Feature: 5 watches that are just great
It’s easy to get wrapped up in specs when choosing a watch. Of course you want to get great value for money, but really if we think about this too hard, the best value for money when it comes to time-telling specifications is to simply look at your phone. So let’s move the brain over to one side for a bit to make room for the heart as well, because that’s exactly what makes these watches great.
Omega Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch
The Omega Speedmaster, ranked solely on specifications, is one of the worst watches you can buy, especially in base Hesalite trim. It’s too big at 42mm, gets only fifty metres of water resistance and needs winding by hand every other day. It’s a hangover of a less convenient time, and in today’s rush there’s just no room for it. Except it remains one of Omega’s most popular watches, and not just because it’s bang on half the price of the equivalent watch from Rolex.
There can be no overstating just how important this watch is in people’s lives. What else do we have to drive us on, day by day, but hope? And what more hope is there than in the progress of humanity as a species? Look at the news and there’s a clear reality: we’re all doomed. There are too many people consuming too many things and everyone’s at each other’s throats because of it.
But in 1969, people were united by the journey three men took to a place no one had ever visited before: the moon. The hope of possibility was unrivalled at that time. The future was bright. And even today, alongside all the negativity, there’s the glimmer of a brighter future with the revival of space exploration and the discovery of new things beyond our atmosphere.
The Moonwatch not only commemorates what came before, an achievement so incredible it stands today, over half a century later, as perhaps the greatest ever accomplished, but is also a vessel for the fragile essence of hope. That inexplicable feeling wearing a Moonwatch is the reminder that there’s still a chance. It’s not over yet.
Omega Seamaster Diver 300m
Everything in the world is being optimised. From the films you watch to the music you listen to, the food you eat and the media you consume. The ability to use data to strip fat and refine the sweetness of what engages us has a particular side-effect: everything becomes a generic, homogenous blur. Many of us have grown up with the idea of success being defined by, well, definition itself, but over the years that’s stepped aside to a new way of doing things.
The Omega Seamaster Diver 300m refuses to comply. It should have a simpler case that appeals to more people, instead of those sculptural lugs that do nothing functional. The helium escape valve should have been removed, an unnecessary addition to a watch that simply won’t be found in the conditions needed to use it. And the dial, it shouldn’t have those distracting, pointless waves carved into it. We know it’s a dive watch already.
But it does have those things and more, and that’s what makes it stand out. Because after all, character isn’t defined by perfection, it’s derived from quirks, flaws and personality. A movie isn’t a good movie if the main character starts out perfect and stays perfect until the end. A song isn’t a good song if it’s been polished down to the purest production, without the squeak of a string or the breath of the singer.
Omega has left all these things in knowing that, as a numbers game, it just can’t be more popular than Rolex’s Submariner. But that’s a good thing. I don’t want Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to be a Hollywood blockbuster. I don’t want Son Lux to perform at the Superbowl. And I don’t want the Seamaster to lose its waves. They did it once already and I hope they never do it again.
Studio Underd0g 01Series Watermel0n
It’s said that children feel such joy because they’ve not experienced the woes of being an adult. It’s true that life as an adult seems scant of moments that fill the soul with buoyant happiness, but I don’t think it’s a life sentence. Many of the moments that made us laugh as children would still make us laugh today—we just don’t indulge in them anymore. Whether too busy or too proud, we starve ourselves of the precious silliness that fills our hearts.
It really doesn’t take much, and the Watermel0n from Studio Underd0g is proof of that. It’s a chronograph watch, hand wound, 38.5mm across in the style of the watches of the 1930s. Not exactly the most chipper of time periods—although the Watermel0n gets a little extra something that transforms it into a beacon of pleasure: a refreshing splash of colour.
Who would’ve thought that taking a watch and colouring it in like a watermelon could be such a success? With the addition of melon seeds as hour markers bringing a smile to so many faces? It says so much about how desperate we are to feel positivity, and it’s thanks to the existence of little moments like the Watermel0n that we don’t entirely go without. It’s an excuse to stop a minute, feel the warmth of the sun and remember that there’s still a chance to be happy.
Grand Seiko Omiwatari SBGY007
It’s hard to believe that just a few generations ago, the idea of growing food yourself was completely normal. And I don’t mean a few tomatoes to leave rotting in a bag at the back of the fridge as some sort of token self-sustenance cosplay that got out of hand, but actually living off of the ground we stand on—and being vulnerable to it as well.
The biggest risks we face as humans today are for the most part from other humans. The environment has been tamed to such a degree that we can make rain in the desert and melt ice in the frozen tundra. But the world we each interact with on the daily is just a tiny view of a much larger ecosystem. Even beyond our own planet, the devastating might of the natural world should terrify and humble us.
The Grand Seiko Omiwatari is one of a number of nature-themed watches that reaches in deep and connects with a fundamental part of us that still remembers our environment is something to revere. Looking at the icy chill of the Omiwatari dial somehow communicates the scale and majesty of vast swathes of our world that could dispatch us in a second. It pays to stay grounded, to remember our own fleeting mortality, and that’s been expressed with true Japanese stoicism in the Omiwatari.
And the fear is twinned with awe too. The overwhelmingly devastating reality of the rock we cling onto like limpets on a ship comes with a beauty and a peace. Somehow, the magnitude of it and our insignificance brings a reassurance that feels like something heading towards enlightenment. We’re here, it’s out of our control, let’s try not to get too worked up about it.
Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Pioneer
On the face of it, it might seem weird that we dwell upon old things when we have access to some of the most impressive technologies humanity has ever seen. We’re living in an era where we can talk to someone on the other side of the world, live with picture in the palms of our hands and not think twice about it. Tech has advanced so rapidly that the vision of today from even several decades ago very wildly misses the mark. Except for hoverboards. That’s been a big disappointment.
The reason we look back is twofold: one, things were simpler, and as technology drives us forwards into ever crazier levels of speed and complexity, it leaves our heads spinning a bit. It used to be a job at work might require sending a letter that would be responded to in a week. Now that communication can be responded to instantaneously by everyone everywhere all at once. It’s overwhelming. The mechanical wristwatch being the bleeding edge of technology feels like a moment’s respite to slow things down a bit.
The other reason is because of the people who wore them. Because they were cutting edge, they were worn by people doing cutting edge things. Astronauts, divers, pilots—and the armed forces. For many of us, we’ve never experienced war. The closest experience is news from the furthest reaches of the world and shows like Band of Brothers. Watches like this Hamilton Khaki Aviation are one of the few things we have that connect us to the people who have and do keep us safe, who leave us free to worry about things like hope and happiness, the future and the past, give us the time and the space to think about those who don’t have that luxury—and the security to ponder over the little things we enjoy, like all these watches.
What watch do you think is just unequivocally great?
