3,920 articles · 373 videos found · page 68 of 144
Monochrome
Named after a mythical Norse blacksmith, Völund, and the best-preserved Viking blade, the Fullerö Sword, we’re looking here at a truly spellbinding watch. The inspiration for the Fullerö Sword comes from an ancient Viking blade, found in Fullerö, Sweden, in 1969. To this day, it remains the best-preserved Viking sword ever to be found and […]
Hodinkee
A more compact offering from the Wrist Enthusiast himself.
SJX Watches
Having re-emerged in 2021 with the debut of his new brand and the launch of the FVF1 C2 Tourbillon Superligero, Franc Vila is back with the FVF1 Tourbillon Superligero “Today”, a watch that challenges conventional notions of timekeeping with a good-humoured twist on the traditional day of the week display. Leveraging its predecessor’s ultralight 42.5 mm titanium case and integrated flying tourbillon movement, the Today questions the difference between the days of the week, with a day roller that displays the word ‘today’ in a different font for each day. While over time the wearer might learn to associate particular fonts with particular days, the otherwise functional day roller is intended to be a reminder to not take things too seriously – today is all we have. Initial thoughts I didn’t really know what to expect the first time I stepped off the elevator into Mr Vila’s brightly lit, attic workshop in Geneva’s Saint Gervais neighbourhood. The workshop itself is part of the story, housed in what was once very likely home to a cabinotier, a term that refers to a watchmaker operating from a rooftop workshop once favoured by Genevan watchmakers of old, who preferred to work where they could get plenty of natural light. Beyond the typical watchmaking equipment, and even some atypical equipment like a perlage machine with a mysterious past, the workshop is packed with contemporary art from Mr Vila’s personal collection. Talking with him about these sources o...
Monochrome
For many, watchmaking is synonymous with Switzerland. While the Swiss industry remains influential, several other countries also play significant roles in the production of timepieces. Germany, Japan and China are obvious examples. But India, too, is increasingly important, both as a manufacturing hub and a growing market. At the heart of India’s watch industry is […]
Worn & Wound
As my thirties pass by and more gray hairs emerge, I can’t help but notice the unironic fondness I’ve been feeling for two-tone watches. Much like my inability to understand the slang my kids use, feeling that the rizz of two-tone slaps (am I doing that right?) seems to be an inevitable part of aging. And while Citizen’s decision to opt for gold accents to mark the 40th anniversary of the Promaster Aqualand probably isn’t a nod to middle aged collectors and is more likely a heartfelt way to honor the original Aqualand C0023, it feels satisfyingly appropriate that this icon is embracing two-tone to celebrate being over the hill. In full transparency of my own horological biases, I went into this review feeling burnt out on dive watches, which in retrospect seems inevitable after owning about a dozen black dialed divers over a five year period. In recent months I’ve also developed a bit of a pro-quartz preference as my first mechanical watches start to show their age and I’m seeking out watchmakers on a limited budget, another seemingly inevitable result of my collecting journey. I share this because, no longer dazzled by ratcheting bezels and mechanical movements in the way I once was, I thought it would be nice to get my hands on a robust and worry free quartz watch to take on my annual road trip from New Hampshire to Michigan. One text to our Managing Editor Zach Kazan during which I forgot to clarify that I would be content if I never saw another black dial d...
Video
SJX Watches
Roger Dubuis is celebrating 30 years by looking back on its days as a trend-setting independent. The Excalibur Biretrograde Calendar deftly balances the spirit of Genevan watchmaking from the brand’s early years in the 1990s with the boisterous designs of the 2000s in a manageable size, but less manageable price. While the style is reminiscent of the oversized Excalibur models that were far from ergonomic, the Biretrograde Calendar has been redesigned for wearability. The retrograde calendar mechanism on the front is an in-house construction, built on top of the brand’s own automatic movement that is unexpectedly sophisticated and classical. Initial Thoughts Roger Dubuis is a marque built on calendars, so the new Excalibur has historical resonance. The late Roger Dubuis was a Patek Philippe alumni who caught his big break working with Jean-Marc Wiederrecht, who would go on to found Agenhor, on a double retrograde perpetual calendar developed for New York jeweller Harry Winston. It was during the project that Dubuis met his future business partner, Carlos Dias, an entrepreneur who would help establish the Roger Dubuis brand and transform it into a hit maker in the 2000s. The same double retrograde perpetual calendar mechanism would accompany the first Roger Dubuis model the brand’s debut in 1995. And the retrograde calendar also has a historical connection to Geneva, as a local watchmaker named Marius LeCoultre created the most prolific retrograde perpetual design of ...
