Reviews & Ratings for Marathon Search and Rescue Divers Automatic Wristwatch, GSAR — 12 reviews — Page 1

This watch is an absolute beast. When you pick it up you can feel its weight and how solid it is. I haven’t taken it out diving yet but I intend to take it to depth as soon as the Gulf of America warms up. The GSAR is a great watch. It’s rugged and sleek enough for use at the range and classic enough to wear with dress clothes.

This is an amazing watch. It is built like a tank, I highly recommend it and the steel bracelet. You can go from a nice everyday watch to a nice dress watch.

Good looking watch, great for daily wear (of course it's engineered for more extreme conditions). Optics Planet had the lowest price and they are an authorized dealer for Marathon so you get the 2 year warranty (you get an additional year warranty when you register online with marathon). The tritium inserts are great at night. Swiss made with automatic movement. The history of the company.

First of all I want to say that visually, this watch takes me where I want to go! It is heavy duty and the look is Teutonic. I replaced the rubber strap with a aftermarket StrapCode stainless steel Super Engineer band and the looks is killer!

Cons:
This watch is super heavy on your wrist and after some time wearing it (in days) you may experience some wrist pain like I do. I simply rotate alternately wearing it on my other wrist.

I also had to return my watch to Service under warranty to Canada. I think I manually over-winded the mechanism and a spring internally snapped but it was covered under warranty. The warranty service was a straightforward process, mailing it to their Support in New York. They then ship it to Canada for actual repair. It took about a month to get back to me but I think the service actually improved the watch mechanism and I'm glad I sent it in!

I was looking for a tough as nails almost indestructible watch and this one checks every box. I wasn’t a huge watch collector prior to purchase the GSAR, That’s said I knew about Marathon and their historic ties to the military. So far I have worn it for the last few months and I have nothing but great things to say about it.

Long story short I’ve owned this watch for roughly just over a year and have worn it daily. I’ve worked in construction grinding and pounding away, Heavy Equipment operating and maintenance. If you know anything about maintenance on heavy equipment it’s a lot of brute force when maintaining them lol. Need less to say whether this watch was rated for all that beating or not, I don’t baby my watches and the GSAR has purred through it all. I love the Tritium as well. Dial is Easily legible in all environments and just glows at night. Everyone loves the look of this watch and it wears great. I’m looking at buying the Arctic version as well because I’m so impressed with this watch

I was a little skeptical at first because of the sheer size and heft of this watch. My experience with the fit and finish of government contracted/issued watches and gear is spotty at best. I also thought having the U.S. Government stamp on the face of the GSAR was part of the cache. However, this watch is amazingly comfortable for its size. The large knurled screw-down crown does not even dig into the back of my hand when doing push-ups! The bezel is not sharp or obtrusive and audibly clicks off in 30 second increments for precise dive time monitoring in limited visibility. The soft vulcanized rubber strap gives off a faint “plain vanilla” essence which, rather than being less manly, is strangely quite appropriate for such a “Spartan” watch. As a result, the strap doesn’t constantly reek of sweat and grime like my hard rubber G-Shock and it doesn’t cut into my skin. This watch has covert “wow factor” because it uses the same Swiss-made automatic 25 jewel movement as many of the top and much more expensive designer watches. I am a Casio G-Shock Tough Solar fan, but on my last deployment, I struggled to keep it fully charged due to working at night and with sleeves down. Automatic movements may loose a few more seconds than a quartz over a month’s time, but if you wear it daily and synchronize weekly, you have an amazingly accurate perpetual motion machine with 48 hours of stored reserve power and no batteries! In addition, the Tritium gas tubes give off the perfect amount of ...
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This watch is rather Spartan, which is a good thing. It has the chiseled rugged good looks of the Government SAR with the added benefit of official USMC religious cult markings. The vulcanized rubber strap is comfortable. The strap also really smells like vanilla, which is better than the essence of sweat from my G-Shock and is rather fitting for such a “no-frills” utility watch. I also purchased the stainless Marine EGA band, which is easy to swap out to dress it up some. The rotating bezel has audible clicks at 30-second increments for dive time accuracy in poor water visibility. The Tritium gas lume is great and reminds me of the old lensatic compasses we were issued back in the day before they changed to the Phosphorescent models. The bottom line is that this is a solid watch that is comfortable to wear. This is the same dependable automatic mechanism used in other Swiss-made watches, but at a more affordable price-point.

My new Marathon GSAR with US government dial arrived today.It more than met my hopes. Fit and finish are great, very comfortable on the wrist.I was also very pleased with OpticsPlanet staff when they,at my request, switched my shipping from ground to 2 day air in just a few minutes.Very pleased.
Greg M.

Insanely well built. The depth of the dial simply cannot be captured in pictures. The dial being so deep and actually smaller in diameter makes the watch wear smaller than the size would otherwise indicate. I have a 6 3/4 inch wrist and it is sturdy, but totally works. Not for everyone, but perfect for me.