What Is Omega Doing ! (Plus More Hot New Watches)

The last few months have seen some of the most insane new watch releases of the entire year, and right here is the place to see them all. So sit up straight and get ready for a whole institution of absolute watch insanity. If you're feeling like treating yourself to some new threads, head on down to the link in the description below, where you'll find some of my sweet, sweet merch, like this jumper, available for sale. Thank you. Just when we thought Vacheron Constantin needed a minute after putting on quite the performance with the Quest for Time Automaton, it's back for round two with the Quest. Or should I say, rounds two and beyond, because the timepieces called Quest are made up of 11 watches total, headlining with the Cosmica Duo and the Armillary Tourbillon. That's a hell of a lot of stamina from this old dog. The white gold Cosmica Duo has no less than 24 complications, making it a girthy 47 millimetres across and two full centimetres thick. You're going to feel that. You can enjoy all 1003 of its components for 60 full hours, bundled together into complications that include a perpetual calendar, a sky chart with horizon indication, sidereal time, minute repeater, equation of time, day night duration, retrograde moon phase, tourbillon, and of course, a toaster. Meanwhile, the Armillary Tourbillon, also known as the Myth of the Pleiades, gets a similarly sized but far more ornate case, riddled with over 450 hours of engraving. I don't think a Cape Cod cloth will fix up this one, if you ding it. The bi-retrograde hands are regulated by what looks like the headset from a Clockwork Orange, but here for a different kind of desensitisation, a resistance to gravity. As if the spherical double-axis tourbillon weren't obvious enough, it comes with a built-in magnifying glass to see where your millions went. Other watches in the collection include the fisherman's favourite Celestia Astronomical Grand Complication with tide indicator, plus the hand-painted Epic Warriors minute repeater series, featuring all your favourite fighters, such as Genghis Khan, Sasaki Moritsuna, and Wolf from Gladiators. If half-naked metal men is your thing, four options in the works of Hercules set rounds out the collection, which depicts various animals, both real and fictional, being pounded into oblivion. Budget busters Atelier Wen have sent a shock to the system with a new watch that costs as much as an entry-level Aldi, the Inflection. An inflection is the way a word is spoken, but there's no way of saying €26,000 that makes it sound cheap. So what's going on at Atelier Wen? Did they get a horrible brain inflection and now they can't think straight? Whilst this new approach may seem a bit mad, there is still method to it. If you'll recall, Atelier Wen were developing a tantalum case for the more affordable Perception, and by the time they'd figured out how to manipulate this challenging material, they determined that it needed a better dial to suit. So they grand feu enamelled a silver base, hand-hammered for the launch edition, and then they figured that the Chinese movement didn't quite fit the bill, so they had a custom movement created for it by Gérard Perregaux, and now it's €26,000. It may be the price of a Royal Oak, but it is in every way better, except for the bit where it doesn't say Royal Oak on it. Considering Gérard Perregaux's own steel and gold 50th anniversary integrated Laureato comes in at some several thousand pounds more, it's hard to argue with the value proposition. So if you want a watch that weighs as much as a dying star, but don't want to go the platinum route for fear of having it cut off your hand by catalytic converter thieves, the Atelier Wen inflection is pretty much the only way to go. Perhaps you'd assume that Aubert and Rammel were the hottest Broadway act in town, but in actual fact, the young duo paired together to split the profits on a brand new watch, the Aurea. While I don't imagine they'd both work on the watch together like in Ghost, the two do split responsibilities to produce just 14 of what they're describing as watchmaking in motion, by which I can only assume they mean transient horology, or doing your homework on the bus to school. The watch endeavours to capture the majesty of the Swiss mountains, blocking the Aubert-Rammel workshop windows. A half-eaten dial pockmarked with jagged engraving that evokes the rocky surface of the workshop's Artex ceiling. The rest is all about the mechanics, put on display with refined simplicity to make watchmaking seem like something you yourself could actually do. Spoiler, you can't. These guys can however, the 174 piece in-house calibre dishing out eye candy like Apple HQ at Halloween. It's all contained in a 40.4mm titanium case, one of the few parts that doesn't get created by the duo themselves. The rest gets the delicate touch of a gentle watchmaker, two