As a UK-based website, we’re always keen to see what watch designs and innovation our fellow countrymen-and-women come up with and when strap-maker turned watch-maker Craig Golby, of Golby Watches (at last, a microbrand you can actually pronounce confidently), first revealed the Coastal range, we were very intrigued. They had already released their first watch range, the Aquareef (which has since been updated with a smaller version in new colours) but the Coastal had something about it and we’d been debating buying one ever since they became available.
The design is based on a true British custom: the colourful beach huts that often overlook English beaches (yes, we have beaches). Bold, summery colours like a MoonSwatch but, and this is important, not disposable trash. The range launched with six colour schemes (SAY NO TO ‘COLOURWAY’) and immediately turned heads clean off their spines like some sort of Coventry-based version of the Predator. Okay, fine, three of them were not as interesting to us (black, white and black and white – like beach huts but in Russia) but the other three were little works of art. And while the soda-popping orange and minty-fresh teal versions were already super-solid contenders, it was the Purple Coastal that caught my eye. Or more accurately, ran over and plucked my eye out of my skull and ran off with it like Art the Clown but after quite the glow up.
Oddly, while the orange and teal versions sold out their limited runs, the purple one didn’t (it’s still available now). We’re not sure why. It’s gorgeous, that’s apparently immediately, but purple is kind of a stretch. It’s more of a hot pink and it’s on the smaller side too, so that probably cut out a few potential buyers who want something a bit more manly perhaps. Not this reviewer though, this was immediately the one I wanted. It’s not going to be for everyone but compared to the blues, greens and blacks of the rest of our collection, this fills a niche as a standout piece and what will be a Summer staple, if the UK is lucky enough to get one next year.
Originally, the Coastal was listed at £599 but with an early bird discount down to £349 before eventually settling down to its current price of £369 which, while reasonable, puts it in competition with many other attractive microbrand watches such as Revelot and Phoibos, while overshooting the price of the recently-improved Chinese brands like San Martin. A fair price but not one that is completely easy to justify when you’re juggling a dozen watches that are struggling for wrist time as it is and I’ve only just tried to shrink down from a ten slot display case to a six, which is a bit like trying to prevent a Chestburster birthing by using yoga breathing.
But something happened the other day. I was about to go to bed but decided to look at eBay for the first time in months and, as I’d often done, I typed in ‘Golby Coastal’ and holy shit, there it was. A Golby Coastal! IN PURPLE! This NEVER happens. I didn’t even bother with the ‘Best Offer’ nonsense. Buy it now like Hugh Grant on a street corner. And a day later, thanks a very nice watch enthusiast (shout out to Dan!), there I am finally holding a Purple Coastal. It was a shame to not be able to contribute directly to Craig and Sarah Golby (even if I’ve got beef with you, Craig) but I was also very keen to review this one as you just don’t see enough written about it, especially now that Golby have moved onto the superb-looking Aquareef 40 range.
On the wife-meter this got an immediate ‘ooh’ thanks to that colour. It’s so apparent, so immediate. You could be forgiven for just looking at it and saying ‘nice’ before putting the watch on your ‘must have’ list right away without looking at specs. Like I said, it’s sort of pink, sort of purple. But it’s vivid and hard-hitting. Like painting Mike Tyson’s nails for him and then calling him a prick. It’s on the dial, it’s on a quarter of the bezel. It’s the only colour on there apart from white (and if you’re one of those ‘er… well, actually, white isn’t a colour’ guys then kick rocks, nerd). All the purple, all the time.
The dial itself lets the colour do all the talking and keeps everything tasteful and refined. Baton indices set the tone. Simple, classy. The cardinal hour markers (3, 6, 9 and 12) taper and add a point but don’t distract from a fairly uniform look. They’re not batons but rather lighthouse-shaped, another nautical nod. They’re filled with lume and have a pleasingly polished outline which is a lovely detail that takes close inspection to notice and is at odds with the brushed polish of the case. We see you, Golby.
That combination of lighthouse shapes, generous lume and polished outlines extends to the hour and minute hands too. Giving a rolling consistency that is the sort of thing you notice when you stare at this beauty for long enough. How clever. Themes echoing themes. We love it. Meanwhile, the seconds hand sticks to all-white as it reaches to the edge of the dial.
