Monochrome
Hanhart, the storied German watchmaker best known for its excellent and iconic pilot chronograph watches and signature red pushers, continues to expand its reach into the depths of the ocean. Following its first dedicated diver, the rugged Aquasphere FreeFall Blue launched last year, the brand now unveils the Aquasphere Ocean Fade with a dial that […]
Two Broke Watch Snobs
A clear guide to chronograph watches: what they do, how to use one, and whether it belongs in your collection.
Worn & Wound
Change is a scary thing. Change at a small, enthusiast-favorite brand is downright terrifying. As watch collectors and enthusiasts, we’re constantly on the lookout for the next thing - the new exciting brand, the unexpected novelty, the rising watchmaker yet to be truly discovered. But that search for the ‘new’ is only possible thanks to the reliable backstop certain brands have built for enthusiasts since the modern enthusiast market developed in the latter part of the 20th century. Stowa is absolutely one of these backstop brands. A reliable step on the ladder for developing enthusiasts, Stowa - which was founded in 1927 but has existed in its modern form since 1996 - has sat squarely at the heart of the watch community as long as I’ve been interested in watches. As long as I’ve been aware of them, Stowa has been the place to go for high-quality, affordable pilots’ and marine watches, and has paired those standards with elegant Bauhaus-inspired dress watches and chronographs (among other things). That much is absolutely still true, but you’d be forgiven for expressing concern when, in 2021, Jörg Schauer (who had owned and operated the brand since 1996) sold Stowa to Tempus Arte, the German watch group best known for their ownership of Dresden-based Lang & Heyne (who in turn are best known for their highly finished tri-lugged case architecture). Since then, there has been a tremendous amount of hemming and hawing over the existential question of Stowa...
Teddy Baldassarre
Watchmaking, at its core, has always been about functionality. By wearing a timekeeper, not only did you get an instant update on at what point in the day you are in, but dependent on complication, you also had the opportunity to see at what point the moon was at in its cycle, what year you are in and even the opportunity to time various events (the big race or dinner). Since their invention more than 200 years ago, chronographs have established themselves the most versatile additions to the field of timekeeping. The very first was conceived as an aid to astronomical observations; over the years, chronographs have proven visually appealing as well as useful in day to day life. While nobody is entirely sure when the first chronograph was conceived, we do often point to Mr Nicolas Rieussec’s creation of 1821, which saw a spot of ink dropped onto a rotating disc of paper and dropped another when the timed event came to an end. Since then, it has become a complication we have seen from almost every brand out there. As we begin a new year, we felt the time was right to spotlight some of the best chronographs that are on the market in 2026. Seiko Prospex Speedtimer SSC813 Price: $695, Case Size: 39mm, Thickness: 13.3mm, Lug-to-Lug: 45.5mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Water Resistance: 100m, Crystal: Sapphire, Movement: Seiko Solar Caliber V192 The original Seiko Speedtimer, released in 1969, was among the world’s first self-winding chronograph watches, equipped with the legendary Calib...
Deployant
Montblanc's Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph gets a new look with an elegant green aesthetic and a newly designed strap.
Monochrome
With the classic car season in full swing, it’s no surprise we get to see a few new special editions to celebrate automotive culture one way or another. One of the brands to have close ties to vintage motorsports and rallying events is Union Glashütte. The German manufacturer regularly updates models from its Noramis and […]
Fratello
Time flies when you’re having retro fun, doesn’t it? With an original introduction date a full decade ago, the Oris Divers Sixty-Five collection feels like a brand staple. I have always found the chronograph version to be one of the more appealing models. Well, today is my lucky day because I get to go hands-on […] Visit Hands-On With The New Oris Divers Sixty-Five Chronograph In Silver And Ocean Green to read the full article.
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...
Hodinkee
All that and more in this week's edition of Hodinkee's What's Selling Where column.
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, […]
Fratello
It’s Sunday, so it’s time to wake up with a nice cup of coffee and another Sunday Morning Showdown. This week, Mike and Jorg picked two absolute heavy hitters to face off in this battle of stainless steel chronographs. Mike picked the current Rolex Cosmograph Daytona ref. 126500LN, while Jorg picked the Omega Speedmaster Calibre […] Visit Sunday Morning Showdown: Omega Speedmaster Calibre 321 Vs. Rolex Cosmograph Daytona to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear. SPLASHDOWN While you might know the story of how the Omega Speedmaster became the official Moonwatch, you might know the story of Navy-UDT Frogman who were tasked with safely recovering astronauts as they returned to Earth. Just as the astronauts relied upon their speedmasters, the UDT Frogmen had their own piece of critical time keeping kit: the Tudor Submariner 7928. While these divers would preform critical roles in supporting Nasa’s splashdown recovery program, their story remained largely untold, until now. On Thursday, June 24th, Tudor unveiled a short film dedicated to these men, aptly titled “Splashdown: The Little-Known Story of Navy Frogmen and the Space Program”. Featuring members of the team, their family, and even Jack Carr, the short film can be watched on Tudor’s website alongside various historical images. Little Camera, Big Punch Yashica, a Japanese camera company, has announced their newest compact camera, the City 300. Similar in size to a point-and-shoot camera or the Ricoh family of cameras, the new City 300 combines a 50MP sensor, a fast F/1.8 lens, and what appears to be a flip/tilt screen; all for an estimated US retail price of $4...
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...