in fact, for a look that's both new and familiar at the same time. The blade-like bridges swoop around the dial to contain the animation, somehow both industrial and refined at the same time, like Isambard Kingdom Brunel's tea set. It's what gambling types would call a sure thing, although I'm neither a gambling type or sure. With one half of the team the winner of the Jean Young Watchmaker Awards however, they're sure to follow in his footsteps. They'll be making grown men cry in no time. Who are you even if you don't have a jump power these days? Nothing. That's who. Nothing. And Chronoswiss didn't want to be nothing, so they created the Neo Digiteur instead. With hours, minutes and seconds displayed via rotating discs, with the hours of the jump variety of course, the Neo Digiteur is basically a parking meter from the mind of H.G. Wells. Based on a version of the Digiteur from 2005, this Neo Digiteur, which I guess makes the old one the Paleo Digiteur, is 48mm tall but skinny with short lugs. Giving it an Art Deco Cartier-esque weighing scales appearance in either black or sand, this somehow manages to avoid looking like a gormlessly grinning face. The curved case gets it wrapped up around your arm like a drunk older lady on a hen do, the onion crown snuggling up in there less obvious than it usually is. It's very similar in silhouette to a watch Lange used to make but no longer does, the Cabaret. They snoozed and, at the hands of Chronoswiss, they loosed. Thankfully, to avoid confusion, Chronoswiss have applied their branding as large as they possibly can. Older owners with ageing eyesight send their gratitude. The jump power module, built onto a Lajeux Perret D100, is proprietary, hand-wound and small enough to keep the thickness down to less than a centimetre. While the movement is round, the jump power module is shaped to conform with the case, bringing the three wheels into play across the dial. Price is a lot higher than you're expecting, so I hope you're sitting down. 13,800 euros. That's almost enough to buy a used Lange Cabaret. It looks like Universal Genève are taking the car out for another test drive, releasing two sets of three watches nobody can have because they're too scared to actually commit. Back once again with recreations seemingly produced to check the temperature of the general public's perception of Universal Genève, it is beginning to make the brand seem like the kind of person that goes back for seconds on free supermarket sample cheese. Unless I'm absolutely dropping off my hobby horse, Universal Genève wasn't originally a premium, read expensive, brand like Patek Philippe or Vacheron Constantin, but it seems history is being carefully rewritten to pitch them like they were. This seems to be part of a grand plan to slip in galley at the affordable side of Breitling with Universal Genève right there up at the top. They're lovely watches, without a doubt, in 36mm of white or rose gold, set with enamel dials and powered by restored examples of the calibre 281. But the whole while they're only making six to be sold to just two people, they may as well be made of cake. I don't even know how much they want for them, with the instructions to buy simply to click a button marked enquire here. I guess they're taking the old adage something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and employing it as their CFO. Maybe the next collection will be a timeshare. To celebrate 30 years of wishing it was Grand Seiko, Citizen's The Citizen 30th Anniversary is to Grand Seiko what Grand Seiko is to Grand Seiko. It's a Grand Seiko, but for the citizens. Aside from the brand name and the suspiciously oppressive logo on the lower half of the dial, everything about The Citizen The Citizen is straight out of Shinshu. The transparent dial, based on the natural wear and tear of a gym hall floor, suspends the markers about a millimetre off the deck, and aids in the watch's ability to self-perpetuate thanks to solar power. This is an eco-drive watch, Citizen's answer to spring drive, combining the accuracy of quartz with the convenience of never having to change the battery. The 38mm titanium case gets angled facets again in the Japanese slash Omega style, such that in a double blind test, no watch enthusiast would ever be able to differentiate it from the house of Seiko. If this were a piece of music, and it were this close to mimicking something from the estate of Marvin Gaye, it would be game over. At £2,795 it's expensive for a quartz, but given the quality is also taken straight out of the Grand Seiko playbook, it's not unreasonable. An extra trick up the Citizen's sleeve is a perpetual calendar to keep you in tune with the date, and a power reserve indicator, just in case you so happen to spend the winter in the Arctic Circle. And with one voice, the watch collecting community came together and said, finally, finally Roger Dubuis, after a decade of clowning