Citizen expands its Series 8 collection of automatic watches with a highly anti-magnetic GMT model. Offered in three contemporary designs, including one limited-edition gold-colored model, the new watches add a highly practical function to the offerings within this much-acclaimed Citizen collection.
One of three new Citizen Series 8 automatic GMT models.
With their traditional GMT function, the new watches allow the wearer to read the time in up to three time zones via the bi-directional rotating bezel.
The bezel colors are split into daytime and nighttime hues, represented by blue and black on the black-dialed model and red and light blue on the model with the dark blue dial.
Citizen created a dial designed to mimic Tokyo at night with a pattern meant to recall skyscrapers and windows of different sizes. The pattern updates a classic checkerboard design, which in Japan are said to represent prosperity.
Citizen finishes the 41mm by 13.5mm steel case on the two ongoing models with both mirror and brushed finishes with multiple patterns. Automatic caliber 9054 is visible through the clear caseback. Citizen adds strong magnetic resistance to the caliber and case, which helps the watch maintain average daily accuracy of-10 to +20 seconds and a fifty-hour running time.
The yellow-gold-colored Series 8 GMT is a limited-edition of 1,300 pieces worldwide. Citizen explains that its designers were inspired by the “warm golden rays of the autumn sun in Japan” when coloring the case, bracelet and dial.
The embossed dial pattern here is particularly impressive. Meant to recall the appearance of light and shade created by long autumn grass during the sunset, it elevates the visual appeal of this limited edition with an artisanal approach not typically seen at this price level.
Here, Citizen frames the dial with a pleasing brown and cream-colored GMT bi-directional bezel. And like the ongoing GMT models, this limited edition also exposes its Caliber 9054 movement through a clear caseback.
One of two new Baume & Mercier Riviera GMT models.
With its full-throttled release of new Riviera designs within the past few years, Baume & Mercier continues in 2023 to update one of its most-loved designs.
While the most recent Riviera update includes good-looking time-only, moon phase and skeleton models, this new GMT edition turned my head the quickest. Granted, the steel and titanium design came in a close second, but the new 42mm steel Riviera GMT model, offered in two color options, topped my list.
With its twelve-sided bezel and accompanying four screws, Riviera has managed to retain its casual elegance since its 1973 debut. When Baume & Mercier presented a fifth-generation Riviera collection in 2021, I was impressed.
But the new GMT upholds Riviera’s tacit invitation to travel (yes, to the French Riviera) with an actual dual-time function. Its central fourth hand rotates around the dial every 24 hours to indicate the time in the travel destination on the peripheral hour scale.
The GMT hand on the new design is as red as a sunburn on its namesake beach, and on either dial the second time zone is always highly visible. But this is especially true on the silver-dial edition, which also displays the 24-hour markers in matching red.
As noted, the two new Riviera GMT watches are available in two versions: one with a blue dialand a blue rubber strap and one with a silver dial and a steel bracelet. Both offer a tone-on-tone sun-satin finish and wave dial decor under a sapphire sapphire crystal with anti-glare coating on both sides. The GMT movement here is powered by an ETA-based caliber.
The watch’s octagonal crown of course displays Baume & Mercier’s Phi logo engraving in relief with a red line. Baume & Mercier’s own “Fast Strap” interchangeability system makes it a simple task to change from one strap style to another with no need for tools.
Prices: $3,200 (silver dial and steel bracelet) and $3,100 (blue dial with blue rubber strap).
Greubel Forsey moves its titanium globe to the center of its new GMT Balancier Convexe, altering the watchmaker’s long-standing dial-borne universe in the process.
The new Greubel Forsey GMT Balancier Convexe.
The globe, an eye-catching component of the watchmaker’s GMT, GMT Earth, GMT Quadruple Tourbillon and GMT Sport, appears at the heart of the new 46.5mm titanium watch, which debuts this week at Geneva Watch Days. In those earlier GMT models, the globe was positioned along the edge of the case.
The new GMT Balancier Convexe joins six existing models within the independent watchmaker’s relatively new Convexe collection.
As Greubel Forsey centers the globe on the new watch, the orb becomes a more visible component. The new design “replaces all previous GMT models and features,” according to Greubel Forsey.
Set within what appears to be an amphitheater just under the sapphire crystal, the globe rotates once per day as it plays a key role in the watch’s contemporary depiction of universal time.
GMT Balancier Convexe, showing inclined balance in foreground.
Three rings frame the amphitheater. These denote local time hours and minutes, as well as universal time. Helpfully, Greubel Forsey darkens the background when the time indicates night and brightens it when the time is during the day.
Greubel Forsey explains that its finishers have polished the inside of the case “so that it mirrors the escapement platform, the Terrestrial globe, and nearly every element visible on the dial side, thus adding incredible depth to this new construction.”
Inclined Balance
The centrally located globe isn’t the only premiere here. For the first time within a GMT model, the watchmaker’s signature 30-degree inclined balance wheel vibrates nearby, held by a flat black-polished and barrel-polished steel balance wheel bridge on polished steel pillars. Adjacent to this, note the small seconds, displayed with a blue gold hand.
Where the dial-side of the new watch is impressively redesigned, the back of the watch retains Greubel Forsey’s signature disc with 24 time zones indicating the UTC time. The only variation here is a minor one:the UTC of Paris has been replaced by La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, home for Greubel Forsey.
All this drama is framed by Greubel Forsey’s unusual convex case, with its curved geometry and undulating lines that, along the top, are higher on the sides and lower at the 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock positions. The case itself is also asymmetric, with a diameter of 46.5mm around the bezel and 43.5mm around the case band. This means it nicely hugs the curve of the wrist.
