• Reference 210.30.42.20.01.018, Seamaster Diver 300M 007 Edition
• Case: 42 mm stainless steel
• Bezel: black
• Dial: black, with orange accents – orange seconds hand and orange printing
• Bracelet: steel Milanese mesh, with a rubber strap option on this card
• Genuine calibre: Omega Co-Axial 8800
• Clone movement: VS8800, built by the VSF factory
• Clone power reserve: 48 hours
• Water resistance: 300 m

That list is the whole description, and every line of it is deliberately exact, because the 007 Editions of the Diver 300M are the part of the Seamaster catalogue buyers most often order by the wrong name. Nothing here is implied and nothing is left for you to assume: steel, not a light alloy; black, not brown; orange accents, not beige; mesh, not a link bracelet. If that is the combination you came looking for – the steel 007 with a black dial, orange accents and a mesh bracelet – this reference is it.

Which 007 This Is: Steel, Black Dial, Orange Print

The 007 line runs across several different watches, and they are genuinely different objects rather than colour variations of one. Some are made in titanium with brown dials. This one is the steel 007 superclone with the black dial and the orange accents, reference 210.30.42.20.01.018, and every element of that description does identifying work.

Steel is the first filter. The case here is stainless steel, which means it has the weight and the bright, hard reflections that steel gives, and it is not one of the lighter grey-metal editions. Hold a steel Diver 300M and a titanium one in the same hand and the difference announces itself before you have looked at the dial.

Black is the second filter. The dial is black and the bezel is black, so the watch presents as a single dark face broken only by the orange. That matters because the black-dial-with-orange combination is specific to this configuration; if the dial you have been shown is brown, grey or sand, you are looking at a different reference and should not buy it as this one.

Movement generation is the third filter, and the only one that does not show in a photograph. The genuine watch runs the Omega Co-Axial 8800, the current-platform calibre for the 42 mm Diver 300M. Our build answers that with a VS8800 from the VSF factory, carrying a 48-hour power reserve.

Milanese Mesh, and the Rubber Alternative

The bracelet fitted in the photographs is steel Milanese mesh: a dense woven band with no solid links in it anywhere. The difference that shows up day to day is sizing. A link bracelet moves in whole links, so the fit lands wherever the nearest link puts it and the slack between two sizes is slack you keep. Mesh has no link length to work against, so it is sized in steps small enough that there is no nearest size to settle for.

Visually, mesh also does something for a black-dialled diver. Woven steel has a finer, lower-contrast texture than brushed links, so it reads as a continuous grey band and leaves the dark dial as the only hard, graphic element on the wrist. The watch head looks bigger and sharper on mesh than it does on a link bracelet.

The rubber strap option on this card is the other half of the proposition. Rubber takes the steel out from under the case, so the 42 mm head stops being the top of a steel object and becomes the whole of the watch.

If you want a pale patterned dial instead of black on the same 42 mm steel case, the grey-dial 42 mm Diver 300M on the same mesh bracelet is its direct neighbour.

Orange Printing Over Black

Orange on a black dial is a functional decision before it is a decorative one. Against black, orange sits at almost the maximum contrast the eye can resolve without going to pure white, and unlike white it cannot be mistaken for a reflection on the crystal. On a dive watch that is the point: the elements printed in orange are the ones intended to be read first.

The orange seconds hand is the clearest example. It is the only moving element in that colour, so motion and colour arrive together and the eye finds the running seconds instantly, without reading the dial. The orange dial printing works the same way, pulling specific text and markings up out of the black field while everything else stays quiet.

The other dial colours built on this platform are in the Omega Seamaster superclone range, and a side-by-side of all seven 007 references covers what separates them.