Watches & Wonders 2021 #3: Best Sport Watches from IWC, TAG Heuer, Oris and More

[Music] hello watch enthusiasts and welcome to watch chronicler in today's episode i'd like to speak about watches and wonders 2021 and in this third episode i'd like to speak about sports watches now i've in fact already addressed some sports watches in this coverage whilst speaking about for example the new releases from rolex and tudor including the new versions of the rolex explorer in both explorer 1 and explorer 2 forms but those i'm going to put to one side because of course i've already discussed them and instead i'd like to speak about some of the highlight sports watches of this season's watch releases and these include some more affordable options some more expensive options but all together a very interesting and very diverse range in a way which i don't think is perhaps true of the dress watches we've seen thus far quite aside from the most well-known releases from rolex tudor and to a lesser extent patek philippe there are a few watches which didn't end up making it into this video but i'd like to address a couple first firstly there's the tudor black bay chronograph which is generally the same this year but has been revised to an extent by making the case slimmer now i don't actually know how this has been achieved given the fact that this watch is technically the same as its predecessor yet what is interesting here is that you have been able to refine and improve one of their models and the popular model at that into perhaps a model with a bit more nuanced than the previous versions then from oris we've had a very exciting slew of new diver 65 watches in their most vintage collection in the cotton candy range which is a set of watches with very bright very vibrant and somewhat synthetic colors to the dial and the general appearance of the watch to give some color and something different to this very vintage and somewhat playful collection and whilst it hasn't made it into this video i think the collection is an interesting one and an exciting one for someone who wants to watch which is just a bit more fun than you would normally expect to see what's most interesting about that watch though is that it addresses the zodiac super sea wolf in its very vibrant colours in a way which i don't think we've seen from oris in the past but the watches which have made it into this video include a rather brilliant new tag hoya dive watch perhaps the best in the last generation and a really very impressive year for iwc with several new watches which promise an awful lot in terms of the overall direction of their pilot's watch range before any of that do remember that this piece is available as a video on youtube but also as a podcast if you want to listen to it during other daily tasks on soundcloud spotify itunes or any other podcast player of your choice also if you enjoy this video please remember to like share and subscribe and head over to watchchronicle.com to always catch the latest podcasts and reviews as well as the bulk of watch chronicler content the first watch to start with is the taghor aqua racer for 2021 and the brand has now entirely relaunched the collection with a new range of watches with a subtly but importantly changed design and the aqua racer has for a long time been a mixed dive watch collection a collection which was often looked down upon by watch collectors and enthusiasts as being the non-watch persons dive watch this was the kind of watch someone would buy if they couldn't afford no mega sea or a rolex submariner but did want a well-known high street brand and so the aqua racer was the obvious choice and the last generation made an awful lot of sense in that regard it put all of its money into the physical characteristics you could see notably that you had a ceramic bezel a well-designed but somewhat non-descript dial and the general aesthetic which was not desperately memorable but still very well made and with a movement which was forgettable a simple eta2824 not a bad movement by any stretch but not the best you could find for the price with this new collection though we've shown an entirely new approach from tag heuer towards the aqua racer and there is a generally new tone and a sense that takoya want to ingratiate themselves with traditional hoya fans rather than just people who've seen the brand and want to buy something that's more affordable than omega of course with the rise of for instance tudor in the last few years it's not that surprising this brand has felt a need to improve itself given the price difference between a tudor black bay and an aqua racer wasn't actually that large a few years ago and with this new collection is even smaller as a result of price increases and i think what tahoe have understood is this watch needs to be cheaper than obviously a rolex submariner but with the same kind of widespread appeal with some of the alternative details you could say of omega's collection a less vintage air than what tudor offers and a watch which is up to the same standards as oris and login and first to address the standard production models these watches have now changed size previously you could buy either a 41 or 43 millimeter watch but now there's a 36 option in addition to the 43 with the 41 entirely removed knowing the brand i suspect this is because they've realized that the demographic which buys this watch tends towards the 43 millimeter and certainly that's the only reason i can see for them removing the 41 millimeter size in a sense you can see they've taken something from the breitling super ocean with the smaller women's size and the larger men's size and in the aim of having this his and hers approach to the collection there are quite a few detailed changes notably the male versions have yellow accents on the dial a fully luminous bezel flat lines traveling across the dial with a textured surface whilst the smaller 36 millimeter version has a wavy dial diamonds as an option on the dial instead of markers and the yellow accents are removed whilst the luminous bezel just has a pivot 12 o'clock instead of having