What is a summer watch?
It’s a question I ask myself every year around this time. It’s partly rhetorical. We all know, somehow, what a summer watch is. It conjures something in the mind’s eye of a watch enthusiast that is colorful and probably on the sporty side. It looks best when sun drenched, on the beach or a patio or a hiking trail. Or maybe even with brightly glowing dial furniture in a dark movie theater on the hottest summer afternoon, when you just need to be in an air conditioned space for a few hours.
But I also wonder, annually, if this is actually a real thing. Any watch, of course, can be worn in the summer. If it’s summer, and you’re wearing a watch, the transitive property (I think that’s the one) proves you are wearing a summer watch. It could just as easily be a Patek Philippe Ellipse as a Tudor Pelagos, even if you’re bound to sweat through the leather on the former, and even if the latter will never see a running faucet to clean a dirty dish, let alone ocean depths.
Eventually, though, I always come back to the Seiko Orange Monster. Specifically, my Orange Monster, an SRP315. As someone who normally is inclined to minimize the impact of seasonality on a watch, and insist that any watch can be worn anytime of year (they don’t actually know what season it is, after all), the Orange Monster is the one exception, the counter example that makes me question my loosely held summer watch takes. Because, frankly, I have no desire to wear this watch at any other time of year.
The Monster itself is a watch that’s been a personal object of obsession for years. We all have these watches, at least I hope we do. We should have a watch or two that rattles around the brain uncontrollably and acts as the glue that holds our enthusiasm together. The Monster might as well be the Inception-watch, the one placed in my subconscious from which all other enthusiasm is generated and informed.
While the Monster wasn’t my first Seiko, it was the one that cracked open my brain to the world of broader watch enthusiasm. I knew, of course, that there was a watch enthusiast community on the internet (not Instagram, yet) that discussed these things in a particularly nerdy way, but I was really only on the outskirts of that community until I found the Seiko Orange Monster. It led me to actually participate in those forums, and then to modding culture (short lived, for me) and provided the connective tissue to microbrands, then indies, and eventually a wider appreciation for all kinds of craft. It’s not out of bounds to say that without the Orange Monster I may never have developed an interest in writing about watches, and that I never would have found a path to work in the watch industry.
Over the years, I’ve owned a bunch of Monsters. My first was a first generation Orange Monster that I mostly wore on that ultra heavy steel bracelet. At various times, I’ve owned blue and black Monsters as well. This isn’t even my first owner’s review of a Monster – longtime readers may remember this gem, the video for which was shot pre-pandemic. The crux of that review is really the normalizing of the Monster, which I’d always thought of as a genuinely weird creation that in the version released about six years ago felt noticeably softer and more pedestrian.
It was probably that somewhat neutered Monster experience that led me back to the second generation Monster seen here, from an era where these watches were still brutish and strange.
I acquired this watch from a collector in the Boston RedBar group, who listed it for sale for a steal of a price a few years back. I was Monster-less at the time, and just seeing this reference was available to me stirred a certain curiosity and nostalgic feeling that I felt I had to make good on. We met for coffee and for the first time in years I was having what I thought of as a real Monster experience.
A few things about this particular watch. You’ll notice from Garrett’s photos that this example is extremely well worn. When I picked up this watch, it was a single owner piece, bought new by my RedBar friend, so all of that wear and tear is original and can be traced to someone I know personally, which I somehow find more charming than if I had bought this watch off an anonymous seller via eBay or a forum.
It came to me as a full set, including the bracelet, which I frankly just don’t like all that much. I had an old Seiko dive strap (the accordion style straps made of that very un-supple rubber material) which began to disintegrate once I began using it with this watch. Oh well. I replaced it with the white Barton rubber strap seen here, which I’m a fan of but realize might be a polarizing look. I also happen to have an orange rubber strap made by Barton in the same style, but the tone doesn’t match, and two-tone orange is just not a great look.
I find the Orange Monster incredibly charming for what it is: an unusual, idiosyncratic dive watch. The design quirk of the Monster that is most often commented upon and that ultimately defines the line is of course the “shroud” that protects the bezel at the 12:00 and 6:00 ends of the case. The magic of the shroud, I think, is that it’s accomplishing two things at the same time that seem to be at odds. First, it provides an illusion of size. It’s essentially extra metal on the case, and reinforces the idea that this is a hulking, heavy tool.
