DOXA - TACTICAL FROG
© Dr. Peter McClean Millar - August 2021
In England there is an expresion: you wait all day for a bus and then two come along at the same time. I guess it is the same for Doxa SUB homages. For almost 20 years there was nothing. Doxa pretty much had the playing field to itself. The SUB was a watch that Cussler fans and the dive watch cogniscenti knew about but it really wasn't that well known. Now with the end of the Marei era and the new management trying to take the brand more mainstream, two clones have arrived in quick succession. First were the Maranez Samui versions of the SUB 300T and SUB 300 which I reviewed here: Samui 1st and 2nd Generations and here: Samui 3rd Generation. Now comes the wonderfuly named: Tactical Frog.
So if you are interested in Doxa watches, you probably want to know what the homage guys are cooking up. Sit back and have a read.
I think most fair minded people would say that the Doxa SUB 300T is an iconic watch with a tremendous history in the dive watch world. At around US$ 2,000 for the modern version I think it is competitively priced and worth the money. The Maranez clones come in at $400 and are very well made and the whole package is very well excecuted. The Tactical Frog (I was going to call it the ribbit but I'm not sure how many people would get my attempt at humor so I'll just call it the Froggy) is priced at $179. Seriously $179. I had to buy it because I wanted to see just what $179 gets you in a Doxa homage. I honestly expected a smorgasbord of medioctity but I ended up being very suprised at what arrived
So let's get the packaging out of the way. You all know by now that I think the packaging should really be part of the overall buying experience when purchasing a watch, especially if it is costing you a bunch of money. You will also know that I'm not a great fan of the ICE era Doxa camera case / fried chicken container. It's OK but could be better. I love the Maranez leather watch roll but the Froggy box is propably just about worth the $2.99 it costs to make. However, having said that, it is very, very rigid and sturdy and you could run the darn thing over with a truck and the watch would survive. It also comes with a spare strap and a nifty wee pin removal tool. Hey, we are in the sub $200 price point, you can't really expect much.
As for the watch itself, well, .... spoiler alert... it is gobsmackingly good for the price and, for me, in some ways, it beats both the Maranez Samui and even the SUB 300T.
I think we should get the elephant in the room out of the way first. The Froggy looks like a Doxa SUB at first glance, Tonneau case? Yep. Beads of Rice (BOR) bracelet? Yep. Doxa style hands? Yep. SUB 5000T style dial? Yep. NODECO bezel? Yep...huh!!!! you are kidding, right? That's not a NODECO bezel that's a Tachymeter bezel. OK, then, yea it really is a Tachy bezel. Some would even say a tacky bezel but I'll resist. I think every man and his dog went: "WTF" when they saw the images of the Froggy and the bezel markings. For a dive watch a Tachy bezel is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. What the heck were the designers thinking?
The Non Decompression Bezel (NODECO) is a classic piece of design. The outer ring in feet or meters shows depth. The Inner ring shows minutes. The markings are aligned to show the maximum time at a certain depth at which the diver can stay before he has to do a decompression stop. A Tachy bezel does none of that. It is used to show what the average speed was over a certain distance. So why did the Froggy guys use it? Well the general thought was so as not to infringe the Doxa patent for the NODECO bezel. But here is the thing about patents. The Doxa patent was filed in 1970. UK law allows for patents to be renewed for 20 years then they expire. US law gives 15 years for a design patent and 20 years for a utility patent. Swiss law limits a patent to 20 years. Not sure about other countries but I seriously doubt anywhere in the world would have a patent filed 50 years ago, still being protected. You can now even buy NODECO bezel inserts for Seiko mods. Some people claimed that the design was trademarked or copyrighted but that is wrong. As far as I know, and I'm happy to be corrected, there is nothing to stop anyone using the NODECO dive tables on a bezel. But here's an idea. Use fathoms. Doxa never used fathoms, only feet and meters. One fathom is 6 feet. Make a 30 fathom bezel.
I actually like the tacky, tachy bezel. It is the one design element of the watch that definitely isn't a Doxa and it makes me smile every time I look at it. It is probably destined to be a highly sought after classic. Well, maybe not. The other thing that sets this bezel apart from any Doxa is that the inner ring is fixed and only the outer ring moves. Again a little bit of a head scratcher but in fact it is really only the outer ring that is bezel. The inner ring is part of the case. Having said all that. The tolerances on the bezel are so good and the click spring is so tight that the bezel movement, sound and lack of any lateral movement or slop is one of the best on any watch I have ever owned. Seriously, it is that good and because it is a unidirectionally rotating bezel it can still be used to time a dive. Even clamping down on a mouthpiece, the word TACHYMETER on the bezel will still make you smile. The word on the street is that there will be a V2 of the watch which uses different bezel markings and there were images floating around showing a NODECO version. As I mentioned above: fathoms would work.
