The Paulin Mara: available tomorrow
It's time for Paulin's first-ever dive watch!
When it comes to a watch, sometimes, you just want something that covers the basics, and you don’t want a lot of extra bells and whistles. At the same time, you probably don’t want that watch to look like it fell out of a white label parts catalog. There are many options for that, but one with it’s own interesting aesthetic has been Paulin Watches. They’ve iterated and riffed on their base designs, and now they’re launching something completely new: a dive watch, hereby known as the Paulin Mara.
Paulin Mara: what it is
Well, it’s a dive watch, of course. Anytime a brand launches a new tool watch, though, we need to ask: is this just the look, or can this thing function as the tool it’s purporting to be? Interestingly enough, this design came about after a discussion in 2023 with Jason Heaton (pictured above in the upper left) about the basics of what makes for a good dive watch. Now, I may talk about dive watches and review them, but Jason actually takes these things for their intended purpose, and goes diving with them. So, he know what works and what doesn’t when you’re actually down under the waves. Expert guidance, indeed.
For the watch itself, you’ve got a 40mm stainless steel case that - with the crown screwed down - carries a 300m WR rating. The dial itself is crisp and legible (white on either black or blue) with clearly differentiated hour and minute hands. While they don’t call it out in the specs, we are presuming that the domed diving bezel (which itself surrounds a double-domed sapphire crystal) is uni-directional, which is how a diving-specific watch should be.
The movement
For a new design, you could be tempted to think a younger brand would go for, say, a more pedestrian movement, see how sales go. Not so, here. To really give this watch a pan-European feel (watch designed in Glasgow, a dial made in Germany), they’ve gone for a Swiss movement. In this case, it’s the La Joux Perret G101, which is designed from the start as a three-hander, no-date movement, so there’s no extraneous bits. It also has a tungsten rotor on it (a heavier metal), meaning it should get itself wound up pretty well from your moving about.
The Paulin look
That’s got to be key as well, right? It’s one thing for a brand to introduce a new design, but if it’s not somehow identifiable as coming from that crew, well, it could be just about any brands’ watch, right? No worries here. They took their custom ‘Wim’ typeface (regularly used on the Neo and Modul models) and brought it here, on the dial and the bezel. Secondarily, they’ve got multiple colors on their handset, and then they’ve gone and mixed up our expectations of what indice shapes go where on a dial. It’s all legible and useful, but still whimsically them.
Wrapping things up
We’ve been fans of how Paulin (and anOrdain) have gone about putting their aesthetic on watch design, and the new Paulin Mara seems like an excellent broadening of their horizons. While it was just announced today, it will be available for purchase starting tomorrow (2025 August 22) at 4pm BST (GMT +1), so mark your calendars for your particular timezone. It will be available in one of two colors - blue or black - and command a price of $1,650. paulinwatches.com
Paulin Mara Tech Specs
PRICE: $1650 / £1200* +VAT (*Live conversion rate at checkout for international customers)
MOVEMENT:
Soigné grade La Joux Perret G101
68-hour power reserve, 28,800vph beat rate
CRYSTAL: Double domed sapphire with 3 layers of anti-reflective coating
WATER RESISTANCE: 30ATM / Waterproof to 300m (990 ft)
CASE: 316L Stainless steel
DIAL: Lacquer and Super-LumiNova on brass
CASE DIAMETER: 39.7mm
CASE THICKNESS: 13.5mm
WITHOUT CRYSTAL: 10.8mm
CASE LUG-TO-LUG: 48mm
STRAP WIDTH: 20mm
WEIGHT (CASE ONLY): 74 grams
WARRANTY: 24 months
Available to purchase from 4PM BST 22