The middle-market luxury watch brands owned by the Swatch Group such as Hamilton, Tissot, Longines, Mido, and Certina are delivering some of the best values in mechanical watches today, and oddly, few people who like watches are noticing. On that note, let’s take a look at the Tissot Heritage 1936 Mechanical wrist watch, and the Tissot Bridgeport Lepine Mechanical pocket watch.
While most men’s watches Breguet produces are round, the Heritage 5410 is a rare exception. The Breguet Heritage 5410, which features a tonneau-shaped case along with distinctive Breguet elements is a really nicely made package. Tonneau watches have been around for almost 100 years, but have most recently become popular thanks to two extremely different brands: Franck Muller and Richard Mille.
The big novelty from Rolex at Baselworld 2016 was… you named it: the Daytona Ceramic Bezel 116500LN – a very nice watch but, after all, a simple cosmetic evolution of an existing model. However, there was some more watches to discover. One stayed a bit under the radar, an evolution of the Yacht-Master, a watch that has never been favorited by Rolex purists. On the other hand, since last year, this model has been revamped by the Crown, with the introduction of the Everose / Ceramic version. While we were expecting it to be introduced in steel, Rolex decided differently, with the new Rolex Yacht-Master 116621 Two-Tone Everose Gold / Steel and Chocolate Dial. And it has some arguments…
In early 2016, Zodiac released this Sea Dragon Chronograph collection, which currently represents the most high-end Zodiac watches available. There are a few standard-edition Zodiac Sea Dragon Chronograph watches available, as well as two, more expensive, limited-edition models that offer unique color palettes.
The story in a second Yet again, Tudor has delivered one of the most talked about watches of 2016. If you’d asked me in the early months of 2016 if the bronze trend had a future, I’d have said no. To all intents and purposes the craze, spearheaded by Panerai, was on the wane. Sure, the ancient-yet-innovative alloy had its charms, but it takes a certain type of person to mess around with sulphur and lemon juice, making their watch look like something salvaged from a shipwreck. I thought bronze would always be a niche case material, not a mainstream proposition. Then I saw the Tudor Black Bay Bronze. Catapulting off the incredibly strong Black Bay family, this watch has what it takes to bring bronze to a much bigger audience. The case We have to start this by talking about the case. The two key take away points here are size and material. At 43mm across this is the biggest watch Tudor has ever made, and boy does this incremental increase make for a big impact when it comes to on-the-wrist presence. For me, the size and bulk of the BB Bronze make it much more of a ‘fun’ watch,…
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Look closely, and you’ll notice a new GMT watch from Bell & Ross for 2016. I’ve appreciated the brand’s refined and legible GMT watches for a while, and this newest model is actually a melding of various watches from the brand’s modern history.
Look closely and you’ll see in Blancpain watches genuinely innovative attempts that are creating new assortments of existing ideas, as well as some novel ones. Today, I’d like to look at the Blancpain Villeret Quantieme Annuel GMT watch.
There are two main contenders for the title of ‘most recognisable watch in the world’, both of them made by Rolex. Naturally, the Submariner has a good shot at the title, but for me, the clear winner is the Datejust. First introduced in 1945, it includes one of the most useful and ubiquitous complications – a date window. Like many features we take for granted on a watch today, this date represented a Rolex first, in that rather than slowly transitioning over a few hours, the Datejust’s date jumped instantly at the stroke of midnight. Even though the model has been around for over 60 years now, the fundamentals haven’t changed much. Three hands, Oyster case, automatic movement and of course the date (with Cyclops). We saw its first leap to the 40mm+ club in 2009, with the bulked up, 41mm Datejust II. But it wasn’t just the diameter of this watch that had increased, it was broader all over: bezel, indices and lugs all felt super-sized. And while the masculine look had its fans, it lacked the elegant proportions of the classic version. Enter this year’s Datejust 41, released at Baselworld in a swathe of yellow and Everose Rolesor models, with options including fluted and…
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At Baselworld 2016, Chopard released this new haute joaillerie rainbow version of its 40mm-wide Imperiale watch. Strictly speaking, most people at Chopard would categorize this Chopard Imperiale Joaillerie Rainbow as a women’s watch – and perhaps, for the most part, it is.
The Angelus U40 Racing Tourbillon Skeleton watch is currently the brand’s most accessibly-priced model, and a good way of looking at it is as a smaller sibling to the more expensive Angelus U20 Ultra-Skeleton Tourbillon watch.