JLC Updates Polaris With Geographic Travel Complication; Timex Has A New M79 AUtomatic; March LA.B Shows New Bronze Case Diver; Isotope's Fully Mirrored Watch; And Kollokium Is Still Amazing

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m not a fan of the new JLC, but it has reminded me of one of my favorite all-time watches, the JLC Master Compressor Geographic. Oh my, what a watch that is…

In this issue:

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Updates The Polaris With The Legendary Geographic Travel Complication

• Timex Has A New Rendition Of The M79 Automatic, This One With A Very 70s Gold Dial

• March LA.B Gives Another Of Their Surf/Dive Watches The Bronze Treatment

• Isotope Teams Up With Revolution For A Completely Mirrored Watch That Looks Unlike Anything Else They Have Done

• Kollokium Shows Their First Official Release And It’s Just As Great Looking As The Orange Glowing One

Today’s reading time: 10 minutes and 54 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Updates The Polaris With The Legendary Geographic Travel Complication

Way back in 2008, while I was still discovering watches and what I like, I deeply fell in love with a stunning watch. It was the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Geographic. The asymmetric dial, incredibly modern font on the numerals, the purposeful design on the two crowns and the very attractive light brown strap had me hooked. It still remains a bit of a white whale until I find the perfect one I will get. That watch was equipped with the JLC Geographic complication, which had a partially hidden 24-city ring, something that I really loved. Now, the same Geographic complication is coming to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris line.

The watch uses the familiar modern Polaris line case which measures 42mm wide and 11.54mm thick. The case has curved lugs, two large crowns at 3 and 10 o’clock and an almost invisible bezel with a glass-box-style sapphire crystal. You get a vertically brushed middle case and polished bevels, bezel and crowns. The Polaris being their sports offering, the watch has a 100 meter water resistance.

The dial on this one will be divisive, just like the gradient dials on the other Polaris models. It has a three different finishes - black opaline on the peripheral minutes/seconds track, grained on the chapter ring, and sunray brushed on the central circle - with a grey gradient from light on the inside to dark on the outside. The color is the result of 35 layers of hand-applied lacquer. The central area has a power reserve indicator with an orange depletion area, and a 12-hour second time zone intersected by a smaller day/night indicator with an orange-tipped hand. The outer minute track also has an aperture at 6 o’clocok to reveals the names of 24 cities of the 24 time zones. The selection of the city moves the hour hand of the second time zone. Interestingly, this world timer doesn’t have a date function.

Inside is the in-house calibre 939 that’s assembled and decorated in the brand’s manufacture in Le Sentier. The movement beats at 28,800vph and has a 70 hour power reserve. The watch comes with two interchangeable straps - a textured black rubber and a blue-grey canvas.

The new Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Geographic is part of the regular collection and priced at $16,600. It’s a great addition to the polarising Polaris line, but it doesn’t beat out the Master Compressor Geographic for me. See more on the JLC website.

2/

Timex Has A New Rendition Of The M79 Automatic, This One With A Very 70s Gold Dial

I just have to say I love what Timex is doing. They are on a massive roll of reviving some of their greatest designs, while keeping the prices low thanks to mass productions capabilities. Sure, these watches can sometimes feel a bit on the cheap side, and many will bemoan the awkward dimensions and lack of sapphire crystals. But I love them, I can’t help myself. Now, they’ve introduced a new version of their biggest revival hit, the M79 Automatic, with a very funky gold dial.

Although technically not part of the Q line, the Timex M79 Automatic features the same design language of a very angular case that’s cut off at the lugs, making for a rather short case. The width of the watch isn’t that much of a problem - 40mm, especially thanks to the short lug-to-lug of 45mm, but what will get you is the 14.5m thickness. That’s a lot, but thankfully it’s not just a slab side, but rather a highly domed crystal and a thick caseback, which hides the thickness just a little bit. The angular case is deeply brushed with hints of polished details. On top is a 60 click undirectional bezel with a black insert with silver markings, surrounding an acrylic crystal. Water resistance is mediocre at 50 meters.