around, we finally have a watch that doesn't look like it fires a bay blade. This is the Homage La Placide, and it may cost an incredible €138,000. It may be so late to the game the field has since been paved over and turned into pickleball course, but it exists. For those of you new here, Roger Dubuis was established in the mid-90s as a classical watchmaker of fine pieces, but somewhere after the passing of Roger and the acquisition of the brand, things went to ----. Instead of building beautiful classical watches, Roger Dubuis went on a personal vendetta against our eyeballs, and this Homage La Placide is the first thing that gets even close to resembling the original brand that they've produced since. The name supposedly comes from Roger Dubuis' childhood nickname, La Placide, which the brand expresses as calm strength and quiet wisdom. Usually, kids like that end up as murderers, but in this case, Dubuis turned his quiet strength to rendering watch calibers such as the RD14 Perpetual Calendar that's been recreated for this watch. The Geneva-sealed caliber sports a bi-retrograde day and date display that has given the brand's perpetual calendar a unique touch since it was originally created in 2004, which sounds like it was yesterday, but was in fact over two decades ago. Doesn't that suck? What doesn't suck is the Homage La Placide, 38mm of absolute relief that it's not a steaming pile of bi-retrograde bullcrap. Roger Dubuis, we knew you had it in you this whole time. We saw it 20 years ago, and we've been begging you to make it again ever since. From the deep blue sunburst dial to the sweeping distorted day and date complications, the La Placide is more Placido Domingo than Liberty Walk Lamborghini. Too little, too late perhaps? Well, there's only 28 of them, so probably. The watchmaker you need a degree in Renaissance history to pronounce, Venezianico, is back. Once a cute brand bringing affordable alternatives to watches we can't afford to love up close, somewhere along the line it got all growed up and started making stuff that's actually impressive in its own right. This is the Redentor Utopia 2. 2 comes right after 1, and it's asking us to take it seriously. It's got a serious price to match, $5,500. That's quite the slice, getting within a fleas biscuit of the big R. So how are they justifying that? Well, inside the 38mm stainless steel case, we're already familiar with the Calibre V5000, a manually wound Italian movement with 60 hours of power reserve and plus minus 3 seconds a day accuracy. But this one is the Calibre V5001, one better. It's actually several better, advancing the finishing of the first with snailing of the crown and ratchet wheels, plus a 24 carat gold finish for that Midas touch. The 2 extrapolates on the original Redentor Utopia's guilloche dial that, unlike everyone's favourite French Grumpus, is actually made on a rose engine, one that so happens to be older than Jesus' piano teacher. This swirling geometric engraving in gold or grey is entirely bespoke to the brand, based on the movement of the Venetian Lagoon, although thankfully not the smell. Each dial is handcrafted at the Italian Atelier Renzetti. I'd sure like to drive one of those. The Venezianico Redentor Utopia 2 will be available for a 72 hour window only, and then it's gone. As they say in Venice, the early gondolier catches the tourist. Trigger warning for anyone who's ever been stuck by the side of the road, trying to inflate a car tyre, because this is the Louis Vuitton Monterey, a reissue of a 1988 special designed by an Italian architect by the name of Gay Olenti. This modern revival in 39 millimetres of gleaming gold brings back that pressure gauge aesthetic, ready for an elite class of car mechanics looking to step up their game. The lugless form sits deliberately tall, pushing the flame-grilled enamel up close and personal. A can of tyre inflation goo is optional. A price of $53,000 is the most contemporary thing about it, partially explained by a calibre you can't actually see. The same found inside Louis Vuitton's Tambour collection. The funny thing about the name, Monterey, isn't any connection to the famous car festival or anything like that, but because it was originally the first watch made by Louis Vuitton. It was called the Montre or Watch 1, a word that has been Americanised as Monterey, which has over time been acorned into Monterey. A big thank you goes out to my venerable Patreons who get extra videos and one-on-one chat directly with yours truly. If you'd like to join them, there's a link in the description below. After the storming success of its integrated Antarctique, Chapek has been on a mission to find its next breakthrough piece, and the Time Jumper definitely won't be it. That's because the Time Jumper is a niche, weird, curious thing, the kind of approach to watchmaking people who watch videos like this like best. Yes, it's a jump hour watch, which