Technisches » Bell & Ross BR 03-92 DIVER

Introduced in 2022, the Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver is not the brand’s first dive watch, but it is the first dive watch in their iconic square case. It is, in my opinion, a great success in balancing various design elements and themes as well as boldness as well as wearability. “Balance” is a word that I kept returning to when considering different aspects of the Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver. The result is a solid, refined jump watch with a look and also character quite unlike any other I know of, and it is just plain fun to wear.
No matter how good, satisfying, or original a brand’s watches are, the genuinely “iconic” model is something most watch brands will never be able to convincingly claim – by its very nature the term can be accurately applicable to only a limited number of watches. I try to avoid even using the term, but I think many view enthusiasts will agree that Bell and Ross’ square-cased, aviation-themed timepieces based on the dashboard instruments associated with old airplanes will qualify. The design is actually strongly associated with and rooted in aviation, but Bells & Ross has branched out to plenty of other genres or styles with the square case as the foundation. While the Bell and also Ross BR 03-92 Diver could get lost among so many other variations on the theme, taken alone it is successful as a compelling dive enjoy.
There are several Bell & Ross collections that use essentially the same basic situation design but in different sizes (and each with different models). The BR 01 is a wrist-eclipsing (for me, anyway) 47mm, the BR 03 like the one reviewed here is 42mm, and the BR S is 39mm. The BR X wrist watches are Bells & Ross’ “Experimental” collection that also use some variation of the sq . case but with generally more elaborate constructions, avant-garde designs, and haute complications (hands-on example here with the Bell & Ross BR X2 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor). There are divers in other collections - and there have been more in the past, such as the BR 02 -- but , again, the Bells & Ross BR 03-92 Diver is the first diver in the rectangular case.
You will have to be the final judge as to whether Bell as well as Ross got it right with the BR 03-92 Diver : and I recommend you try it on very first - but my judgement after wearing it almost daily for a couple weeks is that they did. The actual Bell along with Ross circumstance is immediately identifiable as such, but the Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver is also just a serious-looking dive see. It further manages to play the part of any bold-wearing luxury sport observe with an aggressive presence rapid and at the same time, it looks purposeful and down-to-earth, so the wearer doesn’t look like he’s desperate for attention. Finally, despite that boldness and presence, its size and dimensions somehow keep it surprisingly wearable. At least, these have been my impressions while wearing it.
About those sizes: Looking at the Bell plus Ross BR 03-92 Diver on the wrist, one might not guess that this measures only 42mm wide. It might be some sort of weird or even abstract thing to say, but I would describe the actual Bell + Ross BR 03-92 Diver as wearing more like a new 44mm-wide look at. Square cases are going to wear larger than their measurements would suggest - if you are familiar with check out measurements and have a habit of guessing how a sit back and watch might fit you based on pictures along with specs before seeing that in person. Perhaps a corner-to-corner measurement is a good way of evaluating the size of your square watch because that may better represent how much hand real estate the idea occupies. I really made an effort to portray in some from the photographs how well the item wears on my 6. 5″ (17cm) arm - though I probably couldn’t pull off even a millimeter larger.
Dive watches tend to be chunky, in addition to water-resistance regarding 300m is more or less standard nowadays for “professional dive watches” - even though some brand names get away with calling a good 100m water-resistant watch some diver, and others take it much further to 1000m and more (Bell in addition to Ross’ Hydromax in 1997 was rated to no less than 11, 100m). Water-resistance is often understood through consumers as a shorthand for or way of quantifying general durability. The particular Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Diver is ranked to 300m and meets all the other ISO dive view specifications, and also the brand emphasizes how those specifications influenced the design.
Considering that most dance watches are primarily used today to tell the time on dry land, I’ve often felt that the deemphasized hour hands found on many are kind of a sacrifice involving real-life usability for the sake of being taken seriously like a “genuine” diver. Part of the ISO standards, however , stipulate that the minute hand should be much more legible than the hour hands because the minutes are more critical when diving. For the Bells & Ross BR 03-92 Diver, legibility is not hampered by the orange lume for the hour palm, but it is indeed deemphasized in the dark with a (much) fainter glow while everything else (hands plus markers) shines bright green with Super-LumiNova.