The Rodina Automatic is not a watch that I would buy. Neither is it a watch that I admire. Its Bauhaus looks are directly copied from Nomos Glashütte, and that’s something that in my opinion is not cool. But it’s there, it’s a mechanical watch with a self-winding movement, it has classical looks, a display…
The Omega Speedmaster Moonphase Master Chronometer Chronograph will be joining the collection in October 2016 when it reaches the boutiques, and it’s a welcome addition, with a beautiful moonphase display and an attractive subdial combining continuous seconds and date. The previous version of the Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional Chronograph is still in the collection, at a…
The return of British watchmaking? Contemporary British watchmakers are ever tormented by the fact that their country was once a horological powerhouse. People like George Graham, Edward John Dent, John Arnold, Thomas Tompion, John Harrison and Thomas Mudge were amongst the finest clock and watchmakers of their day, working on the problem of increasing the…
The Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 150M GoodPlanet GMT has a fresh, marine look about it, with its white dial and blue highlights. The case is in titanium, 43 mm in diameter, and quite chunky at 14.15 mm thickness. Its finish is mainly brushed, with polished details and bezel. The water resistance of 15 bar, 150…
The Seamaster Aqua Terra 150M Good Planet 38.5mm by Omega, presented at Baselworld 2016, is a nice three-hand watch with a nautical feel provided by the blue-accented hands and hour indices, and the blue nylon fabric strap. It’s also a very practical everyday watch, at a size wearable by all, men and women, and a…
Bi-ceramic bezel. Er… Rolex, right? Two-colour Cerachrom ceramic bezels introduced into the Rolex GMT-Master II in blue and black in 2013, and red and blue in 2014? Made using a patented system? Well, in the new Omega Planet Ocean 600M GMT, there is a black and white ceramic bezel used for the first time by…
The Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M Master Chronometer Chronograph is a luxury version of a supremely practical chronograph. The counter at 3 o’clock combines chronograph minutes and hours into a display that is legible at a glance. All the hands have areas of SuperLuminova, with differentiated colours of luminescence: blue for the hour indices, hour…
The 170th Anniversary Limited Edition Classico Manufacture by Ulysse Nardin has a dial layout that reflects the earliest pocket watches, with subdial at 6 o’clock. Blue is still very much the watch fashion colour and so the hands and strap are a bright mid-sea blue. The date is carefully camouflaged in the continuous seconds subdial…
The Omega Planet Ocean 600M has a lot of content, accompanied by exceptionally good looks. Its METAS certification includes COSC chronometer certification and betters it, as well as anti-magnetism to fields of up to 15,000 gauss, and waterproofness tested to 600 metres depth. The watch has a helium escape valve, screw-down crown, unidirectional rotating bezel,…
The Omega Speedmaster CK 2998 is a limited-edition watch designed for collectors, like last year’s Silver Snoopy. It is a remake of the 1959 CK 2998, which was the second generation of the Speedmaster introduced in 1957. The original CK 2998 became the first of Omega’s long association with space, when Wally Schirra wore it…
This is a 39.5-mm version of Omega’s existing Planet Ocean collection of diver’s watches, and Omega have marketed the piece as specifically for women. They have also added Switzerland’s most famous product to the name, and their PR photos show the watch apparently diving into a sea of chocolate. It is a reference to the…
The video is of a clock in Schiphol airport, Amsterdam. It’s a video that took 12 hours to film, and it lasts 12 hours. It shows a cleaner who every minute cleans away the minute hand, and then paints on another minute hand, a minute further around the dial. Every 60 minutes he has to…
This variation on the Grey Side of the Moon Speedmaster chronograph by Omega is different for the meteorite dial, made using slices of the Gibeon meteorite from Namibia that fell from the sky many thousands of years ago. Before it reached the earth, it must have been very large: fragments of the meteorite can be…
“Accessories” is a word that is loathed by a lot of watchmakers, because for some people there is a division between “real watches” and “accessories,” the latter generally quartz, while watchmakers who have quartz watches in their collection prefer to think of all their products as more than just accessories. Probably, most of them would…
This new version of the Omega Constellation introduces a small seconds subdial, set with four small diamond markers, in the 9 o’clock position, and METAS certification. So this is a mechanical watch for women, resistant to 15,000 gauss magnetic fields, to 100 metres depth in water, with a precision of 0/+5 seconds deviation per day.…
The Globemaster range by Omega is beginning to expand, from the basic time-only version introduced in 2015. Each watch has Omega’s new METAS certification in which the watch is tested for eight parameters, including resistance to magnetic fields of 15,000 gauss, water resistance of 10 bar/100 metres, and precision. The Omega Globemaster Annual Calendar has…
Every year, Frédérique Constant presents a nautical-inspired watch inspired by Riva runabout boats, the small craft in wood and chrome that have been cruising luxury playgrounds like Portofino and Montecarlo since the 1920s. The watch brand has a partnership with the Riva Historical Society whose mission is the preservation of Riva boats. The Runabout watch…
The F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souverain is an unusual watch because it is one of the very few chronographs that has – in my opinion – a logical dial layout. I have always felt that it’s illogical that in the usual chronograph layout, one of the subdials should be dedicated to continuous seconds, while the large…
Eberhard & Co. first presented the Extra-Fort chronograph in the 1950s, when watch sizes were smaller than today. This is reflected by the name of this piece, Grande Taille. This year, four new dial variants for the Eberhard & Co. Extra-Fort Grande Taille have been presented, all with “frappé” finishing (I think that this refers…
This is a really attractive watch, with its carioca colours on the ceramic bezel, the jaunty skeletonized hands with their differentiated SuperLuminova, and the wavy dial decoration, not a reference to the sea but rather to the two-tone paving design of Copacabana’s beachside promenade. The solid caseback is embossed with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games…