A forerunner of both the rise of microbrands and the ongoing revival of France’s watchmaking industry here in the 21st Century, Baltic Watches emerged on the scene in 2017, originally as a Kickstarter project. Founder Étienne Malec discovered the inspiration for his watchmaking enterprise in his father’s watch collection and named the company in honor of his father’s Polish roots, after the sea off the country’s northern coast. The goal from the start, according to Malec, was to produce “timeless pieces, of the highest quality, for fair prices,” and most would agree that Baltic has delivered on this mission statement. Baltic watches are all assembled in a workshop in Besançon, France, the nation’s historical cradle of watchmaking, and evoke vintage timepieces like the ones Malec’s father collected and extensively catalogued in his journals. Here we will look at the Baltic Aquascaphe, one of their most recognizable watches.
The first Baltic watches were the three-hand HMS 001 model, with a Japanese Miyota caliber, and the hand-wound Bicompax 001 chronograph, with the Chinese Seagull ST19 movement. While both these watches were successful, and put Baltic on its path to fan-favorite microbrand status, the small company has since become best known for its Aquascaphe series of dive watches. The Aquascaphe, which was launched in 2018, takes its design inspiration from early “skin diver” watches of the 1950s and ‘60s, with no small amount of influence from the classic mid-20th-century pioneers of the dive watch genre, like the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. Now available in a variety of styles, materials, and colorways, the Aquascaphes are equipped with automatic Miyota movements, which helps in keeping their U.S. price points well below that daunting $1,000 threshold. Here is a rundown of all the Baltic Aquascaphe models available today, all of which are available exclusively on a direct-to-consumer basis through the brand’s website.
[toc-section heading=”The Baltic Aquascaphe Classic”]
Price: $684 Case Size: 39mm, Thickness: 13mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 200 meters, Movement: Automatic Miyota 9039
The core model of the Baltic Aquascaphe collection features a familiar and somewhat retro dive-watch aesthetic, with a case made of 316L stainless steel, measuring a modest but very au courant 39mm in diameter, with a lug-to-lug span of 47mm and a thickness of 13mm, or 11mm without the double-domed sapphire crystal over the dial. The dial, in sunray blue or grained black, hosts a set of sword hands, a lollipop seconds hand, and gilt hour markers that consist of triangular wedges at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock, round bubbles at the remaining hour indications, with the sole Arabic numeral appearing at 12 o’clock. The markers are accompanied by a gilt minute track on the dial’s edge, and the rotating bezel insert, in either black or blue with gilt markings, has a minimalist version of a dive scale, with an orientation triangle at 12, Arabic numerals at the 15-, 30-, and 45-minute marks, and dots at the intervening five-minute spots. The screwed crown helps ensure the watch’s 200-meter water resistance. The hands and hour markers are coated with Super-LumiNova. Inside the watch, behind a solid caseback with an engraved scuba diver, Baltic has installed the Japanese-made Miyota 9039, with automatic winding and a 42-hour power reserve. The Aquascaphe Classic is offered on either the seven-link “beads-of-rice” bracelet style pictured, or on a black patterned rubber strap.
[toc-section heading=”The Dual Crown”]
Price: $764 Case Size: 39mm, Thickness: 11.9mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 200 meters, Movement: Automatic Miyota 9039
Introduced in 2021, the Aquascaphe Dual Crown models use a crown-operated, bidirectional, internal bezel in the style of vintage compressor dive watches. Matching the wrist presence of the Classic model, at 39mm wide and 47mm lug to lug, the Dual Crown is a smidgen thinner — 11.9mm, or 10mm sans the domed crystal — due to the lack of an exterior ratcheting bezel in the front. The model name is derived from the two crowns on the right side of the case, both screwed down and fluted on their sides: the crown at 2 o’clock is used to rotate and lock the internal dive-scale flange to set dive times, while the crown at 4 o’clock sets the hands and winds the movement, the same automatic Miyota caliber as in the Classic. The dial’s hour markings are slightly different, with a large, inverted triangle standing in for the Arabic numeral at 12 o’clock and capsule-shaped indexes at 3, 6, and 9. All these markers are coated, along with the hands, with BGW9 luminous material.
