Hamilton Updates Their Khaki Navy Scuba; Squale And Long Island Watches Team Up; Porsche Design Marks The Launch Of The New GT3; Breguet Gives Their Top Of The Line A Platinum Case And Black Dial

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Cutting it a bit short today as there’s not a lot of top-level news. I mean, I had to write about two watches you won’t be able to buy, it’s that bad. Hopefully it gets better tomorrow!

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In this issue:

• Hamilton Updates Their Khaki Navy Scuba Watch In Black And Red, A Decent Option For An Affordable Diver

• Squale And Long Island Watches Team Up Again For A Montauk Themed Set Of Divers

• Porsche Design Marks The Launch Of The New Porsche 911 GT3 And GT3 Touring, Intended For A Select Few

• Breguet Gives Their Top Of The Line Tourbillon Equation Marchante A Platnium Case And Black Dial

Today’s reading time: 6 minutes and 9 seconds

👂What’s new

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Hamilton Updates Their Khaki Navy Scuba Watch In Black And Red, A Decent Option For An Affordable Diver

Hamilton is surely best known for their field and pilots watches, but we should’t underestimate their dive watches. In fact, the Frogman and BeLOWZERO dive watches are two of the craziest watches the brand produces, I would say. They are certainly not for everyone, but I’m very glad they make them. If, however, you want a regular diver from Hamilton, they make that as well in the Khaki Navy Scuba. They already make a whole slew of these watches in a variety of bright colors, but somehow this iconic combination was mission — Hamilton recently introduced the Khaki Navy Scuba in black and red.

This is a very traditional diver, and measures such. Made out of stainless steel, the case comes in at 40mm wide and 12.95mm thick, with a brushed finish with polished details. Large, sure, but so are most divers. On top is a sapphire crystal surrounded by a unidirectional bezel that has a bright red aluminum insert with a 60 minute scale. On the side are pointy guards for the screw down crown and water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial on this diver is all black, with a white minute track on the periphery that is interrupted with prominent lumed hour markers and the dagger hands are also plenty lumed. The watch also, unfortunately, has a date aperture at the 4:30 position which really doesn’t fit in with a white date wheel on a black dial. A pop of red can be found on the tip of the seconds hand.

Inside, to no surprise, is the H-10 movement, which is just Hamilton’s version of the Swatch Group Powermatic 80. This means that it beats at 21,600vph and has the great 80 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a 3-link stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp.

The new Hamilton Khaki Navy Scuba 40mm Red is available now and priced at €895, which is becoming an increasingly rare price point, even for Chinese-made micro-brands. See more on the Hamilton website.

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Squale And Long Island Watches Team Up Again For A Montauk Themed Set Of Divers

For the third time, the legendary retailer Long Island Watch and the Switzerland-based Squale watches are teaming up to pay homage to Long Island and its legendary town of Montauk that sits at the very end of the peninsula (as per the Supreme Court). This quartet of watches is based on the skin diver from Squale with a couple of great dial.

The new Squale Montauks come in very familiar steel cases that measure 38mm wide, 11.4mm thick and have a 45.8mm lug-to-lug measurement. These are pretty much perfect proportions, with a brushed finish and polished details. On top is a unidirectional bezel with a black aluminum insert with full 60 minute graduations. Best of all is the water resistance, which sits at 300 meters.

There are four dials to choose from — Black Sea, Rich Blue, Frozen Silver, and Copper. All four have a sunburst finish, applied indices at 3, 6, 9, and 12 and painted indices on the rest. The black has orange details, the blue has red, while the silver and copper dials keep things pretty monochromatic. The dates are silver faceted batons with lume on the upper halves and the seconds hand has a lumed square near the top.

Inside the watch is the Sellita SW200, a well known movement that beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. The watches come on black or blue Squale Von Büren professional rubber straps that taper from 20 to 17mm.

The Squale x Long Island Watch Montauk quartet is available now and priced pretty fine at $775. See more on the Long Island Watch website.

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Porsche Design Marks The Launch Of The New Porsche 911 GT3 And GT3 Touring, Intended For A Select Few

Last week, Porsche introduced the latest versions of their 911 GT3 and GT3 Touring. And when Porsche introduces new GT3 models, you know what follows — Porsche Design releases chronographs themed after the two high performing cars. And this is exactly what happened, I’m just a little slow on reporting. These are the new Porsche Design Chronograph 911 GT3 and Chronograph 911 GT3 Touring watches.

The two watches share a case, made out of titanium and with two finishes — a plain glass-bead blasted version or with a matte black titanium carbide coating. The cases measure 42mm wide and a hefty 15.3mm thick, with sapphire crystals on top and bottom. On the side is an oversized chunky titanium screw-down crown. More options can be had on the bezel, which can come in either matte silver or black, and a choice of scales — pulsometer, tachymeter or minute. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial on the watch has what the brand calls a GT dial with a plate that has hexagonal cutouts. It’s the same plate that’s used on the Sport Chrono GT clock in the GT3. That plate is surrounded by yellow ring, a raised chapter ring with applied indices and you get black rhodium-plated hour and minute hands with Super-LumiNova. The hands of the chronograph can be configured in the colours Performance (white), Essence (black) and GT (yellow). The seconds disc at 9 o’clock reads “911 GT3” and has a chequered flag design. The entire dial is surrounded by a colored ring that can be had in any color your Porsche can, including the Paint To Sample program.

