News · Islander

Islander's Saltaire is a 38mm solar diver with a solid metal dial, US$349

Islander's Saltaire puts the solar cell in the rehaut so the dial can be solid metal, and the 38mm diver is US$349.

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 live with a dial you would not have chosen. The cell sits behind it and needs light, so the dial has to be part see-through, which is where that faintly plasticky look comes from. Islander's Saltaire gets around it by putting the collector somewhere else entirely.

It runs the Miyota 2070, a ring solar movement, so the collecting happens up in the rehaut, the sloped chapter ring between the dial and the crystal. The dial is then free to be solid, opaque metal. Islander has gone with a textured blue and a debossed panel for the applied markers.

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

The rehaut does the collecting

What you give up is collector area, which is presumably why the reserve gets quoted in months rather than years. Fair swap for a metal dial.

Hands and markers are silver, with a hit of red on the seconds hand and on the dial. Super-LumiNova goes on the dial, the hands and the bezel, so the bezel reads in the dark. Divers at three times the price still get that wrong.

Four months a charge, and a warning before it stops

A full charge lasts four months and the movement keeps time to 20 seconds a month. The 2070 also has an end-of-life indicator: as the charge drops, the seconds hand starts moving in two-second jumps. Quartz watches rarely volunteer anything before they quit, so a warning built into the seconds hand is worth having.

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

38mm, 200 metres, six clasp positions

The case is 38mm with a screw-down crown, sapphire and 200 metres of water resistance. The bezel is a 120-click unidirectional ratchet, topped with a domed mineral crystal ring. The bracelet runs solid links and solid end links, sized with screws, tapering from 20mm at the lug to 18mm at the clasp.

The clasp ratchets through six positions with no tools at all, and that is the detail that earns its keep day to day. Wrists swell through an Australian summer, and a clasp you cannot move turns the afternoon into an argument.

Blue, orange, grey, US$349

The three colours are catalogued as ISL-357, ISL-358 and ISL-359, at US$349 each. Islander prices in US dollars only, so there is no Australian figure to quote.

Solar has spent years being the thing you settled for when you wanted to stop thinking about a watch and did not much care how it looked. This one asks a lot less of you, and 38mm is the size most people mean when they say they want a smaller diver.