Even among modern Zodiac watch brand enthusiasts, the recent Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver is a product few people know well. The Pro-Diver is Zodiac’s attempt to create a professional-grade diver’s watch that is fully ISO 6425 rated. Born from the Super Sea Wolf family, the Pro-Diver carries on the long legacy of Zodiac as a maker of divers’ timing equipment. In 2022, Zodiac released both a steel and titanium version of the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver watch. Now in 2024, the Pro-Diver collection gets an upgrade with Zodiac’s updated in-house STP 1-21 automatic movement, as well as a fully lume-painted dial for this reference ZO3560 version of the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver.
The ZO3560 uses the steel Pro-Diver case on a matching jubilee-style seven-link steel bracelet. It is certainly a fun and legible piece for tool watch enthusiasts who like features and value. The Pro-Diver is several hundred dollars more expensive than the standard Super Sea Wolf collection watch. That extra money gets you a good number of upgrades. Still, it does put the Pro-Diver family into limbo territory between affordable Swiss Made mechanical watches and a more elevated $2,000+ price point. Zodiac overall is trying to slightly upgrade its brand perception and price point, so watches like the Pro-Diver continue to “make sense.” With that said, Zodiac now needs to double up effort on explaining what you get with the brands since some nuances of the Pro-Diver are difficult to notice by just looking at it.
Most of Zodiac’s Super Sea Wolf watches have rotating bezels with transparent mineral crystal caps over the inserts. The Pro-Diver watches have ceramic inserts, which are black with a small red triangle frame for the lume pip. The bezel has etched markers that are given a generous application of luminant. Zodiac claims ensuring that the Pro-Diver meets ISO diver’s watch certification standards is a surprisingly involved process – it’s far more than just increasing the water resistance of the Super Sea Wolf to 300 from 200 meters. Durability is also a major factor in ISO rating. That forced Zodiac to create a solid ring that holds all of the hour markers — because mounting them one-by-one on small legs is considered too fragile — preventing the possibility that the hour markers might come off. Therefore, in a lot of hidden ways, the Pro-Diver is a much more engineered watch than the standard Super Sea Wolf.
The first Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver watches contained Swiss Made Sellita SW200 automatic movements, but starting with the Pro-Diver ZO3560 the collection now contains the STP 1-21. More notable about this 4Hz, 42-hour power reserve movement is that it uses a silicon hairspring. That allows for more accuracy over time, as well as far enhanced environmental resistance (against mainly temperature changes and magnetism) as compared to a traditional metal hairspring. The movement in this instance only offers the time, as enthusiasts tend to prefer a date-less dial given that it is more symmetrical and thus visually attractive. Finally, the Swiss Made STP 1-21 movement is COSC-certified as a chronometer.
I rallied around the titanium version of the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver because of how light and comfortable it is. This steel version is clearly heavier because it is in steel, but hardly worse off for it. In steel, the Pro-Diver has nice surface finishing treatments, and the case is actually a bit less sharp than the titanium versions. The Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver case is 42mm wide (up from 40mm for the smaller standard Super Sea Wolf watches), 13mm thick with a domed AR-coated sapphire crystal, and it has a roughly 50mm long lug-to-lug distance. The expansive bezel and wide lugs give the watch a hefty feel, but dimensionally, it isn’t all that huge.
The special trick of this lume dial reference ZO3560 Pro-Diver is the impressive amount of luminant on the dial, which also manages to have a candy mint color to it as opposed to the more sickly green of SuperLumiNova on many other watches. Zodiac uses two colors of luminant (green and blue) for the dial – which is rarely done with nearly equal color saturations of the respective lume tones. To best contrast with the luminous parts of the dial, the rest of the dial components are in black. True enough, as you can see in the lume shot, this dial is designed to be very clear to read when glowing. If you are the owner of this watch, I recommend carrying around a UV light in your pocket just to impress yourself and bystanders should the occasion arise.
While it doesn’t bother me, I am not convinced that black with a red-colored triangle for the 60-minute marker was the best choice of colors for the bezel. This is a color palette we have seen elsewhere, so I understand where the bezel hues came from, but I feel as though it could have been a bit more harmonious with the dial colors. In addition to ceramic, Zodiac has used sapphire crystal inserts, which would have opened up a lot more bezel hue options. Then again, having that many light colors could have changed the entire personality of the watch and transformed it into something seemingly more fashionable than it is functional. With this particular color combination, the Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver “lume dial” certainly does have a bit more of a conservative, professional vibe.
Zodiac designed the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver with hour and minute hands that I don’t like as much as the hour markers. But making the hour and minute hands the same color helps the design of this steel lume-dial version of the Super Sea Wolf Pro Diver, compared to some other versions that utilize different colors for the hour and minute hands.
Zodiac doesn’t include an extra strap with the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver ZO3560 watch package, but the 20mm-wide seven-link steel bracelet does come on quick-release strap ends. On a proper rubber or NATO-style strap, this watch could easily make for a welcome swimming or diver’s watch. In fact, Zodiac said that the all-lume dial is inspired by 1980s diver’s watches intended for night diving activities. Speaking of the steel bracelet, I just want to remind folks that there is a small spring-based comfort adjustment in each of the butterfly-style deployant ends. I’d like to see Zodiac offer a unique bracelet for the Pro-Diver family (as the standard Super Sea Wolf also uses this same bracelet), but with the steel jubilee-style bracelet the Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver still looks pretty nice. I continue to think that, in a lot of ways, the Zodiac Pro-Diver is a sleeper hit that will only later become popular once more people discover it. Price for the Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver ZO3560 watch is $2,195 USD. Learn more at the Zodiac watches website.
Necessary Information:
>Brand: Zodiac
>Model: Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver ‘lume dial’ reference ZO3560
>Price: $2,195 USD
>Size: 42mm wide, 13mm thick, ~50mm lug-to-lug distance
>When reviewer would personally wear it: When swimming (or adventuring) in the dark… or when you want to think about pistachio ice cream.
>Friend we’d recommend it to first: Serious dive watch lovers who really admire the fun of a fully luminous dial and want to carry around a UV torch in their pocket.
>Best characteristic of watch: Very durable and legible. Distinctive design for a lesser-known professional dive watch collection. Still decently priced.
>Worst characteristic of watch: Not sure black was the most harmonious color for the bezel insert. Niche color appeal. No included strap.
