News · Panerai

Panerai’s new Navy SEALs diver, and what the coverage got wrong about it

The small seconds sit at three, not nine, and there is no date. Panerai’s own page settles it.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 2 min read · 7 August 2026

If you read about the Submersible Navy SEALs PAM01738 this week, you may have been told it has a date window at three o'clock and a small seconds counter at nine. Panerai's own product page says otherwise: the small seconds sit at three, and no date function is listed anywhere. When the brand and the coverage disagree, the brand wins.

Setting the record straight

So, properly. It is a 44mm steel diver, listed by Panerai at 12,400 US dollars excluding sales tax, not limited, joining the Navy SEALs line next to the Afniotech Experience PAM01089.

Anthracite, and a target at three

The dial is anthracite, with the small seconds counter styled after a shooting target. The hand on it is yellow, borrowed from the colour of the official Special Warfare insignia. A Navy SEALs decal sits at six, and the caseback carries its own engraving.

The part that will matter in the water is duller and better. Panerai has made the applied indexes 20 percent wider and expanded the Green Super-LumiNova X2 surface by 45 percent. Those are specific numbers attached to the actual problem, which is reading a watch at depth in bad light.

Case, movement, straps

Fifty bar, tested to sixty-two

Fifty bar, so about 500 metres, and Panerai says it is tested at plus 25 percent, which puts it nearer 625. The bezel is unidirectional on a black matt ceramic disk. The crown sits under the usual protecting bridge. It weighs 150 grams.

The movement is the in-house P.980: automatic, three days from a single barrel, transversal balance bridge, stop seconds. Three days from one barrel is the harder way to do it. Most movements at this reserve stack two, which adds parts and height.

Two straps come in the box, an accordion rubber for diving and a military grey canvas, plus an anthracite textile in 24/22mm. Registering the watch takes the warranty to eight years.

Worth the money?

Is it worth 12,400 dollars?

Twelve and a half thousand dollars is Panerai money and always has been. You are getting a serious diver with a serious movement, which is not something you can say about every watch wearing a rotating bezel at this price.

Forty-four millimetres decides it for a lot of people before anything else does. If it fits, the legibility work is what you will still be grateful for on the hundredth wearing. And if it does not fit, no amount of good engineering will talk your wrist round.

No Australian price has been announced. Panerai quoted this one in US dollars, and on the evidence of the specification we would like to see it here.