Inside is the Porsche Design WERK 01.200. It’s a flyback chronograph based on the ETA 7750 that beats at 4Hz and has a 48 hour power reserve. It’s also COSC certified. If you buy the 911 GT3 with Weissach Package or 911 GT3 Touring with Lightweight Package you can also opt for a 911 GT3 Weissach Rotor. The watch can be had on a number of leather straps, all of which are made out of leathers that are used in Porsche interiors, and can be embossed with either 911 GT3 or 911 GT3 Touring, depending on which car you have.

As you might have gathered from all of this, this is not a watch that will be available to everyone. Instead, this is intended only for buyers of the new Porsche 911 GT3 or 911 GT3 Touring. And the watches offer almost as much customization options as the car you will be buying. While the new 911 GT3 price starts at about €200,000, the Porsche Design watches start at €10,250. See more on the Porsche Design website.

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Breguet Gives Their Top Of The Line Tourbillon Equation Marchante A Platnium Case And Black Dial

While it was British watchmaker and inventor John Arnold who came up with the idea of a tourbillon, it wasn’t until 1801 that Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet developed the tourbillon and patented it. So, it only makes sense that the company named after the inventor would make one of the most exciting tourbillon watches on the market. And Breguet does, in their Marine Tourbillon Equation Marchante 5887 model that has introduced a brand new design language to the company almost 10 years ago. The Tourbillon Equation Marchante is the flagship of the Marine line and includes not just a tourbillon and perpetual calendar, but also one of those weird complications — the equation of time. Now, Breguet gives the Tourbillon Equation Marchante 5887PT a platinum case and black dial.

On the outside, things remain largely the same as the other models. It’s a fascinating case. Made out of 950 platinum, it measures a significant 43.9mm wide, but it’s incredibly thin at 11.9mm. Sure, almost 12mm with such a wide watch would be considered chunky, but not on this thing, with all the complications it has. It doesn’t have classical lugs, instead you get lug modules integrated within the caseband, which is fluted. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is now black, with the same layout and guilloche pattern as previous versions of the watch. The black is contrasted with silver details which include a brushed chapter ring, Breguet hands and tourbillon bridge. The applied Roman numerals are made of blackened gold and the tip of the solar time minute hand is rendered in gold. Yeah, solar time minute. There are four hands there in the centre — hours and minutes for calendar time, a hand for the retrograde date and the mentioned solar time minute hand. You also get two windows for the day, the month and leap year, as well as a one minute tourbillon at 5 o’clock. An almost hidden power reserve indicator sits between 7 and 8.30 o’clock.

So, what’s up with that fourth hand, the one that shows you the solar time minute hand. This watch features a running equation of time, one of the wildest complications you can find on a watch. Watches today shows us mean solar time, or calendar hours and minutes. But there’s also true solar time, based on the actual position of the sun in the sky, which can deviate by up to 14 minutes late or 16 minutes early from calendar time. This is what is shown with that fourth hand.

All of this is powered by the in-house calibre 581DPE, wound by a very cool platinum peripheral rotor with a wave motif. It has an 80 hour power reserve, a Breguet balance-spring and escapement wheel made in silicon, and bridges hand-engraved with the silhouette of the Royal Louis, a Royal Navy warship commissioned in 1752. The watch comes on a black rubber strap.

The new Breguet Marine Tourbillon Equation Marchante 5887 is part of the regular collection and is available now. If, of course, you can afford a €292,800 watch. See more on the Breguet website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Farer Field Collection

2/

Hands-On With The Lederer Triple Certified Observatory Chronometer

3/

A review of the MB&F LM Sequential Flyback

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

The Beaucroft Element gives you everyday looks with tool-watch toughness

We must first look at the Element from afar to appreciate its everyday elegance and design aesthetic. By the way, a good and simple way to determine whether or not a watch can do it all is whether or not you feel that it can when you strap it on your wrist. I spent two weeks with the Beaucroft Element, and I did feel it could do it all. As mentioned, its symmetrical dial makes it elegant and functional for everyday use. Reading the time from a distance is easy because the rounded hands and hour markers are large. They also have facets, a brushed finish on top, and polished edges, meaning they’re readable at any angle. And I would say they look at home in this case and with this bracelet. The case flows almost seamlessly into the bracelet, a feature reminiscent of integrated-bracelet sports watches.

Read the whole review on Fratello

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• One wrote six sonatas and claimed they were by Haydn. Another used a ghostwriter to write his symphony – and pretended to be deaf. So how did they manage to hoodwink the experts? These are the hoaxers who fooled the classical music world.

• Speaking of supposedly deaf composers that run a huge scam, Mamoru Samuragochi was a deaf genius whose music inspired a nation. But the “Japanese Beethoven” wasn’t who he seemed.

• Over 20 years, a group of young women led a cycling revolution in US-occupied Afghanistan. In an engrossing narrative for Bicycling, Kim Cross recounts the incredible journeys of a few of these women who shepherded a movement and fought for women’s freedoms in the country. Cross also reports on how, with the help of American cyclist and activist Shannon Galpin, these women and their loved ones were able to escape in 2021 after the country fell to the Taliban.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

How about some music for today? Here’s a crossover from my childhood that I never saw coming.

💵Pre-loved precision

Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us

• LOOKING TO BUY: Here’s a crazy request. One of you is looking to buy the Lotēc No. 7.5. Sure, it’s a big ask, but if any of you have one and want to sell, reach out to and I’ll put you in touch

• SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.

• LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

-Vuk