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Hamilton stamps a wave into the Khaki Navy Scuba dial, five references at A$1,450

Hamilton has given its 40mm Khaki Navy Scuba Auto a stamped wave dial and refreshed bezel numerals, with five references listed at A$1,450.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 11 August 2026

• Hamilton has rebuilt its 40mm Khaki Navy Scuba Auto around a stamped wave dial and redrawn bezel numerals, giving the small Scuba its own identity.
• The wave pattern is pressed into the lacquer rather than printed on top, so the ridges catch light and throw a shadow across the dial.
• Five references are listed at A$1,450 on Hamilton's Australian store, all 40mm and rated to 100 metres, on steel bracelets or rubber straps.

If you have picked up an affordable diver in the last couple of years and thought the dial was working harder than it used to, you were not imagining it. The affordable end of the dive watch market has turned into a texture competition over the last few years. The old deal was plain and everybody understood it: a black dial, a rotating bezel, a date window, and whatever movement the group could supply at the price. Then brands worked out that a pattern costs almost nothing once the tooling exists, and dials started arriving fumé, waffled and sunburst at money that used to buy flat paint. Hamilton has taken its turn at that game with the Khaki Navy Scuba Auto 40mm.

A wave pressed in, not printed on

The pattern is a wave, and Hamilton has pressed it into the lacquer rather than printing it on the surface, which is the difference between a dial with depth in it and a dial with a picture of depth on it. In the brand's own close-ups the ridges throw a genuine shadow across the lower half, the way corrugated iron does in late afternoon sun, so the texture reads as relief rather than as ink. The bezel typography has been refreshed at the same time, cleaner and less crowded than the numerals it replaces.

Forty millimetres, and a hundred metres of it

Under the decoration it is a straightforward steel tool watch, and the figures are the ones you would expect. The case runs 40mm across and 13mm thick, with a screw-down crown, a unidirectional 60-minute bezel and an anti-reflective sapphire crystal, and Hamilton rates it to 10 bar, which is 100 metres. That covers swimming, snorkelling and getting caught out in the rain without a second thought, and it stops well short of the saturation diving that none of us are doing. Super-LumiNova is on the feature list as well.

The 43mm Khaki Navy Scuba Auto has not gone anywhere, and it remains the one to buy if the depth rating is what you are shopping for, since Hamilton rates it to 30 bar and asks A$1,825 for it. The trade is width against depth, three millimetres of diameter against 200 metres of rating, and which way that falls depends entirely on your wrist and on your holidays. The curiosity is thickness, because the 43mm measures 12.58mm and the 40mm measures 13mm, so the small one is fractionally the taller watch of the two.

Five references, and the white one is the surprise

Five references carry the new dial, and Hamilton lists every one of them at the same money. Three sit on the stainless steel bracelet in black, white and blue, while two come on rubber, one of which drops a turquoise strap under a black dial and is comfortably the most cheerful thing in the collection. The white one is the quiet surprise, because a white dial on a dive watch usually tips into summer novelty, and the wave texture rescues it by giving the light somewhere to go instead of glaring back.

What is actually new here

It is worth being straight about what is actually new, because Hamilton's catalogue already held a 40mm Scuba Auto at A$1,450, rated to the same 100 metres and running the same calibre, so the case has not shrunk and the price has not moved. What has changed is the surface of the dial and the drawing of the bezel. That sounds like very little written down, and yet the surface is most of what you look at across the years you own a watch, so it is a long way from nothing.

The H-10, and the twenty millimetre lugs

The engine is Hamilton's H-10, listed as an automatic three-hander with a date function and 80 hours of power reserve, and the reserve is the figure that changes how you live with the watch rather than how you read it. Three days of autonomy means the watch tolerates being put down and forgotten, and comes back to the wrist still on time. The balance spring is Nivachron, the titanium-based alloy Swatch Group developed with Audemars Piguet, and it shrugs off the magnetic fields that a plain steel hairspring quietly picks up from everyday objects.

The lug width is 20mm, and that is the quiet gift in this release, because 20mm is the width the aftermarket actually stocks while the 43mm model's 22mm lugs send you hunting. Hamilton fits the steel bracelet with a folding clasp and a 20mm buckle, and sizes it to your wrist before it ships, while the rubber versions taper to an 18mm pin buckle so the strap narrows as it comes around. Either way, the strap drawer that has been sitting untouched at home suddenly becomes relevant again.

Why the dial is the whole argument

The 100 metres will nag at buyers who read water resistance like a scoreline, though a wave dial on a 100 metre watch is at least honest, because 100 metres is where the waves are and 300 metres is where they are not. The larger argument is that the specification sheet has stopped being the interesting part of a Swiss tool watch, since almost everyone buys the same movements off the same shelf. What is left to compete on is how a dial behaves in a room with a window. Hamilton has read that correctly.

Hamilton Khaki Navy Scuba Auto 40mm pricing and availability

All five references are listed at A$1,450 on Hamilton's Australian store: H82415130 with a black dial on the stainless steel bracelet, H82425110 in white and H82425140 in blue on the same bracelet, and H82415331 and H82415330 on rubber straps. Hamilton shows the watches in stock and sizes the bracelet to order from 15cm to 23.5cm at no extra cost, with 24cm adding A$10, 24.5cm adding A$15 and 25cm adding A$20. Delivery within Australia is free and express, returns run to 14 days from delivery, and the watch carries a two-year international warranty. The 43mm Khaki Navy Scuba Auto continues alongside it at A$1,825.