all the numerals illuminated but the changes are actually much more fundamental than that notably the big complicated applied markers of the previous generation have been made smaller more modest more simple and actually more legible in terms of not appearing like a rolex submariner homage in any way but simply being more delicate and more measured the date has also moved to six o'clock with a rounded cyclops instead of the rolex style version which we've seen on previous generations and i think this is an immeasurable improvement then you have much development of the case itself with different bevels along the lugs fewer harsh angles but much sharper lines altogether and this gives the watch a much much more mature appearance particularly for the price when you see what other brands are offering something which has remained is a hexagonal emphasis and that means that across this watch you see a hexagonal sort of format for elements like the bezel for various details including the case back and the image of a diving mask on the back as well and it makes sense to keep this given it's an important part of this range's appeal then text on the dial is radically reduced and the case overall is lighter slimmer and has a shorter lug to lug than previously seen a key revision is also the change to sword hands on the dial which again are more classic and more classically accepted than what we've seen from tag heuer previously an important change which i think should be noted at this point is the bracelet is more simple it doesn't have quite so many jagged edges and also has 15 millimeters of micro adjustment which you can move on the fly so to speak to allow you to enjoy this watch in a way which seems more and more standard across this price range now there are also a few special versions of this watch released including a version in full matte titanium with a green dial and green bezel arrangement which is certainly a very striking interpretation of this watch and priced at three and a half thousand pounds it is a thousand pounds more than the base price for this watch in steel now all of these watches do still use an eta2824 but i suppose that's to be expected from this particular brand which doesn't have the same incentive to add interesting additional components like login does the most exciting version for me though is the aqua racer tribute to reference 844 limited edition now the 844 was produced by hoya and muna from 1978 all the way through the 80s and started off being branded simply as hoya and by the end of its run it was a tag heuer product and this first dive watch from the brand was interesting in its earliest iterations because rather than having mercedes hands it had an interesting style of cathedral hand it also had red markers on the dial to show you 24 hours and a very military feel now this 200 meter watch resistant watch was hardly the most technologically advanced watch of its period but certainly it defined hoya and later tag horror dive watches in a way which i don't think the aqua racer ever has until now and what they've done to bring back that watch is a comprehensively new product has to be said and a technologically impressive one too but i think a more appealing one than the other watches in the range as well this isn't cheap it's 3 600 pounds but for that in addition to the eta 2824 you get a grade 5 titanium case in polished and brushed finish with a matte black dial with a very heavily grained surface age superluminova the red 24-hour graduations which one would have seen in the 1970s on the original watch an applied logo on the dial where it's simply printed on other versions and of course it also has the legibility of the larger version of this dive watch in its standard form that's to say with a fully luminous bezel with c3 super luminous on the hours and markers and bgw 9 on the minutes seconds and the bezel to give that color distinction for easy legibility altogether it's not going to be a watch for everyone and particularly in standard form it may still struggle to appeal to the watch collector market which ultimately forms quite a small portion of its demographic but still is important to the image of tag heuer but i think this is a much much better attempt at producing an exciting interesting and most importantly individual dive watch than we've seen in the last few years from tag heuer coming in at the same price as that limited edition of 844 pieces from tag heuer is the orris aquis pro date caliber 400. now that means that these watches are both 3 600 pounds but they couldn't be more different in other respects this oris takes a new direction because previously the oris professional dive watch was the oris pro diver and the pro diver is still in the oris collection but from the release of this watch we can assume that it's on the way out that watch is a thousand pounds cheaper than this aqueous but does have very similar specifications until you get to the movement this watch takes the much larger case size of the pro diver but produces it with the same design as the aqueous in order to create sort of a hybrid and maybe a much more coordinated oris range rather than having two separately named dive watches now they just have the aqua's collection in standard and pro form the appearance though is radically different to the standard aqueous notably this watch is entirely dlc titanium so that's a diamond-like carbon very resistant coating over titanium with a thousand meters resistance and a 49.5 millimeter diameter now it's important to note that like something like a seiko tuner which incidentally is now the direct competitor for this watch the size of 49.5 millimeters is not quite as extreme as you might expect because of the unbelievably short lug to lug length aesthetically a lot comes from this watch's logical predecessor the pro diver notably it has the same black and yellow color scheme dotted 12 marker on the dial and the same wave dial composed of matte and glossy black surfaces but what are new are the hands and the markers in general which take the shapes of the aquas collection rather than the simplified