Horizon Nautilus

Never have I ever seen an Art Deco dive watch. Art Deco dress watch? They’re a dime a dozen; seen ’em, loved ’em. But an Art Deco dive watch? Never have I ever. Until now. My initial encounter with the Horizon Nautilus, the brand’s first watch, was through my nightmare enchantress, Instagram. The early posts were renders, and then a 3D printed model. That was enough to pique my interest. The Nautilus has all the traits of a great Art Deco watch, plus a dive bezel. I’m simplifying things, I suppose, but when you get down to it, that’s all it takes to call a watch a dive watch (though not in the official, ISO 6425 sense). So here we are with an Art Deco dive watch. A DecoDiver if you will.

The case is nice, the bezel is just ok, but the dial is where we start having all the fun–dual-finished, layered, great indices, superb date integration. It’s got a lot going on in a relatively small space, but the initial impression is great.

Check out that stepped lug, with brushed and then polished finishes. Then a crisp transition to the vertically brushed case side. It’s all very good. Let’s talk about coin edge bezels, though. A fine-ridged, short coin edge bezel is really not ideal for practical use. It’s one step away from a smooth surface, so can become nigh on impossible to grip when the watch or your fingers are wet. They look nice and seem to be favored for vintage-inspired designs, but some weight must be given to practicality. There are two solutions: use a different style bezel grip (preferred) or loosen the tension to allow turning with less active grip of the bezel. Overall, the functioning of the Horizon Nautlius bezel–made from polished, PVD-coated stainless steel–is adequate: I found it easy to grip and turn when dry and tricky when wet, though certainly not the worst I’ve encountered.

This watch is tall; that’s what you get when you use a Seiko NH35. It’s not great on a NATO for that reason, but on the rubber and other straps, it works well because the lugs slope down so much from the case. It still sits prominently, but not problematically.

I told you. Big ol’ lug slopes. There’s also a nice balance here between angularity and curvature. They pull in opposite directions but make taut the overall design. It works.

The Nautilus takes its name, not from that Nautilus, but from the underwater ship belonging to Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s adventure classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. While the bezel is about as ho-hum as you can get, the dial doubles down on the name with both the 6 and 9 o’clock markers shaped like the shell of a nautilus (the sea creature, not the fictional vessel).

The deco minute track, the brushed hour disc, the coral-like central disc, the applied markers; it’s a wonderful dial but it does seem a bit full. Perhaps downsizing the markers and widening the center disc would change that. I love the beveled hands and how they catch the light but found the minute hand’s pointer to be too narrow.

I had multiple people message me about the date window on the Horizon Nautilus, heaping praise upon it, and it’s one of the best integrations of a date window I’ve seen–and I’m saying that about a 4 o’clock date. But when a brand manages to fit it in like just another hour marker, it earns a few plaudits. The only quibbles are that the font is a bit small and the window a bit deep, leading to times when angled reading or a quick glance won’t suffice to check the date.

The Horizon website’s spec sheet says this is Old Radium lume, which it is not. The bronze versions of the watch do feature Old Radium lume, but this looks more like C3 to me. Whatever it is, it shone brightly but not without a few issues. Obviously, the lumed date wheel is awesome. As you can see, however, the hour and minute hands are markedly dimmer than the rest of the lume, with the size of the minute hand making it quite hard to pick up in low light. The bezel’s lume is plenty bright but seems to be incomplete on some of the pips. And the second hand doesn’t feature lume at all.

The caseback features a brilliant stamped image of a diver in standard diving dress discovering a copy of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in a forest of kelp. I imagine it was copied from a very real picture of a thing that definitely happened. Curiously, the decoration is protected by a sapphire caseback insert. Under the caseback is the tried and true Seiko NH35. (It seems like a lot of micros are making the move to Miyota these days, but the NH35 offers a more affordable option that’s just as robust.) On the caseback and lugs is the grit and grime that accumulates with a weekend beach trip.

The 22mm vulcanized rubber strap is nice and flexible, if the occasional dust magnet. The branded buckle does a nice job of echoing the design of the case with its stepped sides.

Just because it doesn’t wear well with a NATO, doesn’t mean it can’t look good with one.

Maybe Horizon could’ve chosen a less already-taken name for their debut watch, but let’s look beyond that. The Nautilus is what we could call a dress diver: the styling, the afterthought of a bezel, and the unlumed seconds hand all suggest a watch more appropriately paired with Sperry Top-Siders than a monofin–not that you or I would use it for actual diving. Though the height makes it an outlier for a dress diver, it’s quite beautiful. The styling does indeed set this watch apart: as I mentioned up top, I don’t know of any other DecoDivers, and at the price offered, you’re getting a fun watch with a lot of character. You can check out more and sign up for updates at the Horizon website.