Islander Watches Review: Why These Divers Are A Hidden Gem

The independent and microbrands of the watch world are often where the most interesting things are happening, but the landscape is only getting wider and the competition stronger – which is ultimately a good thing. But, with competition only growing fiercer, there are other brands that get knocked out of the spotlight, overshadowed by the current hyped brand/watch/designs of the time. Such is the case with Islander watches. But today, we’re going to help fix that and give a little extra consideration and attention to what I would call an underdog of the independent world. Down below, I’ll be walking you through what Islander Watches are all about, focusing on a case study of a couple of models, and sharing my final conclusions about how this brand fits into the wild world of watches. 

Some Context

Islander Watches hold an interesting position within the industry, as they are actually the house brand of Long Island Watch, and, at its core, Islander is an entirely enthusiast-driven brand. I’m sure there are plenty of those already familiar with Long Island Watch from YouTube or the digital sphere, but for those uninitiated, Long Island Watch is a New York-based watch brand founded in 2003 by Marc Frankel, a mechanical engineer who turned his passion for collecting watches into an online retailer back in 2003. Focussing on offering a really dynamic curation of affordable, hardworking, and interesting watches from nearly all genres (and often from obscure brands), Marc also began amassing quite the following on social media, sharing his own takes, approach, and opinions about watches, and you can also look at his content as a portfolio of his own personal watch tastes. 

With the social media presence of Long Island watches and its reputation as an online retailer growing, Marc took the next big leap in 2019, officially launching Islander with its own repertoire of watches. At the beginning of Islander, the brand was primarily filling the gap left by the recent discontinuation of the ever-popular SKX series. The first models retained the details that kept people coming back to the SKX again and again, like its case silhouette, style, and functionality, with added mods and components to the movements and modern upgrades – all while remaining in an affordability sweet spot. Six years is an incredibly short period of time for the watch world (I mean, many of the established brands have had over a century to grow into themselves), but Islander has already moved far past its SKX homage era and now offers just about any type of watch an enthusiast could want. Currently, there are over 200 unique Islander models with different configurations across the brand’s collections, from divers to GMTS to your Everyday wears. 

There are some pretty quirky makes in the Islander repertoire (I’m thinking specifically of the Turtle diver with an actual turtle on its dial, which is quite endearing), but across the catalog, there’s an extensive range of options from the more subtle to combinations of timeless watch design codes executed in both lowkey and bold color options. But within this stylistic range, Islander is offering just about everything at a price point that’s shockingly low across the industry, especially for mechanical watches with tool-oriented specs. It’s remarkably impressive, and really an anomaly, for a brand operating on such a small scale to be able to offer pieces this competitively priced. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to be honing in on the Greenport and JFK Auto, but other collections I think deserve some praise are the very Explorer-like 36mm Manhasset line, the Aviator Pilot that captures that 20th-century field watch feel, and the Port Jefferson Skin Diver. 

Islander Watches Case and Wear

This article is kind of like a two-for-one watch review deal on a couple of the brand’s most popular and distinct models. For the sake of easy reading comprehension, I’m going to lead with the Greenport diver (which, not to show favoritism, but is the one that is more aligned with my own tastes), followed by the JFK Automatic GMT. Most Islander collections get their names from a detail, city, or unique feature of Long Island (this is the house brand of Long Island watches after all), and the Greenport takes its name from a small coastal village in Suffolk County, which I have not visited myself, but seems quite charming from what I can glean from Google images. With its 39mm diameter (47mm lug-to-lug), we’re right in Goldilocks sizing territory.

Though this watch does have some quirks that I will be getting into in the next section, the Greenport is a utilitarian diver at heart, and features a screw down crown to get that 200 meters of water resistance. The H-Link bracelet this watch is paired with really demonstrates Islander’s watch enthusiast ethos: it’s got a 20mm lug width that smoothly tapers down to 18mm at it’s smallest point, negative end links, features a brushed finish with a little razzle dazzle of polish on the edges of the center links, and has a micro adjust clasp, all making for a really nice bracelet that is often hard to come by at this price point. 

For the JFK Automatic GMT, the name of the collection is not inspired by a charming scenic destination of Long Island, but a more practical, and travel-centric one – JFK airport, which I have actually visited a number of times, and I’m sure I will continue to visit so long as I live in New York. This watch is the larger of the two we’re here to discuss today, measuring 42mm in diameter with a 47.7mm lug-to-lug. Though the focus of the JFK automatic is definitely its GMT functionality, it really is more accurately a Diver GMT, also equipped with a screw down crown at four o’clock and capable of depths up to 200 meters. The H-link bracelet used here strikes as a bit more muscular, a bit more angular than the one on the Greenport, more angled and architectural. There’s still the nice tapering, and this one features a female front end link and solid links that are adjustable with screws, along with a clasp with microadjustment in six positions for finding a comfortable fit. 

