Omega has put almost every colour on a Seamaster Diver 300M bezel. Black, blue, grey, aluminium, ceramic. Across the fifteen Diver 300M guides we've written, exactly one is red.
This one — a red anodised aluminium bezel ring against a white lacquered dial, which is Canada's red against Canada's white, and which Omega also intended to read as snow and ice. It is the most unusual-looking Seamaster in the collection and the only one that announces itself from across a room.
The rest is quiet. The seconds hand is rhodium-plated with a red tip. The caseback is solid, embossed with the Vancouver 2010 emblem — the Ilanaak figure, a stacked-stone marker of the kind Canadian First Nations peoples built as greetings to travellers — and engraved with the edition number. Two thousand and ten pieces.
A watch built on one loud colour relationship has a narrow strap brief, and it's worth getting right.
The size: 20mm
This takes a 20mm strap, stated outright in a published specification for this exact reference and consistent with every 41mm and 42mm Diver 300M we've covered.
Two size warnings worth carrying. Omega made a smaller 36.25mm version of this same Vancouver watch, and that is not a 20mm case — if yours is the small one, measure before you order. And the 43.5mm ceramic Seamasters and 44mm chronographs are a different width again.
On our product pages, select 20mm.
There's a second detail, and it moves
Look at the tail of the seconds hand. The Olympic rings are printed on the counterweight — in full colour, going round once a minute. It's the only place the Games appear on the dial side, and it is never in the same position twice. Omega liked the device enough to use it twice: the Aqua Terra chronograph made for Beijing two years earlier does the same thing.
This is where the strap argument comes from, and it's specific.
You don't look at rings on a counterweight. They're a few millimetres across and they're in motion, which means you catch them the way you catch anything moving — in peripheral vision, out of the corner of your eye, usually while you were doing something else. That's the whole charm of it. One reviewer called it the best little thing on the watch, and he's right.
Peripheral detection has one enemy: competing motion. And a polished steel bracelet is a machine for producing it — dozens of curved reflective links throwing highlights across your field of view every time your wrist moves. Against that, a small coloured disc doing one revolution a minute simply doesn't register.
Matte rubber produces no highlights at all. Put this watch on rubber and the only thing moving in the frame is the thing Omega wanted you to notice.
That's a narrow argument, and it's the honest one. This is not a watch that needs rescuing from a bad factory strap — it's a watch with one lovely detail that a bracelet quietly buries.
The best straps for the Diver 300M Vancouver 2010
1. White — finish the flag
The bezel supplies the red; the dial supplies the white; a white rubber strap simply gives you more of the second one. It completes the pairing Omega built the watch around, it makes the red bezel the single most saturated thing in view, and it leaves a pale calm field for the coloured rings to cross. It's the most striking of the three and the one that photographs best — it also asks the most of you in upkeep, which is the trade.
2. Black — let the red do the work
The wearable answer and the one I'd expect most owners to settle on. A black rubber strap removes every competing surface from below the case, so the white dial reads brighter and the red bezel reads deeper than they do against anything else. It also drops the watch a register — a red-and-white diver can shout, and black is what stops it. Best contrast for the rings, too.
3. Navy blue — cool it down
The considered middle. Red and white together is a warm, high-energy combination, and a navy blue rubber strap is the one colour that calms it without going all the way to black. Navy is also what the Seamaster has worn for three decades, so it makes a themed limited edition read as an ordinary good dive watch — which, for a watch you want to wear on a Tuesday, is the point.
Two we'd steer you away from, since both are stocked for this collection: orange sits too close to the bezel's red and the two fight rather than pair, and green is one of the five ring colours, so it pulls attention to the strap at the expense of the detail this whole page is about.
The short version
20mm — and measure first if yours is the 36.25mm. White to finish the flag, black to let the red do the work, navy to cool it down. Skip orange and green.
Every strap in our Seamaster Diver 300M collection is cut for this case and carries a lifetime warranty on rubber — with free worldwide shipping and no import costs, part of why more than 50,000 customers have trusted us with their watches. Guides to every other Omega we've covered live in the Omega strap guide hub. The best thing on this watch goes round once a minute. Give yourself a chance to see it.