Monochrome
Not too long ago, we introduced you to the newly founded European chapter of The Horology Club, one of the fastest-growing and most active watch enthusiast and collector clubs around. Founded in Hong Kong by Helbert Tsang, Johnathan Chan and Carlos Pang in 2021, the club quickly gained traction in the greater Hong Kong area […]
Worn & Wound
Our first introduction to a brand can often set the stage for our initial relationship with it. That can be especially tricky for small brands launching their first model, hoping to latch onto an enthusiast market. So when I lay this all out for you, keep that in mind. London has been close to the top of my list of travel destinations for quite some time, so even when seven hours of flight delays burned my only free night before British Watchmakers Day, I was still teeming with excitement just to be going. That same energy, though, began to slowly leave my body, as Zach Kazan and I made our way to the upstairs section of the pub where we hosted our meetup with Arken. Ken graciously provided us with a bottle of whisky, ensuring my tumbler stayed wet as the growing crowd conversed around us, and the conversation grew loud. It was then that I met Thomas Hill-a warm, soft-spoken individual who, like me, seemed more at home on the periphery of the crowd than in its throes. It was in that setting, in the middle of the conversation that I thought had been going well, that Tom looked right at me and called me a nimrod. Or so I thought. Seeing the puzzlement on my face, he laughed, put me out of my misery, and produced a trio of sample watches adorned with the name “Nimrod” on the dial. Thus, I was properly introduced to his brand, Abinger. Joking aside, Tom was very polite and a bit sheepish about showing off his project, as they were his first prototypes of the model, yet...
Hodinkee
While British microbrand Aera's new M-1 may draw inspiration from the iconic Dirty Dozen field watches, it is not bound to or limited by its source material.
Hodinkee
The French-Chinese brand dips its toes into grand feu enamel with the first new design in three years.
Video
Hodinkee
A completely objective and totally not astrologically driven review of a high art watch from one of the world's oldest watch brands.
SJX Watches
One of the year’s best summer watches, the Hublot Big Bang Unico Mint Green Ceramic is a fresh interpretation of the brand’s signature collection. Housed in a 42 mm case clad in candy-like, mint green ceramic, the Big Bang Unico features Hublot’s top-of-the-line HUB1280 flyback chronograph movement with an unusual, dial-side integrated construction. While technically identical to other ceramic Big Bang watches, the new mint green colour is unusually fun and approachable. This new edition of the Big Bang joins the permanent collection, and extends the brand’s industry-leading range of coloured ceramic watches. Initial thoughts Hublot is a brand that tends to elicit visceral polarisation among collectors, and it’s easy to see why. The bold designs are seen as outrageous by some, and the pricing puts them out of reach for those focused on maximising their horological dollar. But Hublot has outgrown its early reputation as a Royal Oak imitator and found its own identity, in part through its leadership in ceramics and willingness to experiment with design and colour. In this case, the mint green colour looks great, and considering the glossy finish, it looks almost like candy. This gives the watch a friendly countenance that results in an amusing tension with the overtly masculine, technical structure of the case and design of the dial, with its stencil-like hour markers. The Big Bang collection is all about its signature architectural case, and the mint green editio...
Monochrome
Founded by Georges Eberhard in 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Eberhard & Co. had established itself as a purveyor of innovative, technically advanced chronographs by 1919. Although the independent brand is well-known among Italian collectors, and its Chrono 4 model, with four separate counters inspired by the dashboard of race cars, might resonate with some readers, […]
Worn & Wound
Is it too late to dub the summer of 2025 “Black Watch Summer”? That might be how I remember this particular season. The watch I’ve worn most, by far, as the temps have soared is my Ming 37.09 “Uni,” a blacked out void of a watch if ever there was one. And a few weeks ago at Windup I purchased my first vintage watch in ages, a DLC coated Favre-Leuba chronograph that I couldn’t pass on. And now, as we’re fully in the dog days, I sit here with the new Aera Instruments M-1 Blackbird on my wrist, another cool, sleek, blacked out watch that bolsters the notion that Aera is one of the most interesting accessible indies of the moment. I reviewed Aera’s D-1 dive watch a few years ago, and the tone of that review was one of pleasant surprise. At the time, the brand was in the midst of launching their second collection, and from the photos and press materials I had seen, I was struggling to make sense of why this brand needed to exist. That might seem like a harsh standard, but we live in a period where it’s incredibly easy to churn out incredibly generic sports watches for minimal money and talent that absolutely no one needs. The whole point of this website, as I see it, is to find the stuff that has a real reason to be made because it offers something different. So I was surprised to find that the D-1 subverted my expectations by flipping the idea of a dive watch on its head. It kind of looks like a generic dive watch at a glance, but every single detail is act...
