Omega Releases Swedish Themed Aqua Terra; Breitling Has A New Titanium Super Diver; Raymond Weil Shrinks Down Freelancer; Unimatic's Orange Modello Uno; Roger Dubuis Homagges Le Mans Lamborghini

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. While reading this, remember I don’t hate the Aqua Terra. It’s just a rant. Btw, my keyboard is fixed, so get ready for a lot of my writing. Like, a lot.

In this issue:

• Omega Releases Swedish Themed Seamaster Aqua Terra 41mm With Pole Vaulting Legend Mondo Duplantis

• The New Titanium Breitling Superocean Automatic 46 Super Diver Is A Very Capable Watch

• Raymond Weil Has Their Entrant In The 38mm Time-Only Genre, The New Freelancer Trio

• Unimatic Teams Up With Exquisite Timepieces For A Very Orange Version Of The GMT Modello Uno

• Roger Dubuis Celebrates Lamborghini’s 24h Le Mans Prototype Debut With A Special Edition Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 6 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Omega Releases Swedish Themed Seamaster Aqua Terra 41mm With Pole Vaulting Legend Mondo Duplantis

You know how there’s that one watch that everybody loves, just adores, but you don’t get it? For the life of you, you just can’t get what’s so special about it? Well, I have that feeling with several watches, but with none so much as the Omega Aqua Terra. Spend any time in an online forum, social media comment section or on watch Reddit - even better, ask them for a watch recommendation - and within two or three steps the conversation will inevitably turn to an Aqua Terra. Regardless of what you’re asking for. Ask for a good GADA watch, and the suggestion will justifiably be an Aqua Terra. But ask for a nice dive watch, and there will be a contingent of people convincing you that nobody uses watches to time their dives, so you should just get an Aqua Terra. Need a $100 watch that will survive your job of jackhammering concrete 8 hours a day? Save up some money, quit the vibration job, and get an Aqua Terra. You have $150.000 to spend on a piece unique? Why don't you just get 21 Aqua Terras? You know they come in different colors, right? Need a chronograph to time stuff? Get an Aqua Terra and count in your head!

OK, rant over. Thank you for allowing me one. And really, I don’t hate the Aqua Terra. I think that there are some pretty nifty versions out there. I just don’t get the absolute undying love they get. And that’s OK. Anyways, Omega just introduced a brand new AT, one releases in partnership with one of the greatest athletes in the history of pole vaulting, 8-time world record breaker and current Olympic champion Armand “Mondo” Duplantis. Mondo is a Swede, so the new colorway of the watch matches the Swedish flag.

On the outside, this is still a regular Seamaster Aqua Terra 150m 41mm, which means that it comes in at 41mm wide, 13.2mm thick and has a decent lug-to-lug measurement of 48mm. It’s, of course, made out of stainless steel, has polished bezel and the recognizable short twisted lugs. Water resistance, as the name suggests, is 150 meters.

The dial is new, and the place where Omega pays homage to Duplantis. The dial has deeply grooved horizontal stripes, a blue color and yellow details that include the Seamaster logo, the minute markers every quarter hour and the seconds hand. Speaking of the seconds hand, it loses the lumed arrow tip the regular AT has and is instead fully straight, just like a pole used in pole vaulting.

Inside, also no surprises. It’s the calibre 8900. This is Omega’s in-house automatic three-hand movement with a date complication at 6 o’clock. It’s Master Chronometer-certified and thanks to its dual-barrel architecture, it has a 60 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a deep blue rubber strap with yellow stitching and a folding clasp.

There’s no indication from Omega that the new Seamaster Aqua Terra 41mm Armand “Mondo” Duplantis is limited, but it’s likely to be an Olympic-themed watch so don’t expect them to stick around for long. Price is set at €6,900, which isn’t cheap. See more on the Omega website.

2/

The New Titanium Breitling Superocean Automatic 46 Super Diver Is A Very Capable Watch

Last week, Breitling announced a duo of new Superocean models with rainbow-colored hour markers, which was a pretty fun summer piece. However, they also released two brand new models that I completely missed. I missed them because they looked like regular 46mm Superocean models. What they are in fact is the new Breitling Superocean Automatic 46 Super Diver, a titanium diver that gives you the vintage look of the Superocean with some hard-core capabilities like 1,000 meter water resistance and a bezel locking mechanism.

