I am an engineer and I work in an office with a lot of engineers and project managers. It probably won’t be a big surprise that there are quite a few watch fans in my line of work. From the people that wear different fashion watches every day, to the guys with their one good watch, and everything in between. There’s a whole smorgasboard of appreciation and approaches to watch collecting. At the start of the year one of my colleagues, who is definitely at the enthusiastic collector end of the spectrum, came into the office sporting the new Seiko 5 Sports SRPD.

I spotted it straight away and as soon as an appropriate opportunity arose I asked him if I could do a comparison with my SKX007. Like many people I’m a big fan of the SKX007. I assumed the new Seiko 5 would be a bargain basement version of the SKX007. I was wrong. Okay, it doesn’t have the same water resistance rating (100m is still more than enough for most people) but it does have a super smooth bezel action, applied indices and an exhibition caseback. There’s a clear similarity in terms of the overall look but almost every detail is different.

The thing that really stands out for me with the new Seiko 5 is the range of options and styles available. The SKX007 has often been popular with people looking to modify or customise their watch. With so many great standard options available in the Seiko 5 range why would you bother modding? There’s something for everyone!

If, like me, you are a dive watch fan, then I’m sure the new Seiko 5 Sports SRPD will appeal to you. I think it is sufficiently different from the SKX007 that you could justify having both in your collection and there are so many different cases and dial colour variants that you could probably justify having more than one Seiko 5!