At the end of the year it’s time to note our favorite 2023 debut watches. We continue our look at a few of our favorite timekeepers of the year.
Maurice Lacroix: Pontos S Diver
Maurice Lacroix revisited its Pontos S Diver earlier this year, revamping the dive watch with a sharp-looking new dial sporting bolder indexes and minute markings, improved luminosity and a raised date frame.
With the updated 42mm watch, Maurice Lacroix enhances dial visibility with newly facetted hour and minute hands, both of which glow with SuperlumiNova. On the minute hand you’ll now see a border colored to contrast with the dial. The hour indexes retain their generous luminescent treatment.
Maurice Lacroix also retains the watch’s useful internal rotating bezel to indicate elapsed time, adjusted using the crown at the 2 o’clock position. The second crown at the 3 o’clock position is used to adjust the time, date and to wind the automatic ML115 movement. All models are water resistant to 300 meters. Prices: $2,050 (steel) and $2,600 (bronze).
Bell & Ross: BR05 Chrono Green Steel
Bell & Ross mixes nature and architecture with the new BR 05 Chrono Green Steel, one of its newest in the BR 05 series of ‘rounded square’ designs. The watch is even more approachable as a steel model, when compared to the gold-cased, three-hand model (BR 05 Green Gold) from earlier in the year. Bell & Ross fits an eye-catching automotive-inspired 360-degree rotor to the movement, which is visible through a sapphire caseback.
Price: $6,200 (rubber strap) and $6,700 (steel bracelet).
Citizen: Washi Paper Limited Edition
This limited-edition model features a Tosa ‘washi’ dial enhanced with powdered platinum leaf using a traditional Japanese decorative technique called S unago-maki that echoes the look of freshly fallen snow.
The 38.3mm case and the bracelet are made of Super Titanium treated with Duratect Platinum, making the watch scratch resistant and giving the metal a gleaming, almost transparent, silver hue. And of course the watch is equipped with a high-accuracy light-powered Eco-Drive movement with an annual accuracy of ±5 seconds. Price: $4,300.
Pro Tek: Field Watch
This quite affordable 3000 Field watch is crafted in a slim (11mm) and lightweight titanium case in either a natural or black IP version. All are capped with a flat sapphire crystal over a dial and hands enhanced with 3 colors of T-100 self-illuminating tubes.
Rated and tested to a legitimate 100 meters of water resistance, the ProTek Series 3000 field watch can also be a casual-use water watch and is delivered with a waterproof Italian leather strap. With a light weight of just over 48 grams (head-only), the watches are very comfortable on the wrist for extended use. The threaded (screw-down) back is also crafted in titanium with a stylized “P” presented in deep relief, as it is on the double-gasket crown. Inside the case is a Citizen/Miyota quartz movement with a four-year battery accurate to +/- 20 seconds per month. Retail price is $475 at www.watchgauge.com.
Custos: Challenge Sealiner PS
At 59mm by 45mm, this watch’s impressive sapphire case is endowed with a non-reflective coating on both sides and is affixed with specialized Cvstos polished titanium screws. Its sharp-looking teak dial really sets it apart from other nautically themed models. Just below the stylized luminous hands (including a very cool propeller-shaped small-seconds hand) lies a teak-wood plate, echoing the woodwork found on many an ocean-cruising yacht.
Cvstos will make twenty-five examples of the Challenge Sealiner PS with orange or turquoise dial and crown accents and matching rubber strap. Price: $49,500.
Zenith: Pilot Big Date Flyback
Powered by the new El Primero 3652 automatic high-frequency chronograph (a new version of the Zenith El Primero 3600), this hero debut from Watches and Wonders 2023 displays its namesake functions with panache. The steel model is especially notable for its vintage ‘Rainbow Flyback’ references with its chronograph’s minutes totalizer finished in alternating colors, which will make it easier to distinguish between the five-minute marks.
In addition, the steel model’s central chronograph seconds and its chronograph minutes hands are bright orange. This is another nod to the Zenith El Primero Rainbow from 1997. Also very cool, the model’s black ceramic version (above) is more utilitarian look with luminescent white markers and hands that contrast nicely against a black corrugated dial. On both models, the oversized date display features a new, patented mechanism that advances and stabilizes both of the big date’s wheels in less than 0.03 seconds.
Prices:
Pilot Big Date Flyback – Black Microblasted Ceramic: $13,500 and Pilot Big Date Flyback – Steel: $11,500.
The elegant Clous de Paris pattern is set with a brown hue that gradually darkens toward the edges. Thin stick indexes in gold also set a more sartorial tone to the watch, as do the gold hands.
As with all Aikon watches, 
And as the watches are made for summertime outdoor wearing, Maurice Lacroix uses FKM rubber straps which are said to be more flexible and more weather resistant than standard rubber straps.
