Today I’m doing a Oris watch review. The Oris Aquis is a very popular timepiece that’s part of the their collection of luxury diving watches. Oris watches have been under production in Switzerland for over a century now. Having perfected traditional watch making techniques and developing a huge range of styles, Oris are now one of the top luxury Swiss watch brand. These days Oris focuses on Swiss mechanical watches exclusively. Check out my Steinhart Ocean 1 review next if you like diving watches. You’ll see from this Oris Aquis automatic review that they’ve have kept to their promise to provide high quality Swiss made luxury timepiece. I love the style of this piece so I’m going to enjoy giving you an in depth look at it in closer detail.
To start off I’m going to take a quick look at the general specifications of the Oris Aquis. This allows you to have a quick skim through of some of the details that are most important to you before we analyze the watch in more depth.
Oris are well known for their luxury Swiss made timepieces, and this Oris Aquis Date is no different. It’s a high spec watch with luxury featured like the domed sapphire glass on the front and rear of the watch, as well as a rather impressive 300m water resistance rating. The Oris automatic movement is also pretty great, I’ll go into more detail about the movement further below for you. I love the design of the coin edged uni-directional rotating bezel, it just adds nicely to the overall style of this diving timepiece.
The main thing I expect to see when I look at the dial of a diving watch is an easy to read design, something I feel quite a few watches fail to do these days. I’m really pleased with this Oris Aquis dial though, it has a high contrast, very easy to read design which is just so important. The hands and hour markers are coated in Superluminova which makes them extra visible in dim lit conditions, perfect for diving as it gets dark very quickly as you dive. Even the date display is complete in a clever way with the white writing on a black background, rather than the opposite way around which you see done every now and then. Overall a great dial design with diving really kept in mind throughout. Now I quite like larger watches so the Oris Aquis is ideal for me with its 43mm casing diameter. It gives you this large prominent look on the wrist that I really kind of like on my watches. When you take the screw down crown into consideration it brings the measurement up to 47mm. I know larger watches aren’t for everyone, some people with smaller wrists might not find this large design to their tastes so it’s something to keep in mind when considering this watch.
This Oris features sapphire crystal glass on the front and rear of the watch. Both sides are domed which is typically found in higher end watches such as this – domed sapphire glass tends to cost a fair amount more to produce than standard flat sapphire glass. The glass has an anti-reflective coating on the inside of the glass, meaning it won’t wear away. Sapphire glass is one of the highest scratch resistant glasses to fit on a watch. It has a Mohs hardness rating of 9 meaning you’d need a diamond to scratch it.
The watch features this nice thick rubber strap that’s ideal for this style of timepiece. You can also find similar designs with a stainless steel strap if that’s what you prefer. The strap is pretty awesome, it features a deployment clasp that fixes to the rubber in a similar way to leather so that any slack hides under the rest of the strap. The clasp also has a diver’s wetsuit extension feature that’s really helpful as it allows you to quickly adjust the size of the strap.

The stainless steel buckle has a nice finish to it with a mix of polished and matte brushed effect. It also has the Oris brand etched into the buckle. Overall this has a great high end design to it that I’m really pleased with. The only negative I would point out is that you can’t easily swap out the straps are they’re integrated with the casing.
The Oris Aquis Date features a water resistance rating of 300m, or 30bar / 30 ATM however you like to read it. 300m water resistance is pretty impressive especially considering the exhibition caseback that the watch features. This 300m rating makes the watch suitable for professional marine activity, serious surface water sports and skin diving.

Something to keep note of is that when the testing of water resistance is done for a watch is that it’s done in a still environment with no added pressure or temperature changes. A 300m rating doesn’t mean you can take it 300m deep. The very motion of moving your arm would increase the pressure forced upon a watch greatly from that that it would experience just submerged.
One of my favourite features on many watches is an exhibition caseback. The Oris Aquis has this brilliant sapphire glass caseback that’s intended to show off the famous red rotar found on Oris watches. I love the ability to be able to take off my watch every now and then and just take a peek at the movement working away. There is quite a bit of engraving on the caseback, some of which could probably have been done without, but to be honest, this isn’t the worse thing to have happen, realistically it won’t be on show much.
I mentioned earlier on in the specifications section that the Oris Aquis Date features a Oris caliber 733 movement. This is an awesome Swiss made automatic movement with 26 jewels. This is a high end movement as we would expect from Oris, it’s based on a Sellita SW200-1 movement as is very accurate and reliable.

The Oris caliber 733 movement has an impressive power reserve of 38 hours. It also vibrates at 28,800 beats per hour. Along with its automatic winding and bi-directional rotating red rotar this really is a very good movement.
So there you have it, a nice detailed look at the Oris Aquis. It’s one I’ve been wanting to do for a while now so I’m happily to finally have gotten it all ready for you to read. This has been a really popular watch for Oris and I can understand why, I was pleased with pretty much the majority of the watch. My only negatives as I mentioned along the way was the integrated strap and over doing it a little on the caseback, nothing I’d consider to be anything major that would put me off buying it that’s for sure.

Overall I highly recommend the Oris Aquis, and it deserves it. We took a look at some of the watches benefits and highlighted some of the negatives associated with it but I feel it still whole heartedly deserves the 9/10 that I’ve awarded it.