Greubel Forsey will make sixty-six GMT Balancier Convexe timepieces at the rate of twenty-two per year between 2022 and 2024. Each is available on either a titanium bracelet or a textured rubber strap. Price: CHF 350,000.
Displays:Hours and minutes, small seconds, 2nd time zone GMT, rotating globe with universal time, day-and-night, 24 time zones universal time, summer time, winter time.
Movement: Manual-wind with 423 parts, including 59 in the escapement. Two coaxial series-coupled fast-rotating barrels (1 turn in 3.2 hours), equipped with a fixed mainspring-bridle. Bridges and main plates in titanium with frosted, polished beveling and countersinks, straight-grained flank. Escapement is inclined at a 30° angle, flat black polished steel, polished beveling and countersinks, straight-grained flanks, polished steel pillars, flat black-polished.
Case: Caseband diameter 43.50mm, bezel diameter: 46.50mm, case height: 13.75 mm, height on sapphire crystals: 17.40 mm. Titanium case with curved sapphire crystal, three-dimensional, variable geometry-shaped bezel, hand-polished, profiled lugs, screwed fixing, transparent back with curved and high domed synthetic sapphire crystal, engraved GMT pusher, titanium security screws, raised engravings.
Dial: Terrestrial globe in titanium, relief-engraved continents, ocean blue treatment, day-and-night UTC indicator in titanium, engraved and lacquered, GMT indicator in gold, amphitheater hour-ring with engraved and lacquered minute-circle, small seconds indicator in gold.
Hands: Hours and minutes with SuperLumiNova, red triangles, 2nd time zone GMT indicator, blue triangle, small seconds in polished blued steel, flat black-polished head.
Strap:Non-animal material, rubber with text in relief, titanium folding clasp, engraved GF logo. Also upon request:3-row metal bracelet in titanium, folding clasp with integrated fine adjustment, engraved GF logo.
With its new Aluminum GMT Amerigo Vespucci, Bulgari pays tribute to the Vespucci, a three-mast Italian navy training ship. The new watch, a limited edition of 1,000, is Bulgari’s second recent Aluminum Collection debut, arriving just weeks after the Aluminum Chronograph Ducati Special Edition.
The new Bulgari Aluminum GMT Amerigo Vespucci Special Edition.
As Bulgari’s sportiest design, the Bvlgari Aluminum series has long been one of the Italian-Swiss watchmaker and jeweler’s most successful collections, with its lightweight case and bold Bvlgari Bvlgari-branded black or blue rubber bezel.
Bulgari originally fit its Aluminum series with a mechatronic-quartz movement but updated the collection in 2020 with mechanical calibers. Here, Bulgari fits the new watch with its Caliber BVL 192, a GMT movement powering a dual-time display indicated by a yellow-tipped luminescent arrow hand.
The new watch’s dial displays both the Italian colors and the yellow hue found on the namesake ship. As the GMT hand rotates once in twenty-four hours, it indicates the hour within a chosen second time zone. Bulgari simplifies the timekeeping by marking the two twelve-hour zones in contrasting black and yellow to distinguish between day and night.
The Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian Navy training ship.
This 40mm aluminum watch is water-resistant to 100 meters and features a titanium caseback that is engraved with “Nave Scuola Amerigo Vespucci” and the motto: “Non chi cominicia ma quel che persevere” (Not he who begins, but he who perseveres).
As with all Bulgari aluminum watches, this latest model is fit with an articulated rubber strap. Price: $3,950, limited to 1000 pieces.
Specifications: Bulgari Aluminum GMT Amerigo Vespucci Special Edition
Movement: Automatic BVL Caliber 192 with GMT function (second time-zone indication) and 50-hour power reserve, 28,800 vph (4 Hz) frequency.
Case: 40mm aluminum, black DLC-coated titanium back, black rubber bezel, DLC-coated titanium crown,
Dial: Black bearing inscription, rhodium-plated hour-markers and hours and minutes hands filled with SuperLuminova, yellow rhodium-plated seconds hand, black and yellow 24- hour outer dial with an arrow-shaped GMT hand filled with SuperLuminova, date window at 3 o’clock. Water-resistant to 100 meters.
Strap: Rubber with aluminum links, aluminum pin buckle.
Norqain adds a blue dial limited edition model to its 40mm Freedom 60 GMT collection, one of the independent Swiss watchmaker’s most popular designs.
The Norqain Freedom 60 GMT 40mm Limited Edition
With its 1960s-style domed dial and an easy-to-read GMT scale in the center of the dial, the watch has serious vintage appeal. Norqain seals the appeal when it applies Old Radium SuperLuminova to the bronze hands, and frames it all with a bronze case.
Norqain underscores all this retro eye-candy with appropriately modern technology, most critically the use of its chronometer-precise, in-house-designed Caliber NN20/2, an automatic movement (below) produced together with movement-maker Kenissi.
The movement boasts a jumping hour to easily set the time and date forward or backward. Its long power reserve of seventy hours is among the most impressive we’ve seen at this price point.
Also very up-to-date is Norqain’s decision to offer only non-leather straps or metal bracelets for all its watches. For this new model Norqain offers three different bracelet options, including a vegan-certified Perlon blue rubber strap with a pin clasp that matches the case. The watch is also available with Norqain’s own Nortide strap and an Alcantara strap, both of which include stitches that resemble mountaintops near the lugs.
The bezel colors are split into daytime and nighttime hues, represented by blue and black on the black-dialed model and red and light blue on the model with the dark blue dial.
