News · Islander

The solar cell moved to the chapter ring

Islander's 38mm Saltaire uses Miyota's ring solar movement, which puts the collector in the rehaut and frees the dial to be solid metal. 349 US dollars.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 9 August 2026

The Islander Saltaire, a 38mm steel dive watch with a textured blue dial and a blue and red bezel on a steel bracelet — Image: Islander

Solar watches usually make you take a dial you didn't want. The cell sits behind it, so the dial has to let light through, which is why so many of them look faintly plasticky or turn up in a translucent finish nobody asked for. The Islander Saltaire dodges all that by moving the solar collector somewhere else entirely.

It uses the Miyota 2070, a ring solar movement. The collector is built into the rehaut, the sloped chapter ring between the dial and the crystal, which means the dial itself can be fully opaque metal. Islander has used that freedom on a textured blue dial with a debossed panel where the applied markers sit.

The collector moved to the rehaut, so the dial could go solid

A normal solar dial is a compromise between letting light through and looking good. Put the cell on the rehaut and the compromise goes away, at the cost of collector area, which is presumably why the reserve runs to months instead of years.

Hands and markers are silver, with red on the seconds hand and the dial. Super-LumiNova goes on the dial, the hands and the bezel, so you can read the bezel at night too, which plenty of divers at three times the money still get wrong.

The Islander Saltaire photographed in darkness, its markers and hands glowing green and the bezel markings glowing blue — Lume on the dial, the hands and the bezel. Image: Islander

Four months on a charge, and it tells you when it is running low

A full charge runs the watch for four months and the movement holds 20 seconds a month. The Miyota 2070 also has an end-of-life indicator: when the charge drops the seconds hand starts moving in two-second steps. That's a useful feature and a rare bit of honesty in a movement. The alternative is a watch that just stops one morning.

Two hundred metres, and a clasp you adjust with your fingers

The case is 38mm with a screw-down crown and 200 metres of water resistance, under sapphire. The bezel is a 120-click unidirectional ratchet topped with a domed mineral crystal ring. The bracelet has solid links and solid end links, tapers from 20mm at the lug to 18mm at the clasp, is sized with screws, and the clasp ratchets through six positions without tools.

A tool-less micro-adjust at this price is the detail I'd notice day to day. Wrists swell in an Australian summer, and a fixed clasp turns into an argument with yourself by three in the afternoon.

The engraved caseback of the Islander Saltaire and the underside of its bracelet showing the ratcheting clasp — The clasp ratchets through six positions. Image: Islander

Three dials, 349 US dollars, no Australian price

The Saltaire comes in blue, orange and grey, as ISL-357, ISL-358 and ISL-359, at 349 US dollars each. Islander sells in US dollars and there is no Australian price.

Solar has spent years being the thing you settled for when you wanted to stop thinking about a watch and didn't mind how it looked. This one asks a lot less of you, and at 38mm it's the size most people who say they want a smaller diver actually mean.