The production of purpose-built sport watches has been central to Alpina’s identity for nearly 80 years now. Introduced way back in 1938, the “Alpina 4” standard guides the brand in its pursuit of creating robust sport watches. To be considered a true “sport watch,” an Alpina must have the following characteristics: it must be anti-magnetic, shock-resistant, water-resistant, and housed in a stainless steel case.

These are traits of modern sports watches that we now often take for granted, but in 1938 the type of innovation that allowed watches to consistently meet these specifications was far less common.

The quality timepieces that were produced under these guidelines made Alpina a favorite among sportsmen of all stripes. From divers, to mountaineers, to pilots, if you needed a watch that would reliably stand up to whatever was thrown at it, Alpina had you covered.

While the modern Seastrong is very different aesthetically from the heritage version, there’s a spiritual connection between the two that binds them together. The traditional lines of the 10 Seastrong are replaced here by a muscular and angular case shape that’s decidedly modern. And the new version is spec’d with all the modern attributes you’d want in a diver that can actually do the job of diving. The new Seastrong 300 is different in appearance compared to its predecessors, but it’s built with the same single-minded focus that Alpina has always brought to sport watch design.

The Seastrong Diver 300 represents a natural evolution of an iconic Alpina tool watch. Alpina has always focused on designing watches with a form-over-function mentality, and many of the Seastrong’s features exhibit that ethos in highly tangible ways. The stepped case is rugged and well proportioned, the cross-hatch dial is easy to read, and the crown and bezel have knurling that makes them easy to grip, even with gloves, or wet hands. The legacy of the Alpina 4 principles, which have been baked in to the Alpina design language over the decades, is still very much at play here.