SJX Watches
A. Lange & Söhne refreshes its arguably most avant-garde collection with the Zeitwerk Date in pink gold matched with a dark grey dial. The new Zeitwerk Date joins the existing model in white gold as a regular production model, and retains the L043.8 movement featuring the signature digital time display driven by a constant force mechanism. The Zeitwerk Date is one of Lange’s simplest watches in terms of information displayed – just the time and date – but stands out as one of the brand’s most technically complex creations. Despite the low volume of production and esoteric mechanics, the Zeitwerk is also one of Lange’s most iconic models, alongside the Lange 1 and Datograph, thanks to its striking design that departs from the usual aesthetics of the normally staid brand. Initial Thoughts While the original Zeitwerk Date in white gold was the first of the second-generation Zeitwerk, bringing with it sweeping changes to the Zeitwerk movement, the new model is stylistic variation that serves to fill a gap in the collection. It offers more choice (actually just a binary choice) for someone looking for a Zeitwerk that is more complex than the base model, but not ready to go all the way to the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater that costs five times as much. The original Zeitwerk Date was a good, perhaps even great, watch inside and out, and this is too – though it could probably could have come a little sooner. It’s still a large watch, but the bulk is easy to justify consi...
Video
Hodinkee
What came before the vintage Type XX Pilots' Chronographs? Nothing, really. But if you imagine hard enough, it could have been this.
Worn & Wound
There’s something satisfying about handling a watch that feels like it knows exactly what it is. The Longines Spirit Zulu Time 1925 (L3.803.5.53.6) landed on my wrist with that kind of confident presence-not shouting for attention, but quietly competent in the way good tool watches should be. At 39mm with a mix of steel and 18-karat rose gold, it’s Longines’ centennial nod to their 1925 original, the world’s first dual time zone wristwatch. The question isn’t whether it’s historically significant-it obviously is-but whether it actually earns its place in today’s crowded GMT field. Longines, GMT Watches, and the Inevitable Tudor Question Let’s address the elephant in the room: if you’re shopping GMT watches around this price point, you’ve probably looked at the Tudor Black Bay GMT ($4,675). It’s the obvious comparison, sitting at roughly the same price with similar functionality. But where Tudor leans into its diving heritage with a rotating 24-hour bezel, Longines approaches GMT complications from their aviation roots. The Spirit Zulu Time 1925 isn’t trying to be a dive watch that happens to track time zones-it’s purpose-built for travelers and pilots who need to know what time it is “there.” The other natural competitors include the Grand Seiko Spring Drive GMT ($6,900), the Raymond Weil Freelancer GMT Worldtimer ($3,175), and the NOMOS Zürich Worldtimer ($6,100). But it’s worth noting these watches solve the multi-timezone problem...
Worn & Wound
I’ve reached the age where I regularly feel the temptation to say things along the lines of “back in the day…” This applies to various things, such as life without smartphones, dial-up modems, and Napster, among others, but occasionally, it also applies to watches. You see, it wasn’t that long ago that things were quite different. Dive watches were all north of 40mm, in-house movements were rare under $5k, microbrands were dismissed as a passing trend, and, most relevantly to this review, mechanical chronographs under a certain price were primarily powered by Valjoux 7750s or a close variant. With sub-dials at 12, 6, and 9, day-dates at three, two-pushers, cam-actuated, and always automatic, approachably priced mechanical chronographs were limited in their design options. Even 3, 6, 9 layouts were rare, powered by 7753s or ETA 2894s, and often limited to Swatch group brands. The point is that in 2025, it’s almost hard to imagine a world of such limited chronograph options. Today, thanks largely to Sellitta, 3, 9, and 3, 6, 9 layouts are typical (I actually miss 12, 6, 9 now), monopushers are no big deal, manual winding is an option, flybacks, GMTs, and even column-wheels are on the table. Simply put, it’s a good time to be a chronograph fan. Yet, even in this golden-age of chronographs (ok, that might be a stretch), there is room to stand out. Enter Albishorn, which launched in 2024 with a series of chronographs powered by a bespoke movement, based on a fun r...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
A quick review of the durable and capable Casio G-Shock GW6900-1, with longterm ownership insights, photos, specs, and more.
SJX Watches
The polarising Cubitus collection is not yet a year old, but Patek Philippe’s newest line of elegant sports watches has expanded in a big way with the Cubitus ref. 7128/1G-001 in a new ‘medium’ 40 mm size that transforms the wearing experience for the better. With summer now in full swing, it’s worth looking at this new Cubitus and considering what it means for the future of the collection. Featuring a silky 18k white gold case and bracelet, the smaller Cubitus practically drapes itself on the wrist, and is probably the most compelling launch yet from the new collection. Also available in rose gold (ref. 7128/1R-001), the new “medium” Cubitus is a luxury sports watch in the true sense of the term, combining everyday comfort and wearability with premium materials and high-quality finishing inside and out. For better or worse, the Cubitus retains several signature elements of the Nautilus such as the embossed sunburst blue dial and lozenge-shaped hands. Initial thoughts When the Cubitus launched last year, it was decried by many spectators as an unworthy successor to the sought-after Nautilus. I freely admit I never had a strong affinity for the Nautilus, which might explain my open mind toward the Cubitus, but I really like the faceted eight-sided crystal and find the overall design about as compelling as that of its esteemed predecessor. That said, I do wish the Cubitus had more of a distinct identity of its own. In the case of the current ref. 7128/1G-001 in 1...