I ordered the turquoise version of the watch because I had previously bought the turquoise version of the 2nd generation Maranez Samui. It had a wonderful, gloss paint dial with crisp lettering and gloss painted hands. They did a great job and for me, it just raised the watch up a notch. Maranez are a bit hit or miss on when they use gloss paint on their dials. Some do some don't. Unfortunately the Froggy was a major disapointment in that department. But just to be clear, when viewing the watch on the wrist or in the hand, the dial and hands look fantastic. The turquoise is bright and very vibrant. The slightly domed crystal may help in that regard but more on it later. The dial is actually 28.3mm in diameter, which is a larger than the 27.4mm of the SUB 300T. Look at the image above. The dial and hands are matt and the colors are flat and lifeless. Also the printing is not sharp and the red lettering shows signs of bleed. That can be a consequence of using matt finish paint. However, there is one thing I do like about the dial: The frog logo. It's also on the crown and, honestly, I think it is so cool. I hope they leave it on there for V2.
OK, I can hear you ask: "what's the deal, Pete? You always want glossy paint. Yes I do, because colors are better with gloss paint. It's all about how light is reflected and there is a ton of cool physics about painting and why car manufacturers do things to make their vehicles positively shine. Watch dials are small and under glass / crystal so there are reflection both internally and externally and Anti Reflective coatings to add to the mix. I tried to take some macro dial shots to try to illustrate but I couldn't get anything good. Have a look at the image above. It is a spare Doxa SUB 300 50th Anniversary USD dial I have (no, it is not for sale!!!!). It is gloss paint and it is bright and shiney with a luxurious deep almost liquid color. ohhhhhh, I love it. Can you see how the black paint on the lettering and markers is raised and rounded? The Froggy dial is absolute rubbish in comparison. It's the same with the hands on the Doxa. They have a beautiful black gloss paint and the contrast with the dial is just so much better and that all just smacks of quality and going the extra mile and separates Doxa from the homages. Heck, how much is the production cost for the dials and hands in a watch? Not a lot in comparison to the rest of the watch. I'd gladly pay extra for gloss hands and dial but maybe that's just me and other people don't care.
The Tactical Frog guys market the Froggy as the Sub 300T...... Hey, they are copying the look and style of a Doxa SUB, why not use the name too!!!! But come on, the froggy is supposedly good for a depth of 200 meters so they could have called it the Sub 200T. Funny thing with that would have been that the Froggy bears more resemblence to a true Doxa SUB than the 200 that Doxa are calling a SUB, which looks nothing like one and has more instances of Jenny marketing on it than Doxa...sigh!!!!!!!! Personally I would have just called it the Tactical Frog 200 and been done.
Actually, in reality the Froggy dial doesn't look anything like the Doxa SUB 300T. It is far closer to the SUB 5000T / 6000T which which I reviewed here: SUB 5000T. The SUB 5000T broke tradition from the classic 4 quadrant Doxa dial and used metal markers around the lume rather than black paint. The markers were polished as were the hands which was something Doxa handn't done before. Because the hands and markers are polished they will refect whatever color is in front of them so sometimes they can look black or light grey etc. On first look the Froggy markers look to be the same but on close inspection they are not silvery / shiney, they are painted a light metallic grey. I found it quite interesting that the Froggy guys didn't just paint them black as it gives a much better contrast against the lume. I was actually tempted to paint them black myself when I had the dial out but didn't have the time. Maybe later.
And talking about lume. No complaints in that department. The C3 lume used on the Froggy is every bit as good as the lume used on the Doxa SUB 5000T and SUB 300T, as can be seen in the image above.
One of the reasons I bought the Froggy was to see if the bracelet would fit my vintage SUB 300T. Sadly it doesn't. The holes line up but unlike other endpieces there are no "shoulders" to engage against the side of the lugs to stop the end pieces rotating. Total fail. But what about the ICE era SUB 300T? Well, as you can see in the image above. The endpieces fit pretty well.
However, they do rotate slightly because of the small gap between the endpiece and the case. Look at the image above. I've had this with other bracelets and a very simple fix is a thin piece of plastic either slid into the gap or superglued onto the back of the endpiece.
