The small diver I'd recommend first
By Hannah Lindqvist, Stockholm ยท
Tudor based this on its first Submariner from 1954, the 7922, and it shows in the proportions. 37 mm. 11.2 mm. 20 mm lugs. 200 m. This is the dive watch I'd point every small-wristed person toward, and I've been waiting years for a brand like Tudor to make it.
Why it works: the case is short and the lugs aren't long, so on a 15.5 cm wrist it should sit inside the edges. The 11.2 mm height is low enough for a jacket cuff. The bezel is slim. Nothing about it feels like a men's watch with a few millimetres shaved off. It just feels small and correct.
A word on the Black Bay 58, its 39 mm sibling. Plenty of people with small wrists bought the 58 because it was 'the small one', and then spent years wondering why it looked big on them. The answer was lug-to-lug and height, not diameter. The 54 fixes that. It's the first Black Bay where I don't have to squint and pretend.
The bezel matters more on a small case, because it's a big part of what you see. This one is a proper unidirectional 60-minute bezel, so you can time a swim between two buoys or how long the pasta has been on, and it's slim enough not to make the watch look chunky.
The MT5400 has 70 hours, so it survives a weekend off. 200 m is plenty for the archipelago and for anything short of real diving.
Downsides. No date, which I like and some people won't. The 37 mm dial looks a little crowded with the chunky Black Bay hands. And the price has crept to 4,100 dollars and up, which puts it closer to an Omega Seamaster than I'd like.
Still my first answer when a friend with a small wrist asks for one good diver.