is as cliche as iron brew at a Scottish wedding, but the execution here is archer easter egg levels of complexity. Firstly, that's not one jump hour wheel, it's two halves of a jump hour wheel split left and right over a pair of clear discs that can join in the middle. Around the outside is a floating minute disc kept in place by five ruby rollers that could straighten out any shopping cart. All the gubbins that make the hour jump to the tune of every 60 minutes is on show, that is, until the watch performs its next trick. Snap shut the lid of this hunter-style 40.5mm case, and now, through windows in the textured metal, only the hours and minutes can be seen. A little pusher at six reveals what's under the hood, but for when you're feeling a bit more modest, the time jumper dares only to show a bit of ankle. With just 100 pieces of the steel and 30 in gold, it's not a definitive commitment to a steampunk future of glass goggles and top hats, but it's a step in that direction. Who knows what the next big trend after integrated will be, and maybe Chapek is onto something. No, they're not. It's cool, though. I love it when a plan comes together, so when two come together, I love it even more. That's the case with the Benzinger by Habring2George, a meeting of two halves that make one very appealing whole. And we all know how tempted we get by a very appealing whole. For reference, Jochen Benzinger is known for his engines, not the high-revving, screaming V12 kind, more the hand-cranked rose kind. The ones that spit out guilloche. The Habrings, however, they're known for calibres, not just for their own wadges, but other great independents as well. I think you can see where this is going. The front of the 38.5mm George gets an unbelievably exquisite dial with two types of hand-turned guilloche, delicate Breguet-style hands and a moon phase thrown in for luck, whilst the back exhibits the Habring's clean Germanic approach to fine craftsmanship. Decorated with frosting and even sporting Benzinger's trademark wheel of certain death. Look closely and you'll also spot a dog keeping an eye on things, because, you know, dogs are cool. The watch manages to capture the best of both brands without ever treading on each other's toes, which would have been impressive since they've literally taken opposing sides. Fans of Benzinger's work who want something a bit more delicate and Habring2 groupies that wanted less Germanic starkness will be very pleased. The final result is without a doubt elevated beyond the sum of its parts. When Felipe Pikulic stunned the world with the genesis of his Moon Phase I, he said to himself, F-Pick, that's what he calls himself, F-Pick, one day, someday, I will build a Moon Phase II. And he did. And it's here. And it's called the Moon Phase II. The Moon Phase II takes everything the Moon Phase I did and doubles it. There's more parts. There's more quality. And of course, there's more Moon. Where the Moon Phase I was a shy but sultry peek at what's going on behind closed doors, the Moon Phase II just straight out sits on your face on the first date. Every part of it is designed to fulfil Felipe's sadomasochistic tendencies to require more handwork, like the spidery dial that contains more interior angles than MC Escher's house. The Moon Phase itself is the highlight of the brand's first entirely in-house calibre, hand engraved to represent a teenager's face on one side and polished aventurine on the other to blend in against the layer of aventurine buried within the movement. Unlike previous Felipe Pikulic watches, this has all the gubbins on the front, so the back is less interesting to look at, although the work there is no less attentive. Starting at €45,000 in steel, the Moon Phase II is a complete lunatic. It's definitely not a watch for those looking to blend in on the subway, especially not at 41mm. The broad chapter ring onto which is inscribed, the same message you might get on a dog's collar to help it find its way home, makes me wonder if it could have been a touch smaller in circumference. Felipe tends to favour watches slightly on the larger side, however, being the towering gentleman that he is. And maybe I just need to man the f*** up. Omega's unsubtle campaign to increase prices continues with another new addition to the Speedmaster collection, the Moonwatch Professional Black and White. It's less about putting the frog in a hot pan and hoping it doesn't notice the increased heat, and more about throwing it into the fiery depths of Mount Doom on the promise of something precious. In isolation, the watch, as is the case with almost every Omega, is excellent. The calibre 3861, for instance, is a rare beauty that should be treasured, and we should bow our heads in thanks to Omega for it in the same way we do Gordon Murray for keeping the naturally aspirated V12 alive. Compared to the anemic view through the casebacks of even the automatic