There are two green things on this watch, and they only appear in the dark.
Everything on the Planet Ocean "Sochi 2014" glows blue — the applied indexes, the hour hand, the seconds hand. Everything except the minute hand, which glows green, and the dot at twelve on the bezel, which glows green too. A launch report on the watch notes that Omega did this deliberately: those two marks are the pair a diver actually aligns, so in the dark the only two things you can see clearly are the two you need.
It's the most useful piece of design on any Olympic Omega we've covered, and it tells you something about how this watch expects to be worn.
The rest is Games dressing, and good dressing: a matt black ceramic bezel with a chromium nitride scale, minutes one to five lacquered blue and minutes six to ten lacquered red for the host nation's flag, a black dial with the date at three, and a solid screw-in caseback embossed with the Sochi 2014 logo and engraved with Si14 and the edition number. Limited to 2,014 pieces.
The size: 22mm
This takes a 22mm strap — the widest in the Planet Ocean range, and a size people routinely get wrong on this watch.
The family rule, verified across our thirteen Planet Ocean guides: 39.5mm takes 19mm, the older 42mm takes 20mm, 43.5mm takes 21mm and 45.5mm takes 22mm. This is the 45.5mm case, the biggest Omega builds in this collection, so it's 22mm and nothing else.
Our Planet Ocean collection is cut in all four widths. Select 22mm on the product page.
On the biggest case Omega makes, the strap stops the watch moving
Here's the argument that applies to this reference more than any other Planet Ocean.
Forty-five and a half millimetres of steel is a genuinely heavy watch head, and on a steel bracelet a heavy head behaves in a specific way: it rotates. The bracelet is rigid, your wrist isn't, and over a few hours the watch works its way round until the dial is somewhere on the side of your arm. Everyone who has worn a large steel sports watch on a bracelet knows the small correcting twist you do without thinking.
Rubber doesn't do that. A supple strap conforms to the wrist and grips it, so the head stays where you put it — and on this watch that matters more than usual, because the whole point of the two-colour lume is that you glance down and read the minute hand against the bezel dot immediately. A dial that has quietly rotated forty degrees is a dial you have to hunt for first.
So the case for rubber here isn't comfort or looks. It's that a watch designed to be read at a glance should still be facing you when you glance.
One practical note. The blue and red lacquer sits on the bezel edge, exactly where a slipped tool lands. Work on a soft cloth and keep the spring-bar tool square.
The best straps for the Planet Ocean Sochi 2014
1. Full black — let the ten minutes be the only colour
The disciplined answer and the one the design is asking for. The dial is black, the bezel ceramic is black, and the only colour anywhere on this watch is ten lacquered minutes at the top of the bezel. A full black rubber strap extends that black field past the lugs, so those ten minutes become the single point of colour on the entire assembly — which is exactly the hierarchy Omega drew. Start here.
2. Black with red — take the second five
The bezel's red runs from minute six to minute ten. A black strap with red keeps the black ground intact and picks up just that half of the flag, so the watch stays dark and serious while one of its two accents is carried below the case. It's the warmer of the two halves and the more assertive choice.
3. Navy blue — take the first five
The other half, and the more subtle. Minutes one to five are blue, and a navy blue rubber strap picks up that end of the scale — the five minutes a diver watches most closely. Navy against a black dial and black ceramic reads as a considered near-neutral rather than a colour statement, and it's the version that looks least like a commemorative watch.
4. Black with white — continue the scale
The pick that pays attention to the bezel rather than the flag. The diving scale itself isn't blue or red — it's a chromium nitride scale on black ceramic, effectively white, and it's the part doing the actual work. A black strap with a white line repeats that relationship exactly: dark ground, one fine bright marking running through it. The most technical-looking option here.
The short version
22mm, not 20 or 21. Full black to leave the ten minutes as the only colour, black and red for the second five, navy for the first five, black and white to continue the diving scale.
Every strap in our Planet Ocean 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. Ten minutes of colour on a black watch. Don't add an eleventh.