Other than the colorways, if you look at the watches in the picture, you can see how I missed this new release. They look very much like the existing Superocean. But now the huge case has more of a point. And it is pretty large. 46mm wide, 14.5mm thick and a lug-to-lug of 52.25mm, with a substantial 24mm lug width, make this a chunky watch. So, it’s good that it’s made out of titanium, although I doubt it’s supremely light seeing how Breitling used the increased thickness of 1.3mm over the regular model to include a soft-iron shield for anti-magnetism. Despite being a dive watch that’s rated to 1,000 meters of depth (compared to the 300 of the original), it doesn’t have a standard unidirectional bezel that most divers have. No, instead this is a bi-directional bezel with a lever-operated locking mechanism on the left side of the case and it’s pretty cool. The bezel is also made out of titanium with a ceramic insert that comes in either green or black. That surrounds a cambered sapphire crystal and there’s a solid screw-down caseback out back.

The new Super Diver comes with two dial versions, in green or black, and both have a camouflage pattern. Would have a version without the camo been more than appreciated? For sure! Are these dials also good looking? Certainly. Aside from the camo, there’s not much different going on - you get a minute track on the edge of the dial, applied hour markers and three hands, with the minute hand getting that awesome minute hand with the large square of lume near the tip.

Inside is the Caliber 10 automatic movement. This is a slight upgrade from the Caliber 17 that the regular 46mm Superocean gets, but they are both ETA based. While the 17 is based on the ubiquitous ETA 2824, the Caliber 10 is based on the much improved ETA 2892. You get a beat rate of 4Hz and a 42 hour power reserve. The movement has COSC certification, meaning you get accuracy of -4/+6 seconds per day. Both versions come on either a titanium bracelet or a rubber strap, both of which taper from 24mm to 20mm and come on the same titanium folding clasps which offers tool-free incremental adjustment.

While the regular 46mm Superocean can be had for $5,300 on rubber, the superior water resistance, titanium case and better movement bump up the price of the new Breitling Superocean Automatic 46 Super Diver to $6,300 on rubber and $6,950 on the bracelet. See more on the Breitling website.

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Raymond Weil Has Their Entrant In The 38mm Time-Only Genre, The New Freelancer Trio

There are a couple of brands out there that put out quite decent watches and we don’t talk about them enough. One of them is surely Raymond Weil. While I have mentioned their collaborations with musicians and artists several time, one shouldn’t overlook their Freelancer time-and-date offering either. Well, one could, because their simplest watch measures 42mm wide, making it great for larger wrists, but now things are changing with the introduction of a new trio in the Freelancer line, this time measuring 38mm. This is a good looking watch.

The three watches are made out stainless steel, with one version getting a two tone treatment with a yellow gold PVD treatment. The case measures 38mm wide and just 9.9mm thick, which is pretty fantastic. There are flat sapphire crystals on top and bottom, and the top one is surrounded by a fixed and super simple bezel. The watch seems to have a pretty nice combination of brushed sides and highly polished top surfaces and water resistance is 100 meters.

There are two colors to the dial - a green that appears on the stainless steel version and a deep blue that comes on the stainless as well as the PVD versions. The stainless steel models have silver applied hour markers, hands and date aperture, while the two-tone version has the same details in gold PVD. But the nicest detail about all the dials is certainly the outer ring on the dial that has deep grooves cut into it, giving the dial a lot of depth. In addition, this outer grooved part is darker in color than the inner ring, so it all looks like a nice package.

Inside is the calibre RW4200 based on the familiar Sellita SW200 which has a 38-hour power reserve. It’s equipped with hours, minutes, seconds and a date function at 3 o’clock. The watch comes on a jubilee-style stainless steel link, with the two tone version having the central links in gold-colored PVD.

The three new Raymond Weil Freelancer 38mm watches are on sale right now and priced at CHF 1,895 for the stainless steel version and CHF 1,995 for the gold PVD version. See more on the Raymond Weil website.

 4/

Unimatic Teams Up With Exquisite Timepieces For A Very Orange Version Of The GMT Modello Uno

The Italians are back at what they do the best - collaborations. Unimatic has made a name for themselves with simple, retro styled, pieces that take on characteristics of vintage divers and field watches. But the result of this approach, intentional or not, has been the creation of fantastic canvases on which they can experiment with materials, colors and bring in interesting collaborators. The latest is based on the Modello Uno and made in collaboration with Exquisite Timepieces, one of the most exclusive watch retail destinations in Naples, Florida.

The new U1S-T-GMT-ET (what a name…) comes in a ultra light titanium sandblasted case that measures 41mm wide, 11.6mm thick (with a 2.5mm thick double-domed sapphire crystal) and a lug-to-lug measurement of 49mm. On top is a 120-click uni-directional bezel that has an aluminium insert that’s rendered in matte black, engraved with a diving scale that’s left untreated so it’s black-on-black, and with an orange lumed dot at 12 o’clock. Water resistance is a very respectable 300 meters.