Video
Hodinkee
The Glaswegian brand, known for its colorful and labor-intense dials, steps out from enamel.
Worn & Wound
By all accounts, Breitling seems to be experiencing a renaissance moment thanks to a few strong back-to-back years. Inspiration from its historical archives, contemporary trend chasing, strategic brand ambassadors, and strong culture building with storytelling elements have culminated in a change of perception in the budding enthusiast. Not too long ago, the common discourse surrounding Breitling was one of a brand that had lost its way. Now, though, they seem to have successfully flipped the script and reestablished their offerings as genuine contenders in every category of the luxury market. This year, in particular, the enthusiast market has been quick to heap praise upon each new release in stark contrast to previous release cycles. Of those new releases, the new Breitling Top Time B31 stood out to me as one that warranted a deeper discussion and full hands-on review. Part of a larger marketing push, Breitling took the opportunity to showcase three large pieces of information. First, dreamboat Austin Butler had signed on as the latest brand ambassador, clad in vintage motorcycle and mechanics attire. Second, a new collection of Top Time models would be available soon in a three-hand configuration, styled with a new design language. Third and finally, those Top Time watches would be powered by the new automatic B31 movement. While the origins of that movement are still somewhat debated, it marks a significant push by Breitling to update its entire movement lineup whil...
SJX Watches
Grand Seiko returns to its Sport Collection with an even bolder and edgier take on its flagship chronograph with the Tokyo Lion Tentagraph SLGC009. Combining an oversized case Brilliant Hard Titanium and a high-spec, high-beat chronograph movement, the striking new is Tentagraph is surprisingly not an all-new design but an iterative evolution that builds on the existing Sport Collection case. Initial Thoughts While a strength of Seiko itself, chronometry-focused Grand Seiko has historically struggled with sports watches, though not for lack of trying. In 2019 Grand Seiko launched the angular and aggressive Sport case featuring a facetted, polygonal form with a sapphire-covered bezel to celebrate 20 years of Spring Drive. Grand Seiko intended the design to evoke the mane of the brand’s lion mascot. In 2023 came the regular production Tokyo Lion series, and the brand also extended the design language into its jewelled Masterpiece watches. The “lion’s mane” case design reminds me of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept, and with the addition of an octagonal bezel the resemblance has only grown, though I wouldn’t say it is derivative – if anything the Grand Seiko case is a more boisterous take on the 45GS design from the late 1960s. The earlier Spring Drive GMT Chronograph SBGC275 with a less stylised case design I quite liked the Sport case when it was launched in 2019, especially the rose gold SBGC230, but it felt unfinished with a round bezel and buttons. With...
Hodinkee
Journe's maximalist approach to a tourbillon meets a maximalist approach to gem-setting for one of the most outrageous watches the brand has ever made.
SJX Watches
Having first introduced its Beta 21-inspired wristwatch over a decade ago, Piaget rebooted the concept this year by renaming it the Piaget Andy Warhol thanks to a freshly inked agreement with the American artist’s foundation. The watch retains the same oversized style format defined by a many stepped bezel and clean dial, but now adds the option of customisation in both dial and case materials. Though pricey for a time only watch, the Andy Warhol is arguably Piaget’s best formal dress watch for men. It’s just as elegant as the brand’s round watches, but substantially more distinctive. And the Andy Warhol nickname makes it more memorable than it was before. Initial thoughts Piaget’s most significant recent watch in technical terms is unquestionable the Altiplano Ultimate Concept, but ironically it is somewhat too thin to be elegant. The wafer-slim case feels a little strange on the wrist. The Andy Warhol, on the other hand, is large, but elegant and especially glamorous in certain variations like the malachite dial. In fact, the case is oversized – the case is 45 mm wide – but very thin around 8 mm, giving it a sleek profile but large presence on the wrist. And up close the multiple steps on the bezel give the design surprising flair given its overall simplicity. The large cushion form easily passes for a 1970s watch, but this is not an exact remake. Instead it is loosely based on the Piaget Beta 21, a pioneering quartz wristwatch, a specimen of which was owne...
Video
Question, suggestion, or just want to say hi? Drop a note.