features of the pro diver collection which in many ways were based on the previous generation aqueous rather than the current generation as of the last few years maybe the most important feature is the presence of a locking bezel as seen on the pro diver where you had to press down to disengage a lock in order to then be able to rotate the bezel and it's a unique looking system but it's very much befitting a thousand meter dive watch and i suppose it's oris's own take on seiko's more simple but historically proven shroud around their bezel but this watch is a 3 600 pound watch and for that you get the in-house caliber 400 which aside from a few teething problems with regards to setting the time is an impressive piece of kit it's an in-house automatic and manual winding caliber the 120 hour power reserve 21 joules silicon escape wheel and pallet so that's the whole escapement in silicon for anti-magnetism and also low friction and also runs at four hertz like the salita sw200 or caliber 733 as ours calls it seen in most other aqueous watches when the caliber 400 was first launched a few months ago oris made a very big point of stating that it wasn't designed to be an ego project so to speak but was designed to be tougher and more durable and reliable than the equivalents on the market like presumably the salita movements they've used in the past and so it's a heck of a vote of confidence that they should put it into their thousand meter dive watch which has become more and more popular over the last few years so i look forward to seeing this piece in person especially to see the difference between this and let's say the only marginally more expensive tudo pelagos or other watches of that kind of caliber which this watch now is being forced to compete with ultimately this watch and the aqueous in its 300 meter form with the caliber 400 are both making it more and more complicated to choose a dive watch in that two to four thousand pound price range speaking of luxury chronographs instead of more affordable dive watches we have the zenithify extreme a new interpretation of the most impressive chronograph caliber you could say in the current zenith collection and in fact one of the most impressive on the market altogether now the defined name has been in the zenith collection for quite a few years and has appeared in intervals most notably in the 1960s and 70s as a sort of tough modern looking piece which was a sort of counterpart to the more classical pieces in their collection and then again in the last few years as the most technologically advanced branch of zenith's main collection and a few years ago they launched the defy 21 el primero and this piece had a 44 millimeter case with 100 meters resistance and a very modern appearance it has to be said but still with the traditional el primero hands on the dial el primera markers and also the typical colors you would see the various shades of blue and red on the dial this year zenith have decided to take this watch a step further because that watch already had a very modern looking case but they decided to develop this into a larger 45 millimeter case from the 44 with a thickness of 15.4 millimeters in a finely blasted titanium and this is still the same material as we've seen on previous defy 21s but the enlarged case does give a more impressive more imposing look and also this watch has a higher 200 meter resistance the case back is certainly new that's worth saying and there's a new system for quick releasing the strap and adding the bracelet onto this watch which by the way is fully titanium as well but i do wonder whether there are some shared components in the case with the 44 millimeter watch from a few years ago the biggest change in my opinion is seen on the dial because aside from the fact this watch is available in a very bright and very loud you could say titanium and rose gold option which despite being bright and loud is actually quite good looking the dial of this watch is where the changes have taken place because the hands are enlarged the markers are bigger and the whole thing is going to be more luminous most importantly the sub-dials are also bigger than they were previously and unlike the defy 21 they aren't cut out to show you the movement this watch is still skeletonized but the dial legibility isn't compromised as a result and legibility is important given the fact that this watch has the el primero 9004 movement as seen in the device 21 and this shares the same gear train as the 1969 original el primero to a great extent and so runs at 36 000 vibrations per hour or 10 ticks per second with a 50 hour power reserve but has 53 joules as a result of the fact that in addition to that gear train there's an additional one with its own independent mainspring and that side of the movement also has its own escapement which is entirely separate from the main one of the watch which deals with timekeeping and this runs at 10 times the frequency 360 000 vibrations per hour a baffling rate for a movement to be able to hold this means that the central hand on the dial shows you a single second in one rotation so that you can really time things accurately whilst the subdials give you the normal seconds and the minutes of the chronograph the cost for all of this is a much shorter power reserve in the case of chronograph use because it will only run for 50 minutes although you can wind the watch during running in order to keep it running for longer ultimately the price for this watch is 15 300 pounds in its most basic form which is near enough four thousand pounds more than the standard watch but then in this market for extremely complicated chronographs it's actually quite reasonable the next two watches come from iwc and iwc has had a cracker of a watch release season this year because they've released two particular pilots watches which have really caught my eye and the first is the more ridiculous of the two the iwc big pilots watch shock absorber xpl and this is a modern interpretation of iwc's pilot watch format it's been developed by iwc in their sort of skunk works you could say their