Behind that, you get the company logo as the watch’s signature in the top half of the dial, a G with ‘GOLBY’ underneath, in a stencilled font style. We think that unbranded dials look a bit cheap and weird but we’re always grateful when the logo looks alright and is small enough to not impact on the look too much. The Coastal gets that balance right. And in the bottom half, you just get ‘automatic’ and ‘200M WATER RESISTANT’ in the sort of tiny font size that should be mandatory on all watches.
This all sits on a beautiful oil-pressed dial (a process where a malleable material is shaped under high pressure using oil) which has a wavy texture to it. Okay, that’s lifted right of the Omega Seamaster playbook but it’s a finer pattern here, far more subtle. More of a paddle than a perfect storm. It’s another detail that you have to look for, but are rewarded for doing so, after you get over the initial shock of the bright purple.
One concession to elegant simplicity is the lack of a date window. Indeed, this was the other reason we didn’t immediately buy the Coastal. Like Harry Nilsson sung: I can’t live, if living is without a date complication. This was a minor dealbreaker, something that the right price was going to have to coerce us away from, but it actually does make sense here. Aside from anything, it’d be nearly impossible to read at this size (and, more importantly, with my bullshit eyesight).
The chapter ring is also quite interesting. Steeply-angled and with a metallic finish, it initially appears to just flow on from the main dial but, again, proves to be more interesting than you first thought when you actually study it. More than meets the eye. If this watch was a Transformer it’d sashay away from battle over to the nearest cocktail lounge. Roll out, Speakeasy. One simply cannot be bothered, Optimus.
And just when you thought the Coastal couldn’t be any cooler, you then notice the bezel. Initially it just seems like your usual sixty minute diver’s bezel, with numbered markers every ten minutes and a triangle marker at 0/60. So far, so Submariner. But you have to consider the story the Coastal is telling. Sure, it’s got that 200 meters of water resistance but it says ‘diving’ to you with cutting sarcasm and bunny ear fingers. You see, this isn’t a diver’s bezel, it’s a countdown bezel.
You’re not going to use this watch to regulate your ascent through water to avoid decompression sickness. That’s a mad thing to do. I was born in South London, if I’m 200 meters under water, that means a giant meteor has landed in the North Sea and sent a Roland Emmerich tsunami to my location. This is just for counting down. If you want to spend some time in the sun but don’t want skin cancer, rotate that bezel until the 10 is at the minute hand and when the hand aligns with the triangle marker on the bezel, that’s been ten minutes. For people who like the dive look but also really appreciate a constant, reliable source of oxygen, this is a bezel you might actually use. It’s a uni-directional, 120-click affair with a relatively quiet action.
It’s also very in-keeping with the dial. Purple covers the final 15 minute quarter of the dial, while the remaining 45 minutes is white. The numbering in those sections uses the contrasting colour. And what’s very cool indeed is that all the white bits are fully lumed in the same BGW9 Super-Luminova as the hands and indices on the dial. So even at night, the Coastal still impresses but that big block of lume on the bezel can make it hard for your eyes to adjust when you actually want to see where the hands are. Yes, this thing is brighter than a thousand suns at night but it can be at the expense of night time legibility (did we really just reference two Killing Joke albums in one sentence? Sure did.)
However, as much as the front of the watch is out to impress, almost everything else is more understated. Firstly, there’s that case size which totals just 37.2mm when you factor in the slightly overhanging bezel which makes it the smallest watch in our collection (sneaking in just under the San Martin we recently reviewed). And almost all of the case is in brushed 315L stainless steel. While this can drab up (yeah, we’re using drab as a verb today) the case a little we actually love that choice. It’s far more forgiving of minor scratches and it means that the practical, but somewhat utilitarian, steel acts as a backdrop to the dial. That said, there’s the faintest of high-polishes on the chamfered edges of the case, just for yet another pleasing bit of detailing.
