New Watch Master

Seven Watches Under $600 For When You Want To Keep It Digital (And Simple) While mechanical watches and their micro-engineered marvels remain the raison d'être for Hodinkee—and what drew me to writing about horology—sometimes the mood calls for a complete departure. Something fun, rugged, and remarkably light on the wrist. Digital watches have evolved into so much more than Casios, even if they exist in a world of their own when it comes to choice. Whether you're chasing that nostalgic rush of childhood or, like me, "borrowing" your kid's F-91W for a bike ride, digital watches offer crisp legibility without the pretense. From budget-friendly classics to more sophisticated offerings, read on for compelling digital options that might just remind you why simple can be sublime. Timex IRONMAN Original 30 Rich with retro credibility, the fitness-focused Timex IRONMAN predates today's Garmin and Polar fitness juggernauts by decades, and famously popped out from...

Stowa General Manager Kevin Müller Continues the Brand’s Long Enthusiast Legacy Change is a scary thing. Change at a small, enthusiast-favorite brand is downright terrifying. As watch collectors and enthusiasts, we’re constantly on the lookout for the next thing — the new exciting brand, the unexpected novelty, the rising watchmaker yet to be truly discovered. But that search for the ‘new’ is only possible thanks to the reliable backstop certain brands have built for enthusiasts since the modern enthusiast market developed in the latter part of the 20th century. Stowa is absolutely one of these backstop brands. A reliable step on the ladder for developing enthusiasts, Stowa — which was founded in 1927 but has existed in its modern form since 1996 — has sat squarely at the heart of the watch community as long as I’ve been interested in watches. As long as I’ve been aware of them, Stowa has been the place to go for high-quality, affordable pilots’ and marine watches, and has paired ...

Hands-On: Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Celestial According to Google, I really shouldn't like this watch. I'm not an astrology guy, or a horoscope guy, or even really a Zodiac guy, so on the way to the Vacheron Constantin boutique in New York, I turned to Google for guidance on how I, a Cancer by birth date, should feel about a watch meant for an Aries. It was a great opportunity to be the first journalist in the Americas to look at the brand's newest Metiers d'Art release—an astrologically inspired series of twelve watches called "Tribute to the Celestial"—so I wanted to come prepared. Certainly, four millennia of studying the stars, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia and distilled down into an AI-generated Google summary, would be the best guide to a completely objective review of a watch. So, as I walked into the boutique, according to Google, things weren't about to go well. Apparently, Aries and Cancer are meant to have a diffi...

Hands-On: the Aera M-1 Blackbird Is it too late to dub the summer of 2025 “Black Watch Summer”? That might be how I remember this particular season. The watch I’ve worn most, by far, as the temps have soared is my Ming 37.09 “Uni,” a blacked out void of a watch if ever there was one. And a few weeks ago at Windup I purchased my first vintage watch in ages, a DLC coated Favre-Leuba chronograph that I couldn’t pass on. And now, as we’re fully in the dog days, I sit here with the new Aera Instruments M-1 Blackbird on my wrist, another cool, sleek, blacked out watch that bolsters the notion that Aera is one of the most interesting accessible indies of the moment.  I reviewed Aera’s D-1 dive watch a few years ago , and the tone of that review was one of pleasant surprise. At the time, the brand was in the midst of launching their second collection, and from the photos and press materials I had seen, I was struggling to make sense of why this brand needed to exist. That might se...

Bring a Loupe: A Lange Double Split, A Heuer Camaro, And An Early Jaeger Chronograph Happy Friday, and welcome back to Bring A Loupe! It seems as though the response to including more "bidder beware" picks here has been positive, which is nice. Though it's not the aim of this article to tear people down, if a random eBay seller is trying to pass something off as good that is clearly not, I'm happy to call that out. If we can save someone from making a poor decision by including it, we've done our good deed for the day. We're focusing on the good this week, but "bidder beware" will be back. Before the picks, both good and bad, let's look at the results from the last go-around. The skeletonized Chopard has been marked as "reserved;" the asking price was $6,999 . On eBay: our Wittnauer chronograph did very well, finishing at $4,601.99 , the Ralco Electric has been marked as sold at the buy it now price of £199.99 , and our Gallet Multic...