The dial is very pretty on this model and completely evocative of the 70s. I called it gold on several occasions, but a much more appropriate description would be deep champagne, as Timex describes it. The dial has applied lumed markers - a triangle at 12 o’clock, bars at cardinal points and circles for the rest - all with a black surround. The same black/lume combination can be found on the Mercedes-style hands. At three o clock you’ll find the day and date window.

Inside, Timex says, is a “Japan-made, self-winding, automatic movement”. They don’t give much detail on what the movement is, but internet sleuths believe it’s the Miyota 8205. It beats at 21,600vph and has a 42 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a black tropic rubber strap which is a better option than the regular Timex steel bracelet which isn’t all that fantastic.

The new M79 Automatic is available now as a regular part of the collection and it’s priced at €279. See more on the Timex website.

3/

March LA.B Gives Another Of Their Surf/Dive Watches The Bronze Treatment 

Hey, Vuk, what’s up with this watch? Are you feeling OK? Do you not look over your archive to see if you wrote about a watch if you can’t remember on your own? I know that all of these questions are going through your mind. Because you know you’ve seen this bronze watch from the French brand March LA.B not even two months ago. Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. Only… The watch I wrote about in February was the March LA.B Belza Bronze Edition, their chunky 200-meter-water-resistant watch. The one you see above is the Bonzer Bronze Edition, a little less water resistant, but much smaller and a bit more elegant.

However, when I say smaller, I don’t mean small. It measures 41mm wide, 12.25mm thick and, thanks to relatively stubby lugs, has a very acceptable 46.5mm lug-to-lug. Like the name says, the case is made out bronze and has an overall brushed finish with barely noticeable polished details. The screw-down crown is positioned at 4 o’clock and on top is a unidirectional rotating bezel with a black ceramic insert with bronze-coloured markings. On top is a domed sapphire crystal. Interestingly, for a diver, there are quite a lot of ornate details on the case, including sculpted details on the crown and the edge of the bezel. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial has a black sandblasted finish with an etched crosshair in the center. There’s a minutes/seconds track on the periphery, which is connected to the dial with gold-tone metal indices that have a stepped pattern on them. Another interesting detail of the watch is the almost complete lack of lume, which is not something you see very often on a dive watch. The hands are the only lumed details on the watch, and in another interesting quirk, are fork shaped. There’s a gold-gramed date window at 3 o’clock.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret calibre G100 which beats at 28,800vph and, despite being an alternative to the ETA 2824 and the Sellita SW200, it has a much more impressive power reserve than the competitors of 68 hours. It’s also quite accurate at -4 and +6 seconds per day. March LA.B also adds a customised semi-openworked rotor. The watch comes on a black rubber strap with deep grooves cut into it.

The March LA.B Bonzer Bronze is available now and priced at €2.078. See more on the March LA.B website.

 4/

Isotope Teams Up With Revolution For A Completely Mirrored Watch That Looks Unlike Anything Else They Have Done 

A couple of weeks ago Wei Koh’s Grail Watch project teamed up with Sartory Billard for an incredible SB07 “Ghost” model. It was a divisive piece that split up opinions for its fully mirrored look. Some hated it, others liked it, but I would say it was an interesting take on a Sartory Billard. The mirrored look could be expected. Where you wouldn’t expect the same treatment is from the British microbrand Isotope. The brand is best known for their block and bold colored futuristic-looking watches. But now they’ve partnered with Koh’s Revolution magazine to create a watch that’s very much in line with the Ghost. This is the Isotope x Revolution Mercury.

The inspiration for the watch comes from the Isotope teardrop logo. The watch is made out of stainless steel and inspired by another use of mercury, the Mercury train, an aerodynamic high-speed passenger express operated by the New York Central Railroad in the mid-1930s. It’s a very interesting case that’s made out of three parts, with the bezel and horned lugs sitting on top of the middle case. The whole thing is quite compact at 38mm wide, 10mm thick and with a 44.5mm lug-to-lug. Completely polished, it’s very shiny.

The watch also has mirror-polished convex dial, which is not an easy task to achieve. Isotope took six months to perfect the polish on the dial. And to show it off, there are no markings other than the small seconds display and Isotope’s teardrop logo. The two, along with the very contemporary take on classical 'leaf-shaped' hands gets a high polish. I assume all this is incredibly difficult to photograph, so I wonder what it looks like in real life.