The water resistance is thanks, in part, to the screw-down crown which is signed with the same stencil-fonted G as the logo. It’s a small, unguarded crown which means it doesn’t have much prominence but the downside there is that it’s a little tricky to use. Getting a good grip on it is initially quite hard and we actually found it awkward to screw back down. You almost have to wind your own thumb and finger back a bit to give yourself enough of a run up to get the crown to bite back into the screwing action.
On the plus side, there’s no ghost date nonsense here so this watch only has a winding position and a time-setting one. Golby have opted for the Miyota 90S5 movement which was introduced by Miyota in 2020 as an alternative, and moderately optimised, version of their ever-popular 9015 calibre (which currently sits in at least three of the watches reviewed on this site). And while it loses the date complication it does offers optimisations to the pallet fork, balance wheel and escape wheel. And, of course, it sticks with the features that made the 9015 so popular. It’s just as thin as its predecessor (which allows the Coastal to come in with a thickness of just 10.7mm), has the same reasonably smooth 28,800 beats per hour sweep, the 42 hour power reserve and it hacks (meaning the seconds hand stops when you adjust the time). You can expect the same -10/+30 seconds per day accuracy as the 9015 too.
Flipping the watch around, you get an interesting caseback. Aside from the model name and a 200M reference to the water resistance, the Coastal is numbered as this run is very limited. Ours is 6 out of 25. There’s also an engraved design, a Van-Gogh style sun and wave pattern as created by family member Caitlyn. It’s a nice touch and, of course, keeps the seaside theme going.
While being originally known for their straps, Golby ship this watch out with a bracelet. It’s a 5-link, brushed polished 304L stainless steel one which is, again, pretty understated compared to the front of the watch. It’s comfortable and looks good. The butterfly clasp is okay. It’s easy to operate but it does of course mean you don’t get any micro-adjustment capability which you’d probably want during a hot summer day if you’re prone to a bit of wrist-swell in the heat. That said, if you were looking to take this to the beach, you might want to opt for one of their FKM rubber straps. Our watch also came with one of those and while the white version wasn’t exactly to our taste visually (and just not right for a cold December evening), they are impressively comfortable and smooth on the skin.
Thankfully, the bracelet has a quick release on it and the 20mm lug width should make this pretty flexible. The end links are female too which means you get more of a drop down from lug to strap. Our only real gripe is that the bracelet doesn’t use screw links, which should be mandatory now as far as we’re concerned.
So, after all the umming and ahing over whether or not to pick up a Coastal, was it the right decision? Of course it was. This is exactly what you want from a microbrand. A solid build but with a contemporary finish. A watch with personality both up front and hidden in the details and with a story that holds it all together. And one much more relatable than going to the moon or motor racing. I’m not going to do laps around Monaco but you might find me on Southport pier eating fresh hot doughnuts while trying to find an arcade that still has Bomb Jack in it.
The ‘Six Watch Box’ Verdict: God damn it. Going from ten to six is getting difficult. At this point, very good watches have to leave the rotation. The beautiful Henry Archer, the Phoibos Wavemaster, the Brew Retrograph Lumint? Eesh. We’re not sure that the Coastal can usurp any of the six BUT we’re not sure that any of the six would have usurped the Coastal. Bloody hell. We’re going to have to go back to a ten at this rate. This watch will add a blast of colour and brightness to the collection and will surely be a mainstay, especially in the Summer. It stays!
JUST THE FACTS
Availability/Options: At the moment this watch is still available at Golby Watches but it was just a run of 25 (and you have to assume that at least one of them stayed home in Coventry) so these can’t stay available forever. And sure, we got lucky on eBay, but that feels like it was a minor miracle. There is also a black dial version of this watch (with the same purple/white bezel but with a yellow hand) which comes with the extra strap and an exclusive watch travel roll. Their previous watch, the Aquareef, also got updated which could then be a possibility for this model but who knows?
Brand: Golby
Model: Coastal
Style: Diver
Case Size: 37.2mm
Movement: Automatic (Miyota 90S5)
Material: Stainless Steel
Band Width: 20mm
Band Type: Bracelet
Price Paid: Out of respect for Golby, we’ll keep that under our hats but this was an eBay pick up.