In case you haven’t heard – which I would find personally insulting – for the last few months, we here at Oracle Time have been running our own annual awards. They’re the first and only watch awards shortlisted and voted for by our readers, meaning that the results aren’t down to us. We didn’t get a panel of our industry cronies to decide between them, we didn’t sell the categories to our favourite advertisers, nothing like that, just horological democracy at work.
There are ten categories, running the gamut from dive watches to haute horology, and everything in-between. You may even be able to guess some of the winners from the eight-watch shortlists we’ve been promoting over the past few months – so don’t forget to let us know how many you got right. More importantly, this is the first time we’ll be revealing the results of the completely open Readers’ Choice award – the de facto Oracle Time Watch of the Year 2024.
So, now that the votes have been counted (far more than last year, might I add) let’s take a look at this year’s winners of the Oracle Time Watch Awards.
Best Dive Watch | Christopher Ward C60 Trident Lumiere
When we reviewed Christopher Ward’s latest diver back in August, we knew it would be a serious contender for dive watch of the year. It’s a watch that takes the concept of lightness and runs with it in different directions. There’s the dial, which not only has one of the most eye-catching orange colourings we’ve come across – even in the orange obsessed sub-genre of diving watches – but has solid Globolight indexes. This is the same sort of material Christopher Ward use on their ‘Glow’ watches, so it almost goes without saying that it’s incredibly bright. Then there’s the case, which is light in a very different way, in full titanium.
Less obvious refinements include the newly svelte thickness, which thanks to a new Sellita SW300 movement, slims things down to just 10.85mm, meaning it sits better on the wrist than ever before. It also ups the power reserve to a more-than-respectable 56 hours. All of that, plus professional diving specs for £1,985 makes this a no-brainer for the Best Dive Watch of 2024.
More details at Christopher Ward.
Best Chronograph | Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional White
It seems to be a trend this year for serious watchmakers to update their classic models in favour of anything too risky and while that’s likely to generate fewer headlines, I’m entirely in favour of it. Sure, it makes my job a little less interesting, but the pure, clean simplicity of a Speedmaster with a white lacquer dial makes up for it.
Let’s not beat around the bush here, this is nothing dramatic. It was initially teased by Daniel Craig, which was likely the reason for some of the hype around the new watch more than the watch itself. Still, the pristine white takes the high-contrast, ultra-legible formula that took the Speedmaster to the moon and gives it a refresh.
Old school Speedy-heads are still catered to, too, with some welcome historical touches – the DON bezel and Alaska Project colourway key among them – and a gorgeously finished manual-wind movement. It’s not as authentic as the Moonwatch Professional, but it might be the best Speedmaster of the year, if not a good deal longer.
More details at Omega.
Best Accessible Watch | Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 40mm Gradient
We didn’t call this the perfect summer wearer for no reason. The PRX is one of those scant handful of modern watches that you could actually call iconic and, while a lot of that is largely drawn from the 1970s archives of Gerald Genta, it’s Tissot’s accessible twist on the formula that has made this particular integrated bracelet sports watch a firm favourite.
This time the Swatch Group brand has upped the ante with a gorgeous gradient dial. Rather than the more traditional fume, where the lighter part is in the centre and the darker at the periphery of the dial, the split is between top and bottom, going from pale and icy to almost purple. It still has that signature, Royal Oakadjacent Tapisserie finish, too.
We can imagine in the New Year that Tissot will flex similar designs across the horological rainbow, but for now, with a price tag of £640, this makes for one of the coolest accessible watches around right now – and the winner for 2024.
More details at Tissot.
Best Dress Watch | Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Moonphase Retrograde
The vintage-inspired wave ever crashes, with brands moving away from those core decades of the 1960s and ‘70s to the ‘50s and ‘80s instead, the former of which is firmly in Vacheron’s wheelhouse. In fact, they have a collection dedicated to clean ‘50s style in the Patrimony. It was a collection that was the prestige watchmaker’s focus for 2024 and, while I personally loved the base automatic Patrimony, the new moonphase model evidently struck a chord with our readers.
It’s not hard to appreciate why this is a winner. The Patrimony Moonphase has its titular complication at six o’clock as per usual, but rather than a full circle it’s an arch instead. It works the same as a standard moonphase – marked out to a precise 29 ½ days – but the shape echoes the unusual retrograde date across the top half of the dial. The result is something that looks like a dual retrograde without actually being one.
Pair the novel layout with the ‘50s dress watch refinement of golden pearl minute markers, elegant, elongated hour markers and a silky, silvery dial and you have an absolutely stunning dress watch, as suited for 2024 as it is 1954.
More details at Vacheron Constantin.
Best Travel Complication | Longines Spirit Zulu Time Titanium
When the Spirit Zulu Time was launched back in 2022 – and to a lesser extent, the time-and-date version from the year before – I didn’t realise quite how fantastic the reception would be. Longines weren’t best known for pilots’ watches and the ‘pilots inspired’ nature of the Spirit could have felt like they were jumping on the aviation bandwagon – if it weren’t so confidently done. Instead, it has become their best received watch in years.
The Spirit Zulu Time Titanium doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, it adds the quality-of-life upgrade that is lightweight titanium, making that comparatively chunky case a joy to wear on a daily basis. The darker metal also works nicely with the gilt black and gold dial, which could have been stripped off everyone’s favourite Prince of retro, the Black Bay and given a cockpit-focused facelift.