Monochrome
Minerva, founded as H. & C. Robert in 1858 in the Swiss Jura village of Villeret and renamed Minerva SA in 1929, remains one of the great guardians of traditional chronograph craftsmanship. Its first chronograph movement, the Calibre 19-9, debuted in 1908, and for over 165 years, its workshops have produced some of the finest […]
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
I can remember the exact moment I realized that Audemars Piguet was not the brand for me: I was listening to an episode of Hodinkee Radio in early 2019 featuring an interview with then current AP CEO François-Henry Bennahmias during which he boasted that he does not read books. For whatever skills Bennahmias has as an executive, and whatever objectively nice qualities come through in the watches made under his tenure with the brand, something about this statement immediately turned me off. In the parlance of 2025, you’d say it gave me “the ick.” Over the last few years, I’ve thought about this moment a lot as integrated bracelet sports watch mania has waxed and waned, and my own taste has solidified somewhat. Back in 2019, my exposure to Royal Oaks was fairly limited. I basically knew what watch media and the burgeoning watch collector’s scene on Instagram told me. And the narrative, by and large, was that these were the crème de la crème of the high end, a watch that every collector should strive to own. In those days, it really was that simple: there were a handful of watches from big brands that seemed to be on everyone’s hit list at one time or another. The Submariner, the Speedmaster, the Royal Oak. It was drilled into my head, and all of our heads, that watches like this – the icons – were worthy of our universal devotion. I eventually owned both a Speedmaster and a Submariner. Both of which, I’d eventually realize, were not for me for a vari...
Fratello
In recent times, TAG Heuer has done a great job of balancing modern-looking Monaco releases with others that tell the great racing stories from the past. By doing so, the brand caters to a varied audience. I lean heavily into the Monaco’s historical side because that’s where I find the romance of this classic. So […] Visit Hands-On With The Cool Retro TAG Heuer Monaco Chronograph Stopwatch to read the full article.
Revolution
Hodinkee
A titanium homage to F.A. Porsche's cleanest Chronograph 1 design - now available without a required car purchase.
Worn & Wound
Back in April, Porsche Design quietly hosted an event that gave the press the opportunity to go hands-on with a selection of current offerings and upcoming launches across its merchandise, sunglasses, luggage, and, of course, watch collections. This was a rare opportunity given that, apart from occasional meetups or the secondary market, there has been no simple way to physically put your hands on a Porsche Design watch. That is until now, as Porsche Design has announced a new retail partnership with Watches of Switzerland, allowing enthusiasts to shop the collection physically. Alongside that announcement, and perhaps more pertinent to our readers, Porsche Design has debuted a new Chronograph 1 1975 Limited Edition model that I spent some hands-on time with at that earlier event. Exactly 50 years ago, Porsche Design released an uncoated version of the original Chronograph, to which this model pays tribute. That model was meant to complement the all-black 1972 Chronograph 1 model, as this new version is intended to complement the modern all-black version that was released in commemoration back in 2022. One key change here, though, is in the chosen material. While the original 1975 uncoated Chronograph 1 was crafted in steel, this new version has been machined from titanium, still uncoated but bead blasted for finish. It will offer slightly warmer hues and a lighter weight-wearing experience than the original, but it will still deliver a similar vibe with a modern twist...
Time+Tide
As stripped back as it gets for a Porsche Design Chronograph 1.The post Porsche Design’s latest piece, the Chronograph 1 1975 Limited Edition, digs through the archives for a niche bit of inspiration appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Teddy Baldassarre
The Tudor Black Bay Chrono hit the market, somewhat unexpectedly, in 2017, boldly elevating the already red-hot Black Bay collection into a new tier of horological prestige and marking the debut of a collaboration (again, rather unexpected) between Rolex-owned Tudor and its Swiss sport-watch competitor Breitling. Nearly a decade later, the model still represents the highest level of complication in Tudor’s 21st-Century lineup, and yet this Tudor chronograph also remains very manageable, as a subfamily, in terms of material, size, and colorway options - an area in which the larger Black Bay collection, some might argue, has gone a bit far in the opposite direction, now encompassing three distinctive iterations: original Black Bay, Black Bay 58, and Black Bay 54 (which we reviewed here), all touting different sizing and multiple colorways and materials. And this doesn’t even include the other “complicated” extension of the line, the Black Bay GMT, which recently debuted in the “58” sizing and which seems to unveil a new bicolor bezel or dial color every year since its 2018 debut. Originally called the Heritage Black Bay - as it was clearly an homage to vintage dive watches from Tudor’s watchmaking history, which began in 1946 - the OG Black Bay model traces its aesthetic roots to the Oyster Prince Submariner, released in 1954, one year after big brother Rolex rolled out its own much more famous Submariner watch. This original version, Ref. 7922, used the ...
Quill & Pad
The A. Lange & Söhne Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon lives up to its name. It has a date, a chronograph, a perpetual calendar, and a tourbillon. But it has more: this watch has character. Assigning human traits to a cold machine is a – romantic – fool’s errand, but it’s also irresistible in the presence of a masterpiece. A. Lange & Söhne’s warmest watch is more than a machine with a heartbeat. It has soul.
Fratello
You have already seen the beige Mojave Desert, white Lake Tahoe, green Woodland, dark blue Oceana, and Jet Black fly by. Now it’s time for another Top Gun-inspired color. The IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Top Gun Miramar is a limited edition of 1,000 watches, each in a light blue ceramic case. The matte dial […] Visit Introducing: The Limited-Edition IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Top Gun Miramar In Light Blue Ceramic to read the full article.
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