Quality watches, without the hype. Sounds dreamy, right? When we, the watch-obsessed, are inundated daily with hyperbole and hysteria, nothing can calm the nerves like a good, no-nonsense, reasonably-priced timepiece. Surrounded by icon-idolisers, FOMO-fanciers, and chatter-chasers, NTH watches seem like a port in a storm. And, it’s fair to say, no line within the brand’s ever-evolving catalogue expresses this quite as well as the humble Subs section.
There are wilder watches in the brand’s portfolio, that’s for sure. The fruity Devilray might even be my favourite. It is a wacky tribute to the colour-drenched divers that exploded in popularity during the 1970s. However, rather than coming across as hammy or insincere, it’s a damn good effort at slapping a smile on the wrist that’s still able to keep you safe beneath the waves. Form and function at a fair price. In this day and age, it seems almost too good to be true…
And then there’s the 2K1 Sub line. Bigger. Beefier. More brutal. These watches are impressive feats of engineering, indeed, but daily beaters they are not (or not at least for most of us with wrists of seven inches and below). While their 13 mm thickness is surprisingly sympathetic to smaller-wristed gents, the 43.75 mm diameter makes them a little too hefty for the majority of watch lovers to wear on the regular.
If you think a seven-inch wrist sounds small, by the way, I would have agreed with you before reading a very informative article by the Armoury’s Mark Cho, written way back in 2019. The Armoury is a destination store for all things sartorially elegant and Cho knows his watches. As it happens, following some reasonably extensive research, he also knows wrists, and his findings, displayed in a graph in this article, show that a whopping 82% of men actually have wrist circumferences of seven inches or below. The first time I read that, my mind was blown. I’ve been telling people that my 6.5” wrist is small for years. As it happens, it’s the most common measurement of all, with a jaw-dropping 26% of men reporting the same.
Therefore, it is the 40 mm Subs collection that has my heart. It’s the brand’s biggest family and features a swathe of models that work with the same base specs but offer a variety of colour palettes and dial designs to choose from. Additionally, this range has some of the coolest names you could hope to find attached to watch models. The Amphion stands proudly next to the Odin, the Barracuda, the Scorpène, the Upholder, the Mack, the Vanguard, and the Näcken (for all you fans of Scandinavian folklore).
NTH Näcken Dive Watch - Credit WatchGecko
All of the Subs share the same 40 mm diameter. The majority come in at a svelte 11.5 mm thick, but the Amphion is marginally thicker, measuring a stout 13 mm thick on the wrist. While all sub-families share the same case middle, the total case height is affected by the use either of a flatter bezel and a totally flat crystal, or, in the case of the Amphion exclusively, a double-domed sapphire that results in a more vintage look (recalling the plexiglass “crystals” of old).
Every model in the NTH Subs collection uses either the Miyota 9015 Japanese-made automatic calibre or the dateless version thereof (known as the Miyota 90S5). These movements, regardless of whether or not they have a date complication, have a 42-hour power reserve, a 28,800vph operating frequency, and timekeeping parameters of +15/-5 seconds per day, which is relatively standard for these movements once regulated by trained assemblers.
NTH Näcken Dive Watch - Credit WatchGecko
A key feature of all NTH Subs is their 300-metre water resistance, which, while 200 metres fewer than their bigger brothers that occupy the 2K1 collection, is more than sufficient for daily wear (and, should you be an active diver yourself, use in the water).
The dials come in a variety of colours and formats. The Amphion and Barracuda use stick and dot markers (often preferred by divers and employed by the Rolex Submariner line), the Näcken employs squared markings (similar to the Tudor Pelagos), the Vanguard, Upholder, and Odin models use stylised wedges of slightly different proportions to mark the time, while the Mack, Scorpène, and Todaro pieces utilise Arabic numerals in different ways.
The most expressive of the Arabic bunch is undoubtedly the Todaro. On this model and this model alone, double-digit Arabic markers are used for 12 (styled as “00”), four and eight o’clock (“04” and “08” respectively).
The Mack marks out every hour of the day (including the 24-hour counterparts in a smaller font towards the centre of the dial) giving it the appearance of a field watch (think the Hamilton Khaki Field for a low-budget example that displays time in a similar fashion despite lacking the dive bezel functionality and water resistance of The Mack).
Meanwhile, the Scorpène gives off some serious Pilot vibes by marking the cardinal numbers (12, 3, 6, and 9) with oversized Arabic numerals in a highly legible font that reminds me of either Omega’s Planet Ocean series, a Bell & Ross, or something from Panerai (albeit without the broken lines necessary for the sandwich dials Panerai employs).
NTH Barracuda - Credit WatchGecko
Perhaps the best news for watch lovers looking for a good value and highly versatile watch, aside from the wrist-friendly proportions and hassle-free, easy-to-service movements, is the standard lug width of 20 mm. This means every watch within the NTH Subs collection is a veritable strap gobbler that can be flipped from strap to strap with ease thanks to this thoughtful, highly standardised lug gap.
Better still for anyone looking for an inexpensive but respectable daily beater is the price: NTH Subs retail around the £750 mark and therefore offer a lot of bang for your buck. Given the passionate community built up by and around the brand, this is no longer a niche choice, and the chances of you running into a fellow watch collector with one or more of these pieces in their collection are ever-increasing.