But it’s also the reason this watch is secretly so wearable. The shroud is essentially a nest for the bezel, and the way everything kind of tucks inside it is really smart. While visually there’s a lot to take in, on the wrist the Monster is actually fairly compact. In terms of raw numbers, it’s 42mm in diameter, 47.7mm from lug to lug, and 13mm thick. Those are fairly standard diver dimensions, and I’d say it wears a touch smaller than what you’d expect from the numbers alone because the lugs are short in proportion to the size of the case. The relatively small dial opening also contributes to making this watch feel a little smaller than it actually is. And 13mm is not sleek in any real way, but if you’ve dabbled in divers for any length of time you’ve almost certainly encountered a number of watches that are considerably thicker.
The second generation Monster was the platform where the now famous “shark tooth” hour markers were introduced, and while this might be a point of contention among Seiko fans, I think these bold triangular indices are a lot more evocative and fun overall than the simple rectangular indices seen on the original Monster, and then again in later period Monsters like the one I reviewed six years ago. Is there any argument to be made here in favor of the comparatively dull rectangular markers? I’m not sure how you can reasonably live up to your Monster nickname with anything but indices that make you think of the ocean’s most effective killing machine.
Who are we kidding though? The Orange Monster is defined by its dial. And while there are a huge variety of colors and variants that this watch has been made in, including a plethora of regional LEs, we’ll all just have to agree that orange is the one true correct color for the Monster. It’s also the reason it appeals to me exclusively in the summer. It’s lively and goes with literally nothing in my closet, and even though I don’t generally care if I’m power clashing, summer is the time when it not only doesn’t matter that you’re wearing an orange watch that looks objectively weird, it’s a signal that you’re enjoying yourself. This watch communicates that you are, at the moment you’re wearing it, having a good time. That’s summer energy to me.
The Monster has always been a strong value, and while I’ve heard of rare limited edition references selling into the four digits, this has always been an affordable and accessible line for Seiko, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any real chance that it’ll be subject to the same type of inflation we’ve seen throughout the enthusiast watch space over these past few years. A quick WatchRecon search yields two first generation Orange Monsters, each under $400. That seems like a strong value in today’s landscape where the higher end “professional” grade Seiko divers are easily into the $1,000 range when purchased new. While the 4R36 movement inside is not refined enough for this watch to be considered among Seiko’s higher end consumer or pro divers, it wears the costume of a serious, professional instrument really well. Its construction and unusual shape make the Monster feel adjacent to watches like the Omega Ploprof. It feels ludicrous in a similar way.
This watch, more than any other in my collection, connects me to my earliest days of watch enthusiasm. One of the big mistakes I made as a collector when I was getting started was that I was too open minded about selling or trading those first watches that really got me into the hobby, so of course that first Monster of mine is long, long gone. I wish I still had it, but at the time there was just no way for me to really know that it would one day be anything other than a link in the chain, let alone a meaningful artifact. This heavily used SRP315 is about as close as I’m likely to get to reliving that history. Every time I put it on, it makes me think of that earlier era in my watch collecting life, when I knew very little, had genuine excitement for weird Seikos, and didn’t even know that the job I’d be doing years later was a viable way to make a living.
I’ve been leaning into the Monster a little more this summer in particular because I’m really trying to embrace the season in a way I haven’t, traditionally. I’m not a summer guy. I don’t like the heat, and I don’t even really like the beach or the other typical summer weather activities. Camping and hiking are hard for me (unusual in NH) because, let’s be real, it’s silly to actively choose against indoor plumbing. We’re not animals.
But this year, for whatever reason, I’ve just decided to take a more positive approach to the season. I don’t want to be that guy who is always complaining about the weather. And if I am, let it be the winter months, as they are truly isolating and hard in a way that summer isn’t. It would be overstating it to say that the Orange Monster has helped me learn to love the summer, but I’m happy to say that it’s made things marginally more fun, or at least a little more nostalgic in a pleasant way. It’s just hard to be angry with such a ridiculous thing on your wrist.