Jaeger LeCoultre Master Compressor Diving Watch Review

Jaeger LeCoultre Master Compressor Diving watches pick up where Sports Complication collection left off. The extremes hinted at in the latter collection come into full force in Master Compressor timepieces, resulting in professional timing instruments. Rigged with chronograph, world time (the uniquely shaped “Diving Pro Geographic”), and GMT functions, these watches also gauge depth and resist water up to 1000 meters.

Master Compressor Website

The collection features and eye-popping website that you simply must visit if you're even remotely interested in anything relating to watches or web design. It features a window that appears to replicate a diving mask field of vision, and a set of multi-layered menus that might appear on the inner screen of a diving or space suit helmet. Reverberating music and sound effects complete the experience, which obviously aims to reproduce diving.

JLC Master Compressor Diving watches sport a set of specialized functions intended to make diving easier and safer.

Patented compressor technology ensures a professional level of water resistance, while illuminated hands and indices facilitate legibility in dark underwater conditions; very bright colors on black dials do the same. Unirotational bezel guarantees divers will never go wrong in their remaining oxygen calculations.

In a way, Master Compressor Diving watches looks less sophisticated than their Sports counterpart. It was a concious choice of a watchmaker who understands diving – an extreme life-threatening activity that doesn't leave a wide margin for aesthetic elaboration. Everything about this collection – the cases, the dial designs, the bracelets – tends towards enlargement and simplification – the bigger the parts are, and the less of them – the better. A diver may simply not have the time to discern finer details.

Ladies

Master Compressor Diving Ladies features white and more elaborate dials that appear to compromise somewhat the design qualities discussed above. The guilloche on the face, however, has been coated with a luminescent material that glows in dark, and effectively substitutes the contrast provided by black dials of the men's models. Diving Ladies watches bezels are set with just a few diamonds, in order not to distract or confuse the lady diver by the glitter.