It perhaps doesn’t expand the collection in the same way as the new flyback chrono that it was released alongside does, but for my money – and apparently, a lot of yours – this fills a GMT shaped hole I didn’t know I had.
More details at Longines.
Best Field/Pilot’s Watch | IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Top Gun Mojave Desert
IWC got ahead of the coloured ceramic curve when they released the Mojave a few years back (you know, discounting Rado) and the sandy colour has been a mainstay of their collection ever since. Sure, they’ve dabbled in crisp white, forest green and other military-adjacent combinations, but the aptly named desert ceramic is hard to beat.
Of all watches, this is the one that should have always been draped in the Mojave colours. For one, it’s the Top Gun; both the ceramic and watch itself are inspired by the legendary silver screen pilots’ academy. Here though, it’s the 41mm version rather than the previous Lake Tahoe and Woodland Green versions, making it much more wearable for those of us not determined to strap it over a flight suit.
The pushers and crown that you might assume are titanium are, in fact, ceratanium. I won’t give you too much applause if you guess what two materials that’s a contraction of. Either way, the contrasting dark grey rounds off a watch of stoney neutral tones – which is fitting, given that ceramic and ceratanium are rock hard.
More details at IWC.
Best Microbrand Watch | Beaubleu Seconde Française
Part watch, part Art Deco orrery, French brand Beaubleu’s debut effort nails that sweet spot between a quirkiness just shy of pretension and excellent, elegant wearability. It perhaps doesn’t come as a surprise that founder Nicolas Ducoudert isn’t a watch designer by trade – at least exclusively. His background is in cars and more nebulous luxury products, meaning he comes at Beaubleu with fresh eyes. And it shows.
The key to the Seconde Française (or French Second if you didn’t pass year 9 French) is its trio of hands. All three are unique, oversized circles with the tip of a hand protruding from the balloon edge to accurately point out the time. While the hours and minutes are firmly secured in the centre however, the second hand drifts around the circumference of the enamel dial. Essentially, it’s a mystery watch rendered in that particular French je ne sais quoi and, more importantly, sans Cartier pricing.
Indeed, what makes Beaubleu a worthy 2024 award winner isn’t necessarily the overall design of the Seconde Française (although that helps) but it’s surprisingly accessible price tag of £1,065.
More details at Beaubleu.
Best Integrated Sports Watch | Czapek & Cie Antarctique Green Meteor
Gone are the days when integrated sports watches were what you launched when you’d run out of ideas. And thank God for that, those days sucked. But the success stories from the movement are still around, the Czapek & Cie Antarctique being key among them. Sure, it’s a little dressier and a good deal less industrial than most of the competition, but it’s still very much a sports watch – if one for the more well-heeled of sportspeople out there.
There have been numerous interpretations of the Antarctique since its inception, including the scaled Passage de Drake that in my mind made it a modern classic. But this year, the brand revealed their limited-edition Green Meteor and it’s an absolute stunner. The dark, mineral hue and its clear Widmanstätten pattern (the cross-hatching on a meteor, for your next quiz night) brought together in the otherwise rigid and flawlessly machined case make for an absolutely gorgeous prestige proposition.
It’s a small thing too, but for me what really makes this watch one of my favourites of 2024 – and something I’m glad has received the recognition it deserves – is that red-tipped second hand. Sometimes that’s all it really takes.
More details at Czapek & Cie.
Best High Complication | Jaeger-LeCoultre Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual
Fittingly for the Best High Complication of 2024, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s annual slice of insanity, launched at Watches & Wonders, reads like the wishlist of a master watchmaker prone to hyperbole. The headliner is the Heliotourbillon, a tri-axis take on the classic gravity-defying cage that spins like a top at nine o’clock, given plenty of room to breathe with a dial cut-out.
That should probably be enough. It’s certainly the flashiest part of the watch. But then there’s the fact that, despite taking up a ton of energy, that Heliotourbillon doesn’t impact the power reserve of the main watch. That’s because the Duometre actually has two barrels, one for timekeeping, one for complications.
If a whole barrel for a tourbillon seems overkill, that’s because it is. This particular beast also includes a perpetual calendar and moon phase. Because of course it does, the thing has a grand total of 655 components. Pure insanity.
More details at Jaeger-LeCoultre.
Readers’ Choice 2024 | IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar
And here we are, finally, your choice for Watch of the Year 2024: the IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar. I have to admit, I find some thematic harmony in the idea of a calendar watch being crowned our Watch of the Year, but as with all of these awards, it wasn’t me that decided this – or even a panel of judges – but our readers who, it seems, have impeccable taste.
We actually interviewed Professor Brian Cox, he of BBC space documentary fame, and he was as enamoured by the Eternal Calendar. Given just how impressive a timepiece it is, I’m not surprised. I’m pretty enamoured too.
First off, it’s a secular calendar. To explain what that means, you need to know how the Gregorian calendar works. It’s not just a leap year every three years, but every three years except centennials unless divisible by 400. That means your poxy perpetual calendar will go out of whack every couple of centuries or so. Not so this, which includes an extra wheel that turns over the course of centuries. It’s an incredible achievement that very few watchmakers have ever been able to put into production. I did say production, meaning I’m not counting Furlan Marri’s insane one-off.
So, it’s the most accurate calendar watch out there. But the Eternal is also the most accurate moon phase ever built, knocking specialist Andreas Strehler off the top spot he’s held for decades. It’s accurate for 45 million years, which turns ‘you only look after it for the next generation’ into ‘you look after it until Star Trek Next Generation is a reality’.
More details at IWC.
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