This is the Aera D–1 Diver, it’s the creation of Jas Minhas and Olof Larsson, a pair of watchmakers who met at the Ice Hotel in Sweden 20 years ago and have been firm friends ever since.
The two men established Aera four years ago in Britain to build high-quality, affordable watches with Swiss automatic mechanical movements. Unusually for the world of horology, the watches made by Aera remain at the affordable end of the spectrum, retailing for $1,400 USD apiece.
The company is currently selling two watch designs, the Aera D–1 Diver and the P-1 Pilot, we’ve shown you the D-1 Diver design here as it’s a bit of a favorite, but we’ll cover the similarly good-looking P-1 Pilot in a future post.
The Aera D–1 Diver has a unidirectional 120 click bezel and a domed sapphire crystal with double-sided anti-reflective coating.
The Aera D–1 Diver has a case made from 904L stainless steel, this is a higher end alloy than the more common 316L stainless steel, with more nickel, chromium, molybdenum, and copper which makes it more resistant to corrosion and pitting.
The watch is powered by the Sellita SW200-1 automatic mechanical movement, Sellita is well-known for their accurate workhorse movements and they’re based in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland.
The Sellita SW200-1 has 26 jewels and a 38 hour power reserve, 28,800 vibrations per hour (4 Hz), and hacking seconds.
The watch uses hand-filled Swiss Super-LumiNova® in white on dial, hands, and crown for excellent nighttime visibility.
The watch is topped with a unidirectional 120 click bezel in brushed 904L stainless steel, it has a domed sapphire crystal with double-sided anti-reflective coating, and hand-filled Swiss Super-LumiNova® in white on dial, hands, and crown.
The first 300 examples of the Aera D–1 Diver are the Launch Edition version, it comes with a Scuba Black Rubber and a Limited Edition Smoke Grey Suede strap as standard, when ordering you can choose a third strap for free.
Interestingly Aera offers free delivery including taxes to the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Japan. They also offer 30 day returns and a three year warranty after you register your watch.
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