Islander Watch Dials

I might be biased that the dial section is generally my favorite portion of these articles to write, but for both of these watches, I really think the dial is where their personality really shines. For the Greenport, you actually have four distinct dial colorways to take your pick from. I’ll be focusing on the Sunray blue option, which is a bit quirky but still tame enough for daily wear, but if I were to choose a favorite, I’d probably go with the Stone Grey dial model. 

The hue of the dial is quite a deep, dark shade of blue, but with that sunray finish, you’ll get that nice flash of shine as the light hits the surface. There’s also some bold, punchy pops of orange mixed in throughout, but I would say these flashes don’t feel overwhelming for those who are a bit color shy, and feel balanced with the more classic stylings of the lume-filled applied indices (which vary from pips to rhombus-shaped markers), as well as the laid-back blue bezel around the dial. And about that bezel – while you might have been expecting a unidirectional dive bezel, this Islander has gone for the unexpected with a bi-directional GMT bezel with a 24-hour scale. So, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, both of the watches at hand today are really two different takes on GMT divers.

The bezel insert used here is actually in ceramic, which, given the current $325 price tag of this model, I actually had to do a double take at; I'm really not used to seeing ceramic bezels at this price point. The most quirked-up detail on the dial side of the Greenport might be the vertical day-date window at twelve o’clock, which brings in the orange again for the backdrop of the day of the week, and with the corresponding date numeral text with a black drop for a little bit of contrast between the date and weekday. I am down with the funkiness of this date window, but people are picky on this subject, so I will concede it might not be everyone’s thing. Regardless, the dial is protected by a domed sapphire crystal with an inner AR coating, which is another detail that is premium for the price point. 

In the case of the Islander JFK Automatic GMT, this watch goes for a classic “Pepsi” look with the blue and red sapphire bezel insert, but while the white dial might seem tame from a distance, once we get up close and personal with the watch, it’s easy to see that the opportunity for adding some personality dial side was very much taken. That white dial is completely embossed with an undulating display of texture, which, once again, ties in the aviation flair, as it's intended to mimic the texture of rolling clouds. I would even say that there is a certain airy, wispiness to the dimensional patterning. The other dial details are relatively more traditional, but the gold-tones used throughout the indices, hands, date window, and brought into the 24-hour scale on the bi-directional bezel add what strikes me as kind of an 80s stylistic vibe. The indices and hands are all filled with green Super-LumiNova, but for the red arrow-tipped dedicated GMT hand, the lume glows bright blue for a bit of contrast. Like the Greenport, the JFK Automatic GMT is protected on the dial side with a domed sapphire crystal with AR coating.

The Movement 

A vital ingredient of what draws people to Islander is the movements the brand can deliver at the price (which, most typically, hovers just above the $300 mark). For the Greenport, we’re working with a Miyota 8205 automatic movement, which features handwinding capabilities, hacking seconds, has a frequency of 3 Hz, and a 42-hour power reserve. The JFK Automatic, on the other hand, utilizes a Seiko movement with the NH34 automatic GMT caliber, which does have a dedicated GMT hand, which also features manual winding, hacking seconds, has a 3 Hz frequency, and has a power reserve of 41 hours. 

Final Thoughts 

Call me biased if you want, but I always get a kick out of my fellow watch enthusiasts branching out and launching brands of their own – or hey, even just making a collaboration with another brand, for that matter. But in the case of Long Island Watch’s Islander, I’m not only excited for the watch enthusiast insider baseball, but thoroughly impressed by how they’ve been able to deliver such a crazy amount of pieces in such a short amount of time, and keep the price so affordable despite adding those extra, premium, watchy person touches. All things considered, I would like to see Islander getting a little bit more time in the spotlight and getting the flowers it has so thoroughly earned. I mean, if they’ve been able to make 200 watches in just six years, I can only imagine how many they can spin up by the 10, 15, or 20-year mark. Whatever the case, I’m interested to see what they do next, and I’m inarguably biased here, but I would be thrilled to see the brand maybe offer some more women’s women-oriented takes down the line. You can learn more about Islander Watches over at longislandwatch.com