experimental engineering team as they called them with a watch able to resist shocks up to 30 000 g now i should give you some context because trying to understand 30 000 g without any context doesn't really make any sense and there's no real point to discussing a watch which can resist it in that case to give you some context if you look at the previous generation of formula one engine that's say the 2.4 liter v8 f1 engines we used to see the top of one of the pistons inside their engines at full revs which is roughly 18 000 rpm experiences 8000 g similarly the electronics inside modern artillery shells can resist about 15 000 g but you can see the sort of resistance this watch has although in actual fact that's not quite fair because you see this watch is resistant to instantaneous forces from impacts up to 30 000 g i doubt this watch could resist sustained pull at 30 000 g without destroying all the bearings inside the movement but that's a different matter because you'll never come across that anyway and the way this is produced is a 44 millimeter case with a 12 millimeter thickness produced from serotonin the brand's proprietary scratch resistant but very lightweight compound of ceramic and titanium with a sapphire crystal on both sides screw down crown and 100 meters resistance but most important is the spring g protect system which has a rather stupid name has to be said but which suspends the whole movement and dull within the case and this is produced from bmg or bulk metallic glass and we've seen this from panerai in the past in fact with their production of cases from the material but it was found to be very brittle as a case material because it looked like metal fundamentally it behaved like glass but in this application they seem to have found a use for it which means that the springiness of the material can be put to good use to cushion the movement from impacts the whole assembly is actually very clear through the front of the watch because you have a very modern pilot's watch dial which i'd love to see on other iwc watches with a gap around the edge where the movement is surrounded by that shock absorber the only real concession is the movement which is the caliber 3211 which is a revision of the 32 000 series movement from iwc which is very loosely based on the eta2892 but then again that's going to give you greater reliability anyway and this has 120 hour power reserve and runs at 4 hertz with a new aluminium base plate for lightness and this was probably used because they couldn't fit any of their much larger in-house movements into the case with space for the shock absorber the problem with this watch for me is that it will only be made in 30 pieces over the next three years for 80 000 swiss francs a piece and this would be all right if this were a unique piece of technology but ultimately it simply isn't the first of its kind but then again 50 years ago certina were putting rubber o-rings around their movements for shock absorption inside their dive watches which worked extremely well because more recently ball released the engineer hydrocarbon dvgru which designed for the u.s navy's seal team six with a special regulator system and a shock resistant seal around the movement and the crown which was able to deaden shocks up to 50 000 g which is more than the iwc is rated to and yet that was a watch which cost under 2 000 pounds so i can see the cleverness of that iwc but i also realized that it is ultimately a showpiece and not something with any real practical applications in the short term but now we come to the second iwc of the video and the one which i think is a resounding success this is the iwc big pilot's watch 43 millimeter and i think this is the most important big pilot since the launch of the original 5002 in 2002 and that's a big statement but i think one which is well justified you see this is a rethink of the big pilot for iwc for simplified tastes and for more wrists historically iwc pursued the british style small case four loom plot mark 11 style pilots watch throughout the 20th century from its launch in the 40s but in 2002 they brought back the big pilot as a reinterpretation of the baumuster a and b watches produced for the luftwaffe after being commissioned in the mid-1930s and which were used by pilots and navigators alike during the 1940s and aside from the historical and moral ambiguity of the use of those watches in the past iwc has been very successful at marketing these watches as the ultimate pilot's watch but aside from some specific ultra big versions such as the 55 millimeter big pilot's watch heritage 55 and titanium big pilots watch heritage 48 neither of which had anything like facsimile dials or hands of the originals iwc has added extra features to all releases such as small seconds or power reserve indicators to make it a very different watch to anything like larko might produce which really resembles watches from the past but with this watch iwc have allowed the big pilot to return to basics and its original character as a simple time-only three-hand pilot's watch giving you fantastic quality but ultimately showing you just the basics in the spirit of this the case of the watch has been shrunken to 43 millimeters wide by 13.6 millimeters thick considerably smaller than the 46.2 by 15.5 millimeters of the normal one the watch is also stainless steel with a very pure dial arrangement albeit with the somewhat uglier second hand of the most recent generation of the big pilot but of course that's purely my opinion and this is available in either black or in sunburst blue another key feature is the increase in water resistance which has sat at 60 meters throughout the iwc pilot's watch collection for the last few years and with this watch they've increased it to 100 meters with an exhibition case back as well and a screw-down crown this means that you can now use this pilot's watch as an everyday piece and swim with it if you so wish and have the watch on a rubber strap which i think makes it a much more versatile timepiece for the average owner the only technical concession i can see is the use of the