Northern California-based Minus-8 has been making U.S.-designed independent timepieces for over 10 years, easily several years before doing so was considered “cool.” Minus-8 as a brand name refers to the Pacific Standard Time zone that California is in, which is “GMT -8.” It has been a few years since I’ve handled a Minus-8 watch, and today, I am delighted to review a fun and affordable sports watch with a solar-powered quartz movement known as the Minus-8 Diver 1T Solar. Back in 2014, when aBlogtoWatch first covered Minus-8, solar quartz watches were not particularly popular with enthusiasts. Most watch enthusiasts associated them with longstanding quality products from companies like Citizen, Seiko, and Casio in Japan, but not interesting or innovative design-focused enthusiast watches. While most solar quartz movements are still made in Japan, the last several years have seen these timepiece movements sold for us in watches from smaller, more originality-focused brands from all over the world. Given the utility and relatively cheap price of solar quartz movements (with that said, a new crop of Swiss Made solar quartz movements is focusing on luxury again), watch lovers have been enjoying them, probably more so now than at any time since the 1990s. How does Minus-8’s under $400 Diver 1T Solar stack up?
Minus-8 is part of a new breed of watch brands whose founders began designing technology items and only later decided to take up the considerable challenge (sort of like climbing a mountain, but for a product designer versus an athlete) which is successful timepiece design. It isn’t hard to get a watch made, but it is hard to get a watch made that people want to wear for the price you want to charge for it. Such designers like the folks behind Minus-8 tend to merge their larger aesthetic interests and experience with the world of horology. What this does is offer a wonderful diversity of new watches “as seen through the lens” of professionals coming from a variety of disciplines. That helps explain the creative and personality differences between all these watch companies when their products are ultimately quite similar at the end of the day.
Minus-8’s aesthetic clearly begins in the digital realm on screens and then becomes something you can wear. That’s really the feeling I get with the Diver 1T Solar, that it is a fun watch for a digital avatar that I as a real-world human can wear. So, instead of the character in the video game wearing a watch from the real world, someone in the real world gets to wear a watch from a video game. That’s the analogy I am going with to help explain the background of a design aesthetic from a brand like Minus-8 (and frankly, many other brands these days). More so, the aesthetic very much appeals to some people, and doesn’t at all appeal to others. This is a futuristic watch built with classic watch concepts, and that niche style already alienates most fashion conservatives. Thankfully, the world has plenty of open-minded consumers raised in an era when we are trained to adopt new technologies faster than most people can ask if they need them. This is why traditional timepieces work in the era of digital technology, and why we hunger for ever new forms of watch design because we have been trained that evolution and variation are more valuable than tradition. Hopefully, only a few people in Switzerland’s watch industry will hear about this.
With all that said, let’s move on to my experience with the Diver 1T Solar. In a lot of ways, the design feels familiar to someone like me who started getting into watches when companies like Bell & Ross, Nixon, and Tsovet were shaking things up with a modern aesthetic on classic watch shapes. Part of that was an emphasis on digital graphic design, where boldness and shapes meant more than finishing and materials. The Diver 1T Solar really epitomizes that look, given its overall effort to have no reflective surfaces and its use of big, blocky shapes that look like you pulled this product out of computer design software. I don’t mean that as a bad thing, and getting an on-screen object to look that way in real life is quite challenging. To do that, Minus-8 needed to rely on very specific surface finishes to ensure that nothing was polished too shiny. The grade 2 titanium case is done with a totally matte sandblast finishing. Aside from a little bit of reflection from time to time on the otherwise AR-coated sapphire crystal, the face of the watch has no reflective elements. This is also the sign of a good tool watch (which the Diver 1T Solar certainly attempts to be) and helps with legibility and overall utility.
The lightweight Diver 1T Solar case wears broadly thanks to the wide lugs, is 42mm wide, 13.2mm thick, and has a lug-to-lug distance of about 49mm. It uses a 20mm wide matching titanium bracelet that closes on a fold-locking deployant clasp. The movement inside the watch is the Seiko Epson caliber AS-01 light-powered quartz movement that (when fully charged) has a total battery reserve of about four months. Light passes through the dial of the watch to a photovoltaic cell underneath it, which then generates a small amount of electricity to recharge the battery. Minus-8 recommends that you get a few hours of sunlight per day to keep it charged. Find a good windowsill if you have multiple solar watches in your collection. Or perhaps, Minus-8 can come to me and ask about my ideas for engineering something that will help people keep their light-powered watches charged.
As a diver’s style watch, the Diver 1T Solar’s case is water resistant to an impressive 200 meters and has a screw-down crown. The crown especially has been turned into a distinctive design element on the case. There is a black-colored section with the text “20 ATM” followed by “Titanium” which sits next to the intentionally asymmetric black-colored crown that is at the 4 o’clock position on the case. A bit more complementary asymmetry is created with the small orange-colored section on the uni-directionally rotating diver’s bezel. Herein lies one of the Diver 1T Solar’s weaknesses, and that is that the bezel’s rotating action is a bit flimsy and not as secure or precise as I’d like. This is common on lesser-priced diver’s watches, that is true, but I like this product so much that I clearly want it to have the fittings of a product costing a few times as much. Another minor weakness is the stamped steel folding clasp on the deployant bracelet. Even though the bracelet links are titanium, that metal would be too hard to stamp in these shapes. These stamped metal deployant clasp parts don’t work as precisely as a better-machined component, but a fully milled steel (would be heavy too) or titanium bracelet would have been way too expensive for this price point. Overall, I think that Minus-8 did a really nice job for the money.
In addition to this naturally-finished titanium version of the Diver 1T Solar, Minus-8 also offers a full black-colored case and bracelet variant for the same price. They are both handsome options for those who admire this overall style. With the availability of solar quartz movements and the creative drive of brands like Minus-8, I am really happy to see solar watches officially be part of the enthusiast timepiece space. Their practicality and inexpensive price allow for a variety of hip and interesting real sports watches for just a few hundred dollars. Price for the Minus-8 Diver 1T Solar watch is $348 USD. Learn more at the Minus-8 website.
