With one successful campaign under their belt, Smith & Bradley is back for a second shot at crowdfunding a watch, this time an automatic diver (project page), the Atlantis. As a refresher, the first campaign (again, here) was for a tactical watch with tritium lume. They ended up with 203 pledges and they raised $41,000 against a $16,000 goal. In looking at the comments for that project, the watches were delivered about a month late (which is pretty much on time for crowd funding) and they were generally well liked. The negative comments seem to be grouped around the cyclops (too small, but not included in the Atlantic) and the lume, which I think is more a misunderstanding on the part of the backers on what to expect. (Editor’s note: a discussion of the dimmer tritium is here).
The Atlantis is an automatic (The Sans 13 was a quartz) assembled in Sidney,Illinois from Swiss, German, and Chinese parts. The movement is a Seagull ST 2131, and the hands and face are also sourced from China. The case is stainless steel made in Germany, and the Sapphire crystal is from Switzerland. The hands and bezel use superlume, so they should be quite a bit brighter than the Sans 13. It is rated to 200 meters, which should be fine for any recreational diving, and is more than sufficient for the non-diving daily wear that most of these watches will see. Styling is pretty straightforward, nice and clean for a diver, but not remarkable. Thew watch is a stout, but not comically oversized 44mm (without the crown) and the black silicone strap has a nice asymmetrical tread pattern.
