length and at or under 100 grams of weight. On my 7.25 inch wrist with a 55 mm flat area the watch did look just right though. The NATO style strap does make the watch appear bulkier and wear larger, so that might have something to do with it. Also the strap kept the watch perfectly centered on my wrist and it never favored one side over the other. The ProDiver is not a heavy watch, but you can feel the heft of the watch while wearing it. The watch never completely disappeared on wrist, but never became a chore to wear or caused any wrist fatigue either.



I wore the ProDiver while running boring everyday errands along with wearing it out to dinner and drinks as well. The watch really was a perfect wrist companion and never got in the way or caused any distraction. For the most part the ProDiver just blended in and became a part of my everyday attire. Speaking of that, I dress very casually with a black t-shirt, shorts and sneakers being my primary outfit. The ProDiver's mostly black aesthetic went perfectly with my style of dress. The watch has a rather casual design, but changing the strap from the NATO style strap to leather or possibly rubber would allow it to work in more formal environments as well.

To test the legibility of a watch, I use a simple test where I see how easy it is to tell the time at a glance while driving. In this test, dive watches do the best since they have high contrast dials with large dial markers. On the other end, skeletons and complicated watches do the worst since they focus more on design than legibility. The ProDiver did excellent in this test and was a breeze to just glance at and get the time. This is thanks to the high contrast of the matte black dial and stark while hands and markers. The only way legibility could be increased would have been to use Arabic numerals for the hour markers, but that would have completely changed the design of the watch. With all the lumed areas on the dial and bezel, low light time telling couldn’t have been easier as well. Extra bonus points for having the dive centric markers done in bluish green with other markers being in orange.

The ProDiver is not a loud watch that screams on the wrist, but rather it is very subtle. The orange dial variant might have attracted more eyes than the black dialed version I had. For being a minimalistic tool watch, I guess you can say that's mission accomplished for the ProDiver. The friends I showed the watch to just loved the overall look of the watch and found the orange lume to be super interesting. Most also commented that the watch was priced incredibly well.





Value and Position in the Market

Speaking of price, the UNIMATIC ProDiver in stainless steel is priced at $950. For that price you are getting a just stunningly designed watch that looks timeless and should never go out of style. UNIMATIC's love of minimalistic design just works so well on a dive watch where extra flash will just end up being a distraction when diving. The watch is powered by a workhorse movement in the NH35A that has also proved to be extremely accurate in our testing. Combing 300 meters of water resistance with one of the best bezels we've used in recent memory along with diver centric lume coloration solidifies the ProDiver as a great choice for both pro and amateur divers. Now is the part of the review where we take a look at other watches with similar features and specifications as the ProDiver and see how it holds up value wise.

First up we have the Black Bay from Tudor which has a 41 mm case made out of stainless steel. The Black Bay has a classic dive watch design inspired by its big brother the Rolex Submariner. The watch is powered by a manufacture automatic movement with 70 hours of power reserve. The black bay has a bit less water resistance at 200 meters and cost a lot more at $4,750.

Next is the U50 from Sinn which has a 41 mm case that is crafted out of German submarine steel. The U50 has more of a retro dive watch design with the crown positioned at 4 o'clock. The U50 is powered by an off the shelf Sellita made automatic movement with 56 hours of power reserve. The U50 does offer more water resistance than the UNIMATIC at 500 meters. Like the Tudor, the Sinn U50 is much more expensive than the ProDiver at $3,240.



Moving on is the SUB 300 from Doxa which has a 42.5 x 44 mm case made out of stainless steel. The SUB 300 also has a vintage cushion shaped case which might be polarizing to some. The watch is powered by an off the shelf movement with 38 hours of power reserve. Like the ProDiver the SUB 300 has 300 meters of water resistance. Once again, the DOXA is much more expensive than the UNIMATIC at $2,850.

Finally we have the Super Sea Wolf Compression Diver from Zodiac which has a 40 mm case crafted from stainless steel. The Super Sea Wolf has a traditional dive watch design and offers the same 200 meters of water resistance as the ProDiver. The Super Sea Wolf is powered by an off the shelf movement with 44 hours of power reserve. The Zodiac is a bit more expensive than the UNIMATIC at $1,595.

Looking at the above four watches you really start to see how great of a value the UNIMATIC ProDiver is. The ProDiver has similar if not better specs than the other four watches and cost dramatically less. While some of the above dive watches look similar to many other watches out there, the ProDiver really has its own unique identity, which is something I find more and more important when looking for a watch to add to my collection.





Closing Thoughts

So in the end, is the UNIMATIC ProDiver for me? In all honesty I think it really is. The only thing keeping the watch from being near perfect to me is that it is made out of stainless steel. UNIMATIC does offer a titanium version of the ProDiver that is twice as expensive, and if that model wasn't available I would be 100% behind the stainless model personally. I do have rather strange tastes though and most collectors would prefer stainless steel over titanium due to liking the luxurious weight of steel. I just tend to really prefer titanium, ceramic or carbon where possible. Is the titanium version worth twice the price? On its own, maybe not, but the titanium version also offers twice the water resistance and upgrades the Seiko movement to a Swiss made Sellita movement with date, which could be viewed as a plus or minus.

Otherwise, in a vacuum where the titanium version did not exist, the ProDiver is just a great achievement from UNIMATIC. The brand is able to stay true to their minimalistic design beliefs and still craft a very functional dive watch. The bezel action as stated previously is one of the best I've ever used and the custom orange lume is just stunning in person. The overall look of the watch is just super unique and the ProDiver feels like it could be driven over by a tank and still run just fine. On a personal level, Giovanni and his team have also been super nice to me, even helping me out with a completely unrelated issue to UNIMATIC. So yes, the ProDiver is for me and would make a perfect addition to my personal collection. Be it in stainless steel or titanium.



Would I then recommend the ProDiver to somebody looking for a no-nonsense tool dive watch? I would 100% without hesitation recommend the watch to somebody looking to add that type of watch to their collection. Even just on specs and price the ProDiver is a solid choice. Watches that cost multiple times more offer similar if not lesser specs than the ProDiver. The look of the watch also helps you step out from the "me too" design of countless Submariner and Fifty Fathoms clones. The orange dial version of the ProDiver has already sold out and there were only 300 total examples of the black dial produced. If you think the ProDiver would fit your collection well, I'd really recommend taking a hard look at the watch before the black dial sells out as well.

I'd really like to thank UNIMATIC for sending us this ProDiver to review and I feel it has served as a great introduction to the brand in the metal. The ProDiver really gave me a sense of what the brand is all about in terms of design and build quality. I'm really looking forward to reviewing other pieces from UNIMATIC in the near future and can't wait to see what they come out with next it terms of both collaborations and permanent additions to their catalog.

For more information about the ProDiver please visit : UNIMATIC



Technical Specifications

Reference Number: UWK-U1-PD3-B

Retail Price: $950

Case Size: 40 mm Case, 41.5 mm with Bezel

Lug to Lug: 48.3 mm

Thickness: 14.2 mm, 16.8 mm with Strap

Weight: 112 grams

Case Material: 316L Stainless Steel

Bezel: 120 Click Unidirectional with Ceramic Insert

Strap: Black NATO Style Strap with Pin Buckle

Movement: Seiko Japanese Made NH35A Automatic Movement

Functions: Hours, Minutes and Seconds

Power Reserve: 41 Hours

Water Resistance: 300 Meters