Inside is the hand-wound ETA/Peseux caliber 7001 which beats at 21,600vph and has a 42 hour power reserve. The movement gets a bespoke bridge and is completely highly polished. The watch comes on suede leather strap in gray.

The Isotope x Revolution Mercury is limited to 150 pieces and priced at $2,400. Delivery is expected to start at the end of June. See more on the Revolution website.

 5/

Kollokium Shows Their First Official Release And It’s Just As Great Looking As The Orange Glowing One

Without a shred of a doubt my favorite watch last year was the Kollokium Projekt 01. A neo-brutalist masterpiece launched by three industry mainstays (Manuel Emch, Amr Sindi and Barth Nussbaumer), it featured a unique sandblasted case, an incredible crystal and a never-before-seen dial that had a wonderful orange glow. This first model was a friends-and-family release, but now the brand is back with their first release that will be available to the general public. This is the Kollokium Variant ‘B’.

The case remains practically the same - 40mm wide, 11mm thick and it’s die cast instead of milled. This means that liquid hot metal is poured into moulds which allows Kollokium to make a case with a spectacular grained texture and rounded edges. The case is made of two parts - a barrel-shaped caseback with lugs that are apparently inspired by the Phillips-head screwdriver. On top is a sapphire box crystal which protrudes far from the case, allowing you to see the dial from the side of the watch.

The dial is made up of 468 cylindrical markers in six different diameters and heights that have been so arranged to make “hills” where the hour markers would be. In the first release, those cylinders were tipped with an orange colored lume compound, but here they glow blue. The hands are oblong and also filled with Super-LumiNova, while the seconds hand is lacquered light blue.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic movement, an alternative to the ubiquitous but increasingly hard to source ETA 2824. It bets at 4 Hz and delivers a 68 hour power reserve. The watch comes on an elasticised black textile strap with a die-cast steel hook fastener that makes it easy to size.

The Variant “B” will be limited to 199 pieces and available on May 22 at a retail price of CHF 2,666.66. See more on the Kollokium website and good luck getting yours!

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Nivada Grenchen F77 Titanium Meteorite

2/

Hands on with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Selfwinding Chronograph and Frosted Gold Selfwinding with their Crème Brûlée Dials

3/

A review of the Chronoswiss Strike Two H20 and Stike Two Golden Gear

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The The Bravur La Corsa Rosa IV would really look best on the Giro d’Italia

Bravur managed to integrate the Giro theme very tastefully. The pink accents in various shades pay homage to the Giro d’Italia leader’s jersey, “la maglia rosa.” The pink is placed on a contrasting tarmac-colored dial that also shows a subtle texture mimicking the road surface. It not only looks good but also creates a great contrast. The recessed sub-dials in three shades of pink show clear black markings for easy readability on and off the bike. A very nice touch is the inverted “race number” 13 embedded in the minute track. Racers who have to race with the unlucky number 13 usually pin it upside-down on their jersey to ward off misfortune. You see, cyclists are not just hopelessly vain but also very, very superstitious.

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

• With $20 in his pocket, Richard Allen had a wild week of movies, comic books, and hot dogs. But the tale belies a harsher home life that he wanted to escape, his daughter says. This is the true story behind the kid who went 1940s viral for his week at the cinemas in San Francisco. I just love stories from old newspapers.

• India’s elections are a glimpse of the AI-driven future of democracy. Politicians are using audio and video deepfakes of themselves to reach voters—who may have no idea they’ve been talking to a clone. But it seems that all the candidates very much approve of this very bleak future.

• Elon Musk has his fingers in a lot of stuff. And while he will want you to believe that he has single handedly solved transportation, space flight and global internet, it’s obvious that he is very good at one thing - hiring really talented people. Like the people who built Neuralink. And now, for the first time, Noland Arbaugh explains how the brain implant, which allows him to control a computer with his thoughts, has changed his life.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I showed you the “first look” trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed epic Megalopolis and it didn’t really look all that good. What does look much better is the actual first trailer. I have to say I like this. I hope it’s not a flop.

💵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 Ōtsuka 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

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-Vuk