Longines HydroConquest Automatic: Malaysia Price and Review

Leong Wong 02 May 2018

This Longines stalwart gets a fresh take.

The HydroConquest has been Longines’ sole diving watch range for over 10 years now, and well-poised for a quick refresh. Historically, the Swiss watchmaker has always made dressier timepieces, but with the increased demand for sportier tunes timed perfectly with the revival of mechanical watches, Longines deemed it an apt time to woo the sports-conscious generation.

In 2007, the HydroConquest was launched with all the bells and whistles of a proper dive watch. With bright luminous indexes and hands as well as a unidirectional bezel with minute scale in a rather classic 1960s sports case, divers favoured it for its practical applications and legitimate styling.

The 2018 version hits all the right spots and ticks the right boxes. Take a look at its most prominent feature, the numeral font: it’s fresh and bold yet elegant. Most importantly, the readability is excellent. Enhancing its legibility are the round index markers made for those deeper dives where your eyes can play tricks in the deep.

The ceramic bezel incorporates both Arabic numerals and markers with a triangle at ‘12’ and a 15-minute scale/timer, all coated with ultra-bright Super-LumiNova. Add to that a water resistance of 300m, and the HydroConquest qualifies as a proper diver.

On the aesthetic front, the watch is infinitely more attractive with the new larger fonts and a sunburst-finished dial in grey (our preferred version) complementing the ceramic bezel in a perfect union. It still has the same reliable and robust Calibre L888.2 movement by ETA and is housed in a stainless steel case that comes in 41mm and 43mm options. At RM6,250, you’re certainly getting a value-for-money dive ticker.