The dive watch is one of the world’s most popular types of watches, if not the most. It celebrates its 70^th anniversary in 2023, and Rolex got ahead of its competitors with the world’s ultimate dive watch, the Oyster Perpetual Deepsea Challenge. The water resistance on this behemoth of a watch is an unprecedented — and truly mind-boggling — 11,000m, which is about as deep as you can go in the ocean without digging. While most dive watches are able to take you to depths that you would never survive, this one literally goes beyond what is possible for any man-made machine; dive watches are typically built to withstand about 20 per cent more than the rating, so if the ocean is deeper in parts than we think it is, Rolex might have us covered. For collectors, it is significant that this watch is the first to be offered in full titanium, case and bracelet, and thus may foreshadow the long-awaited introduction of this material across Rolex’s collections. Rolex says the RLX titanium used makes this 50mm tool watch roughly 30 per cent lighter than the same in steel.

Created by Patek Philippe in 1996, the annual calendar has since developed into a desirable complication for many brands, at a variety of price points. In 2022, Patek Philippe levelled this complication up by combining it with the dual-time function — which the Geneva brand calls Travel Time — in its signature Calatrava case. The resulting watch is the 41mm Ref. 5326G Travel Time Annual Calendar in white gold. The central innovations here are having the date mechanism tied to local time, and having all the main time functions controlled by the crown, rather than with pushers as is typical for Travel Time watches. For ease of use, one crown (with three adjustment positions) controls everything. While this combination of features should be a no-brainer, it is relatively rare. One of the problems for users here is that it is all too easy to damage the movement by adjusting the watch in ways that it should not be. Patek Philippe has taken care of this, protecting the watch from user error (and thus avoiding a very expensive repair); the manufacture says it is virtually impossible to desynchronise the hands, whether you set them forwards or backwards.

Parmigiani Fleurier is a manufacture intent on going its own way, as demonstrated in the quirky Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante, cased in steel with a platinum bezel. It happens to be the world’s first wristwatch with a flyback second timezone indicator — pressing the pusher at 8 o’clock causes the local time hour hand (in white gold) to leap back in place above the home time hand (in pink gold). The other pusher, sitting atop the crown, advances the white gold by one-hour increments when the wearer needs to track multiple timezones. In effect, the watch only indicates two timezones on demand, and is a regular dress two-hander otherwise. The simplicity of the design and of the complication makes it hard to believe that this 40mm model is truly unique in the watch world. Perhaps harder to believe is that the manufacture cooked this watch up in less than two years, when typical development time for new features is five years.

While we typically think of the displays on a watch dial as the elements that move, Cartier hit upon the idea of having its entire mechanical calibre swing about freely, as it does in the Masse Mystérieuse. Some clever watchmaker at the company must have wondered what would happen if the entire movement could fit within the winding rotor, thus allowing said movement to wind itself by the power of its own mass. No one had ever asked this question before — well, no brand had ever delivered a watch that emerged from such a question. Now a reality in a 43.5mm platinum case, the Masse Mystérieuse presents a number of questions to collectors, not the least of which is how it can possibly power the hands dial-side. You can actually see the entire movement, front and back, which only deepens the mystery. Another important question is how the rotor winds the watch, given that the whole thing moves on a shared axis.