The Froggy BOR bracelet is definitely not up to the standard of other BORs. Actually, in my opinion, there are none that come close to the quality of the Maranez BOR. The Froggy uses a faux BOR link which was used by Doxa during the early Marei era watches until they went to the separate beads. The clasp is a standard 18mm push button, flip lock with a frog logo which can be found on numerous cheap bracelets. It works well. The Froggy beads are smaller than others and in fact the overall look resembles the vintage Doxa bracelet more. The one thing that is very different about the Froggy bracelet is the endpieces. They have fingers instead of holes. Every other BOR bracelet I've seen has beads going into the endpieces. The Froggy does it the other way.
I initially thought it would look funny and look weird when wearing the watch. In fact it doesn't look any different to a traditional BOR set up. The only thing I did notice about the Froggy BOR was that the last link wasn't rounded like the others. At some orientations on the wrist the unfinished end is quite noticable. But the endpiece can be easily removed allowing that link to be profiled, which again is something I'll probably do later.
So how alike is the Froggy to the Doxa SUB. On first looks, it could be a dead ringer, but on closer inspection things are not as cut and dried and in some ways the Froggy is a better watch. Look at the end profile above. The Froggy measurements are close to those of the SUB 300T. 44mm lug to lug, 45mm wide (including crown), 12.6mm tall with 20mm lugs. The main difference is the height. The Froggy's 12.6 is considerably thinner than the 300T's 14mm. And that makes a big difference in wearability of the watch. It is only 0.4mm thicker than my Omega Seamaster 2230 which is my gold standard for best wearing watch I have ever owned.
Those differences become clearer in the image above with both watches together. It isn't clearly discernable but the Froggy has a nice flat caseback and the bezel is thinner and it's profile tapers down towards the edges and seems to follow the curve of the domed crystal. The side profile seems to show that the Froggy case is about the same thickness as the SUB 300T. It isn't and is infact thicker but because of a clever bit of profiling you don't notice.
That profiling consists of a tapered edge on the botton of the case. Look at how it angles in and creates an illusion of a thinner side. I think this is a really nice touch and something I would expect on a much more expensive watch. The fact that a $179 Froggy has it, is just stunning to me.
The thinness of the watch, the flat caseback and the curved bezel and crystal makes the Froggy a very, very comfortable watch to wear. It hugs the wrist and looks pretty darned good too. The one thing you will notice in the image above is that the domed crystal distorts the view of the dial once you reach a certain angle, which is why I prefer flat crystals.....however, and I had to check that I had written this, three times before I would believe it... I actually think the domed crystal on the Froggy works better than a flat crystal would because of the tapered bezel. Wooooo, I think I need a whiskey after that!
One of the things I thought about before the Froggy arrived was: how bad will the internal fit and finish be given it is a $179 watch? Rough edges, badly machined, even bits of swarf left inside? Well, hold the press on that. Take off that flat caseback and remove the movement and.........
...... take a look for yourself. Looks pretty darn well finished to me. I haven't shown it in the picture, but even the crown has 3 seals on it. One seal in the crown head and two o-rings on the shaft. This thing might actually live up to it's 200 meter depth rating. It sure won't leak through the crown.
It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that the Froggy uses a Seiko NH35A. It is the mainstay of a multitude of microbrands and can be regulated to the accuracecy of an ETA or Sellita movement. I've said this before so I'm going to say it again....The Seiko NH35A is an extremely reliable and also inexpensive movement. I've always considered NH35 movements as unservicable. That doesn't mean that they are unable to be serviced, it means that as I can buy a new one for around $40, why would I service the old one, I just toss it in the bin and get another and install it. A competent watch maker could swap one out in less than 20 minutes.
There is probably not much more to say on the Froggy except that they come in several dial colors (black, yellow, dark blue, silver and ..no surprise...orange). I have to say I really like it. It isn't a Doxa and anyone that wants and can afford around $2,000 to buy a Doxa, needs to buy a Doxa. The brand has a fantastic history and pedigree and up until a year or so ago, a unique style. A Doxa SUB is trully worth owning. However, if you don't either have the money or don't want to spend the money but want to experience what it is like to wear something that approximates to the look and feel of a Doxa, you now have two options. The Maranez Samui at around $400 and the Tactical Frog at around $180. Heck, I think Jan and the Doxa gang should buy one and wear it for a while, they might learn something! The Froggy was really a very pleasant surprise and for the price is a darned fine watch. Heck it even matches my shirt which my wife thinks almost makes me a fashionista.