[toc-section heading=”The Bronze Case”]
Price: $735, Case Size: 39mm, Thickness: 13mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 200 meters, Movement: Automatic Miyota 9039
The Aquascaphe Bronze debuted in 2020, and is now available with dial colorways in brown, dark blue, and black. It features a 39mm case made from an aluminum-copper alloy (rather than the tin-copper alloy more commonly used for watch cases. This material makes the case, including the divers’ bezel made of the same material, more corrosion-resistant and thus slower to develop patina. The dial layout is a little different than the steel Classic models, with Arabic numerals at 3, 6, 9, and 12, and bronze-colored hands that pop nicely against the background of each dial. The dials’ tones are echoed in the sport-rubber straps that help make the Aquascaphe such a reliable diving companion. The Miyota 9309 beats inside the case, which, like all cases made of bronze, will eventually patina to tell the wearer’s unique story.
[toc-section heading=”Lightweight In Titanium”]
Price: $832, Case Size: 41mm, Thickness: 13.3mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 300 meters, Movement: Automatic Miyota 9039
Joining the bronze models in 2022 were a pair of titanium-cased Aquascaphes, dressed predominantly in blue and black and bearing the same all-geometric-index dial as the dual-crown watches. They are slightly bigger than their siblings, at 41mm in diameter and 13.3mm thick, but with the same lug-to-lug measurement of 47mm, and mounted on rubber straps. The 120-click unidirectional diver’s bezel has a ceramic insert in a color that matches the dial, and the watch features all the benefits of titanium, including an increased water resistance of 300 meters and a lightweight presence on the wrist, at just 55 grams. The Miyota 9309 does its duty inside these models as well.
[toc-section heading=”The GMT For Travelers”]
Price: $1,072, Case Size: 39mm, Thickness: 13mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 100 meters, Movement: Automatic Soprod C125 GMT
For the GMT version of the Baltic Aquascaphe, the brand replaced the base model’s 60-minute dive-scale bezel with a more travel-friendly, bidirectional (and bicolor) 24-hour bezel, which can be used in conjunction with a central arrow-tipped hand to read the time in a second time zone. The dive-watch DNA of the Aquascaphe series is clearly present, with the dial sporting geometric hour markers, plentiful lume on the markers and hands, and a 100-meter water resistance (half of the diving model’s 200-meter rating, but still substantial). The Arabic “12” joins the “bubble” hour indexes and a pair of inverted triangles at 3 and 9 o’clock on this one’s dial, along with a date indicator at 6 o’clock. (A date calendar, while not considered essential for a dive watch, is a useful feature in a travel watch like this one, which is meant to be worn across time zones and the International Date Line.) Adding to the value proposition is Baltic’s use of a self-winding, Swiss-made Soprod movement inside the brushed steel case rather than the Japanese-made Miyota.
[toc-section heading=”Baltic Aquascaphe MK2″]
Price: $718, Case Size: 39.5mm/37mm, Thickness: 12.9mm, Lug to Lug: 47mm/45mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 200 meters, Movement: Automatic Miyota 9039
Baltic refers to the now-extensive MK2 series, introduced in 2025, as its “most advanced” version of the Aquascaphe. It is the first Aquascaphe offered in two sizes: a slightly larger 39.5mm and a reduced 37mm, a “unisex” size that is becoming increasingly in-demand despite the historically larger dimensions that the most popular dive watches have sported. Compared to the Classic models, the MK2 has a new set of crown guards around the screw-down crown, a full 60-minute gradation scale on the rotating divers’ bezel, and improved luminosity on the dial thanks to its “LumiCast” indexes, which are 0.4mm thick and applied in BGW9 lume. The dial itself is now in a “Maxi” style rather than its predecessor’s “semi-sandwich” design, and its color options are more vibrant — like grained warm silver and glossy green and blue. The movement (Miyota 9309) and water resistance (200 meters) remain the same. With this plethora of options already on the table, Aquascaphe fans are no doubt already anxiously awaiting the next iteration of this emblematic (and eminently affordable) diver.
