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Events • 06 Apr 2016
A Quartet Worth Considering From Baselworld 2016
Literally thousands of new watches are debuted at each year’s Baselworld watch and jewelry tradeshow held in Basel, Switzerland. Depending on your tastes and budget, different types of timepieces will appeal to you. I’d like to bring up four of many new watches that I feel well represent the show, and each of these should appeal to a very different type of customer. What makes a new watch worth noting? It isn’t just design or technical elegance, but rather a combination of elements that makes a watch actually worth considering for purchase now or in the future. These are each watches that not only represent the best of the industry, but are also worth the money.
Patek Philippe World Time Ref. 5230
One of the most popular Patek Philippe watches I see “in the wild” are World Times. These popular traveling watches have a rotating disc with reference city names which allow people to know their local time as well as the time in any of the 24 major time zones. The 5230 is the latest iteration of the Patek Philippe World Time and it has been given the latest list of reference city names (these thing change) and enhanced with a few visual facelifts. The 38.5 mm wide case comes in either 18k white or rose gold, and the in-house made automatic movement is both slim and high-performance, and not to mention beautiful. Patek Philippe even redesigned the dial and hands for a fresh look. This is a good watch made even better.
The Patek Philippe World Time Ref 5230 is the latest iteration with the latest list of reference city names and enhanced with a few visual facelifts.
Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater
Put the less than 7 mm thick Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater watch on your wrist and you’ll appreciate what it means to wear the world’s thinnest minute repeater watch. Like a musical wafer on your wrist, the carefully tuned manually-wound in-house made minute repeater movement sounds impossibly clear and crisp in the sand-blasted titanium case. Small slits in the dial where the hours markers would be help the sound resonate through more of the case and the subdued style of the watch adds a welcome unpretentious character to the otherwise luxury Octo timepiece.
At less than 7mm thick, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater is the world’s thinnest minute repeater watch.
Hublot Big Bang MECA-10
Set in the now iconic Big Bang 45 case, the Hublot Big Bang MECA-10 contains a brand new in-house Hublot movement that is the caliber HUB1201. Manually wound, the movement offers 10 full days of power reserve along with the time and a cool digital power reserve indicator. What’s more important is how the movement was designed – in order to be visually stunning and capture the modern horological essence of what the brand has become known for.
The Hublot Big bang MECA-10 contains a brand new in-house Hublot movement – the caliber HUB1201.
Tudor Heritage Black Bay
Tudor isn’t shy about sharing the fact that the Heritage Black Bay collection is their best seller – so it makes sense for them to not only add to the product family but also improve it. 2016 has various new additions to the Heritage Black Bay line, but the real news is that moving forward all Heritage Black Bay models will contain in-house made Tudor movements. This is a change from the brand’s use of sourced movements from Swiss supplier ETA. The 41mm wide Black Bay case is more or less unchanged, but in addition to the new movement, Tudor has updated the dial text which is now a bit more refined. Again, here we have another good watch made even better for 2016.
In addition to the new in-house made Tudor movement, the Tudor Heritage Black Bay has an updated dial text.