versions of Omega's same watch, it's a house party of watch parts chaos that's even got several red Solo cups gleaming from within. By comparison, the automatic Speedmasters are about as exciting as holiday snaps with the in-laws. From the front, things are looking equally as appealing. Whether you pick steel or go for gold, the white on black combination in gloss lacquer pops like a post-Christmas dinner trouser button. We've seen iterations of this reverse panda combo before with examples like the 2012 Speedy Tuesday Limited Edition in collaboration with Fratello, but here we have a few interesting and curious differences. First is the mirror-finished hands, gold plated for the gold version and rhodium plated for the steel. There's a potential for the rhodium on white subdial counters to be difficult to read in certain lights, where the Speedy Tuesday wisely chose black hands to contrast its white subdials. Boiling eggs has never been so fraught with uncertainty. Second is the ceramic bezel, a first for the Speedmaster professional and maybe what they consider an excuse for what we'll talk about in a minute. It passes reasonably well for the aluminium original with a bit more contrast punch. The numbers printed in white enamel instead of the raw aluminium shining through like the original. We'll see how well it resists having the numbers picked off with time. What baffles me most with the specification is the stubborn insistence Omega has in not rolling out the smoothly domed sapphire introduced for the recent first Omega in Space edition. A decision that's plagued collectors since time immemorial is the choice between Hesalite crystal for the originality that lacks a sapphire caseback and the sapphire sandwich whose front crystal leaves a milky ring more prominent than a quick sit in white paint in nothing but your birthday suit. And that then brings us on to the price. Of course, the gold version is expensive 41,300 pounds but what I didn't expect was for the steel equivalent to be priced at just shy of 9,000 pounds. It's 2,100 pounds more than the base Speedmaster with a bracelet and there's no conceivable reason why except that it's simply a part of Omega's bid to keep pushing up prices Rather than jack up what already exists they're releasing slightly different versions and upping the costs on those instead presumably to eventually phase out the cheaper model over time. We're also seeing it with the Speedmaster Diver 300M as well the newer no-date version of the base model another 500 pounds extra and so it continues to perpetuate my bafflement with Omega Excellent products in isolation brain itching confusion when viewed as an overall product strategy. At first glance, the Blancpain Grand Double Sonnery looks like some kind of impossible reality crafted inside the wandering mind of ChatGPT but I can assure you it's very much real all 1,053 parts of it. Yes, you're counting four hammers tuned to the keys of E, G, F and B which in theory makes it possible to play the entire back catalogue of status quo. In the case of Blancpain, they've chosen the Westminster Chime and in a twist no one saw coming they've crafted another tune for it as well well, Kiss drummer Eric Singer has anyway. Yes, this Grand Sonnery is capable of playing two entirely different albeit rather similar tunes. It's a world first and it took eight years to make The pushers switch between the tunes and activate on demand whilst the slide gives the option of grand and petty sonnery modes and a shut the f*** up mode too. It's 47mm across, 14.5mm thick and costs 1.7 million Swiss francs including taxes which I'm pretty sure someone who can afford one of these is more than capable of avoiding. That's not actually that bad on all counts for effectively two minute repeaters in one. Turn it over and it certainly looks like they crammed at least two in there. There's enough parts in this thing to cast a Tarantino movie. The sound is of course clear and bright although overlaid with dramatic music in the Blancpain demonstration video it does sound a bit like an ice cream truck in a Michael Bay movie. Meanwhile the watchmakers clearly didn't think the double sonnery was enough throwing in a perpetual calendar and a tourbillon in there for good luck as well. It is a strong return to form for Blancpain who in Breguet's shadow often gets left sat on the shelf. I can't think of any better demonstration of what the brand is technically capable of. A mic drop moment to rival the time a tour guide dropped their presentation headset off the edge of the Grand Canyon. By Blancpain's measure of subtlety it's as understated as Elton John's underwear drawer. And remember if you're not able to afford a watch worth 1.7 million it doesn't mean you're an inferior person you just need to up your oligarchy. Share your best ill-gotten game tips down in the comments below. Please also like and subscribe and I'll see you next time.