caliber 82100 instead of the larger 52110 as seen in the bigger standard big pilot and the smaller movement is of course for the smaller case and makes sense particularly for the price of this watch as well and the power reserve as a result decreases to 60 hours from 168 hours or seven days which means that you get a totally passable and usable power reserve but not the fantastic longevity you would get from those larger movements the dual count has also gone down to 21 and the movement size as a consequence is much smaller too at 30 millimeters rather than 38.2 but you do still get iwc's famous peloton automatic winding system with fantastic efficiency and of course nowadays offered in hard long lasting ceramic to give you peace of mind with this very reliable and very well designed automatic winding system and sure you do get fewer complications and a more simple general construction importantly there has also been a serious price change because priced at 13 900 pounds the normal big pilot was never really competing with any other steel pilot's watch it was always elevated above that but now with this more simple version you can have one for 8 900 swiss francs a considerable saving making this watch a genuine alternative for someone who's planning to buy something like a rolex gmt master thus making the iwc a more enticing option altogether i think that it's fantastic that iwc are putting effort into a watch which isn't a limited edition but is something new and important for the collection the final piece to speak about comes from muay slajjua and it's the icon master grand date a halo model for their very popular icon collection which does play to a great extent off the appeal at the moment for integrated bracelet sports watches with 100 meter or more water resistance but with a somewhat dressy and refined appearance and particularly with blue dials and this watch falls into all those categories and the icon has been very successful as a very well made but affordable watch in that segment and particularly with an extremely well produced bracelet which is of course crucial to a watch with an integrated bracelet and so they've chosen to release a halo version of this product from their masterpiece collection or rather a movement which finds its roots in their masterpiece collection but more on that a little bit later and something very important to bear in mind whilst i talk about this watch is that it's priced at just over 7000 swiss francs which i think gives a lot of context to a lot of this watch and makes it a lot more impressive than you might at first realize now the design of this watch hasn't changed much from the standard version it retains the same format of case and bracelet but now in a larger 45 millimeter size with a 15 millimeter thickness and this may sound rather large by comparison to the reasonably modest watch the standard piece is but it has to accommodate a 16 and a half line movement now to give you some context an eta2824 is 11.5 lines so retaining a smaller case size wasn't really an option i was told by the brand that 43 millimeters would have been an option but as you can imagine the dial wouldn't have looked right if crammed into the case this watch also has the same 100 meters resistance but most important to this watch is the movement the ml-331 an in-house automatic movement based on those seen in the masterpiece models and so has a balance wheel on the front side of the movement to be visible when you look down at the watch and the dial reduced in size into a smaller format and placed on the one side of the dial with the small seconds beneath it of course with this watch though they've taken that movement and improved it because aside from giving a reasonably generous 50-hour power reserve the watch now has a large double date placed on the dial as well for added convenience and a revised balance which is much more sporting previously they've had a simple balance with an unweighted balance wheel but now they have a free sprung balance wheel with a balanced bridge to give razer stability in terms of accuracy and time keeping but also when subjected to greater impacts which this watch might suffer in the sports watch field you also learn a lot about the watch if you look at the case back which shows the skeletonized rotor and of course exhibition case back but most important is the beveling around all the bridges and plates you see through the case back which is all done by hand that's hand england on the watch which is seven thousand swiss francs which i think is quite remarkable and very different certainly than what you would normally expect for the price because ultimately if someone went to buy a watch for that sort of money they might look at a mid-range rolex or something of that type maybe in omega alternatively but here you're getting an alternative option from a brand which is perhaps not on a lot of people's radar but which is giving you an awful lot of watch for not a ridiculous amount of money and certainly not a lot of money to ask for these particular complications so i look forward to seeing this piece in person along with all the various other watches in this video but what do you think of the various watches i've spoken about which one is your favorite and do you think i've missed any sports watches from this year's show let me know in the comment section below if you think so but thank you very much for watching and do remember to like share and subscribe if you enjoyed this video this is armon from watch chronicler.com out

Channel: WATCH CHRONICLER

Views: 36,848

Keywords: IWC, IWC Big Pilot, John Mayer Big Pilot, Oris, Oris Aquis, Aquispro, Oris Prodiver, Oris Aquis Cal 400, IWC Big Pilot 43mm, new watches 2021, Watches & Wonders, Watches and Wonders, Zenith, Zenith Defy 21, Zenith Defy Extreme, TAG Heuer, Heuer, Heuer 844, TAG Heuer Aquaracer, 2021 Aquaracer, Maurice Lacroix, Maurice Lacroix Aikon, Maurice Lacroix Masterpiece, dive watch, best sport watches, Best Swiss watches 2021, Omega, Rolex Explorer, Rolex Explorer II

Id: AZk73B0ZEdk

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021