Tissot Sends the Seastar Back into Deep Water

Tissot has spent close to two centuries making the case that a watch can survive conditions its owner would rather avoid. The Seastar name carries that argument into the water, and the Seastar 2000 Professional, first introduced in 2021, stands as the clearest version of it in the current collection. The watch found its footing fast, setting a working standard for what a serious dive watch from Tissot looks like. Five years on, it returns in five new references, and the evolution lies in the details, not in the concept. This is a watch for those who spend real time beneath the surface, built to keep working when the surface is far above.

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The 44mm case is crafted from 316L stainless steel, certified to ISO 6425 (2018) and rated to 60 bar, the equivalent of 600 metres or 2000 feet. These are figures that place the watch among genuine working instruments rather than among watches that borrow the look of one. 

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A helium escape valve sits at 9 o’clock, releasing gas absorbed during saturation diving without straining the case as pressure drops — a mechanism most owners will never need and a small number cannot do without. Around the case, a unidirectional bezel in steel with a ceramic insert handles the business of tracking dive time, while a domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating and a screw-down crown manage the more basic task of keeping water on the correct side of the case entirely.

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Built for Depth

The dial carries an engraved wave motif, a subtle nod to the water the watch is built to survive, and the surface shifts under changing light rather than sitting flat. Baton hands and indexes are coated in Swiss Super-LumiNova, and the legibility holds whether the setting is bright midday sun or 30 metres down, where light behaves differently and colour begins to disappear. A date window sits within the layout, functional rather than decorative, alongside the hour, minute and seconds displays.

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Inside the case is the ETA C07.111, Tissot’s Powermatic 80 automatic movement, visible through a transparent sapphire caseback for anyone who wants to see it working. A Nivachron™ balance spring fortifies the movement against magnetism and shock, while the 80‑hour power reserve ensures the watch keeps time through a weekend off the wrist, ready to wear again on Monday without a reset. 

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Every reference in the new collection ships with Tissot’s interchangeable strap system: a stainless steel bracelet fitted with a new diver clasp, complete with pushbuttons, a diver security lock and a pushbutton diver extension or a tropic-style rubber strap built for comfort and full immersion. Either can be swapped without tools.

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Colour is where the five references separate from one another. Deep blue, bright orange and a stormy grey each pull the watch towards a different register, one closer to open ocean, another to a storm arriving on the horizon. None of it changes what the watch is built to do. The Seastar 2000 Professional sets out to do one job well and holds to that brief without wandering into other territory. 

In Good Company 

Tissot’s new summer campaign puts the Seastar 2000 Professional in rather good company. The story is narrated by a lifeguard who has watched this particular beach, and the people on it, closely enough to know their habits by heart. She wears a Seastar 1000 Quartz with a turquoise dial that echoes the water below her chair. Among the regulars she observes is Greta, who surfaces from the shallows with a shell in hand, the vivid orange Seastar 2000 Professional flashing against sand bleached pale by the sun. It is, in that moment, less a diving instrument than a very good excuse to notice the tide.

Around Greta, the beach carries on. A boy trains with the kind of conviction that makes a jump shot look inevitable. A woman rebuilds the Matterhorn out of wet sand, grain by grain. An ice-cream vendor arrives, as he always does, precisely on time. None of them are diving to 600 metres. All of them understand, in their own way, what it means to do something properly and repeat it daily — which is, when you get down to it, the entire argument for owning a watch like this one in the first place.

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