What was your first watch" Not your first mechanical watch, not your first nice watch, but actually your first watch. If you?re around my age, I?d hazard a guess that it was probably something fun. Neon Shark watches, bright G-Shocks, and outdoorsy Timexes were the thing on my playground growing up, and it?s a recipe that still works just as well approaching (or beyond) 30 as it did approaching 10. All this is to say that colorful and waterproof is a recipe for success, and one brand that really gets this is Vero.

I don?t exactly remember the first time I crossed paths with a Vero, but I do remember the minty green dial standing out against the stark black bezel, and that I found myself pretty taken with their line of colorful dive watches from the get. It?s an interest I haven?t really shaken, and one only compounded by the latest iteration of their signature dive watch, the Open Water, now in a  38mm case.
The big headline here is a series of subtle refinements to the Open Water model, all of which add up to a stark evolution of Vero?s flagship diver. To look at the new Open Water 38 in isolation, one might be hard-pressed to call out many of these changes but put the old and new models next to each other, and the difference will be clear. 
The most visually dramatic of these changes is the shift from a black DLC finish on the bezel to a boldly colored Cerakote treatment. A stark black bezel has been a key visual hallmark of the Vero Open Water, so moving away...