The dial is matte black with markers in Super-LumiNova BGW09. Arround the perimeter of the dial is a matte white seconds rails, with white 24h markers on the very edge of the dial. The hands are black, filled with white (hour) and orange (minute) lume, with the seconds hand getting a reverse lollipop setup with a white tip. The GMT hand has a pronounced arrow tip that’s hollow and white framed.

Inside is the automatic ETA 2893-2 which beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. The watch comes with an orange TPU two-piece strap and you get an additional black heavy-duty nylon NATO strap.

The UNIMATIC x Exquisite Timepieces U1S-T-GMT-ET is limited to 150 pieces and there are still some available for purchase on the Exquisite Timepieces website. Price is set at $1,489. You can learn more about the watch on the Unimatic website.

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Roger Dubuis Celebrates Lamborghini’s 24h Le Mans Prototype Debut With A Special Edition Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph

Peugeot has had quite a long and successful track record at the 24 Hours Of Le Mans. Their legendary diesel prototype put a lot of other race cars to shame. So, when you debut at the legendary race with a new Le Mans Daytona Hybrid Series hypercar and manage to place above Peugeot, it could be considered a decent result. This is exactly what Lamborghini managed to pull off this last weekend with their SC63 hypercar. And a day before the race, Roger Dubuis, which has partnered with the car brand since 2017, put out a watch that pays homage to the race car, a special edition Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph in the SC63 colors.

The watch is packaged in a grey carbon case with a notched ceramic bezel that has a green outline around it. It measures 45mm wide and 17.13mm thick, with a water resistance of 100 meters, but what’s outside this case is really not all that important. What is impressive is what’s underneath the sapphire crystal and inside the case.

Inside is the calibre RD780, which has two patents pending for the second breaking system and the rotating minute counter. It beats at 28,800 vph and has a 72 hour power reserve. It’s also a Poinçon de Genève certified watch, meaning it has exquisite finishing. You can see parts of the movement - the column wheel, the tilted balance wheel and the twin barrels at noon - are visible through the dial.

The dial is surrounded by a flange that has a red and green minutes/seconds track with white-lumed hour plots and a tachymeter scale. To display the elapsed time of the chronograph, Roger Dubuis uses a 120º rotating minutes counter at 3 o’clock with a tripartite hand and green lacquered numerals. The white gold hour and minute hands have luminescent red tips, while the central chronograph seconds hand is all red. The watch comes on a black rubber strap with a green inlay and a triple-folding clasp.

The new Roger Dubuis Excalibur Spider Flyback Chronograph in the SC63 colors is limited to 88 pieces and priced at CHF 104,500. See more on the Roger Dubuis website.

🫳On hand

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Hands on with the alluring new Seiko Presage Cocktail GMT Watches

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A review of the Bovet Dimier Récital 27

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Peren Regia has the potential to become one of the industry’s entry-level heavyweights

Design-wise, it is obvious where the money has been spent. There are several nice touches that belie the price point. Three-dimensional luminous markers on the dial, for all hours but the 12 are one of the most immediately obvious value adds for the consumer. The 12 o’clock marker has been replaced by a small, neat, circular date aperture to highlight the inspiration of this piece — an ancient and highly accurate calendar made in Transylvania centuries ago. These indexes are not just pleasingly characterful, but also highly functional. The glow strength, duration, and homogeny between the dial and hands is very good for this price point and provides a much crisper nighttime view than you might expect for a sub-1K watch.

Read the whole review by friend of the newsletter Rob Nudds on Watch Gecko

⏲️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

• I have always had a strong dislike for Birkenstock. I got why they were popular among people who needed them, but they quickly became a fashion staple, which was just puzzling. Turns out, there was a Succession-level family drama behind the scenes of the 250-year-old German orthopedic shoe company to turn it into a luxury behemoth.

• Half a century ago, a legion of idealists dropped out of society and went back to the land, creating a patchwork of utopian communes across Northern California. Here, the last of those rogue souls offer a glimpse of their otherworldly residences—and the tail end of a grand social experiment. These are the last glimpses of California's vanishing hippie utopias.

• Christopher Pence kept adding to his family. He got up to 16 kids. Then he decided to remove two people from the mix with the help of a hitman. Life really is more exciting than fiction.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I really don’t need an excuse to post a video about the Kollokium, a watch that will surely show up on my list of favorite watches of this entire decade. Just look at it.

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-Vuk