is a name that has truly transcended the watch industry itself. Though it is neither the oldest nor the most prestigious watch manufacture in the world, is undoubtedly the most well-renowned. In fact, it s nearly impossible to find an adult on this earth who has not heard the name. Due to this legendary reputation, watches of both the past and the present almost serve as their own global currency. But it wasn t always this way.While has always strived for excellence, the brand didn t set out to make the most expensive, prestigious timepieces in the world. Rather, since its founding over 120 years ago, the brand had one ultimate goal: to make the most functional, reliable timepieces possi...

Roll up, roll up! The summer has hit The Hague and Fratello is keen to celebrate. After the fizzing success of March Mania, we are back with a new knock-out competition conceived to find the very best summer watch out there, according to YOU, the Fratelli. And guess what? You can win prizes! No, there won t be a watch available this time but there WILL be some of the finest water-firing weapons money can buy: the Spyra 2 water cannon is reputedly the strongest of its kind ever made. Fancy getting your hands on one? Read on and take part in the poll and comments section of the Summer Splash.This time around, eight Fratelli editors will choose three of their favorite summer watches and pitch t...

We like to talk about vintage watches a lot within the Fratello team. While the daily routine is largely focused on the most recent developments in the world of watches, the most fun for many of us lies in the sometimes weird and often wonderful world of vintage watches. Its a world full of history, remarkable watches, incredible stories, and quirky details. It inspired us to come up with a series of articles focusing on the best watches per decade from a select group of brands. Some of them are priceless, some of them still affordable. In this installment, we will take a look at the best Swatch watches from the 1980s.While the 1970s were a decade filled with tremendous change in the watch i...

I m a bit of an oddball when it comes to watch collecting. I just don t like to buy watches that other people have. Or at least the ones that too many other people have. If you re familiar with my collection at all, you may be shaking your head, screaming Hypocrite! by now. After all, the first two good watches in my current assembly were a Tudor Black Bay and a Submariner. How much more cliche could I possibly get? Hear me out, though.My Black Bay and Submariner were the first two grails I acquired. Mine are watches that, while fairly common, are loaded with memories and sentimental value. As such, they are pillars of my collection that will never leave until I pass them on to my children....

Watch design is without a doubt one of the hardest forms of design to master. Watches are small objects and come with a long list of aesthetic and technical requirements. In its essence, the watch s design always has to be serving the wrist of the wearer and the movement that powers the watch. That combination of aesthetics and technique makes watches fascinating, to begin with. But what happens when industry outsiders get involved in the art of watch design? Time to check out some of the creations from renowned architects and find out if we can learn from them.For me, watches are about aesthetics first and foremost. No matter how impressive the movement is, if the watch s design does not mo...

The inspiration for this article stems from a Fratello on Air podcast episode in May. In the episode, Fratello editors Mike, Jorg, and Balazs discussed watch cultures around the globe. While we are an international team at Fratello, we can only speculate on watch cultures based on our own experience. I set out to deliver the cold, hard facts that somehow reinforce the assumptions made as part of the episode. Using statistics, we will define the most popular watch brand and model around the globe. Before we start, take a guess on which watch brand stands above the rest, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.The data we will look at today was graciously provided by Chrono24 s extensive...

…this might be a?solution. This blue dialed Seiko 6139-6002 is one elegant chronograph that s smart and casual. And you need one. ?Its hard to believe that it has been five years since Mike reviewed his blindingly yellow treasure, the Seiko 6139 Pogue. Why are we writing about the same reference again? Its pretty simple. There are watches that arent worth writing any articles about (pardon my arrogance), watches worth mentioning once in a blue moon, and then there are watches you can t write enough about. The Seiko 6139 belongs to that last category. Actually, I am quite surprised we havent covered it more since. Tune into those Pepsi tones, we are about to improve our Seiko 6139 track...

Oris has slowly but surely been equipping more of its watches with movements from the in-house Calibre 400 series. Earlier this year, we did see the bronze Divers Sixty-Five Carl Brashear that featured the Calibre 401 and a small seconds sub-dial. Now, the time has come for Oris to release the first Divers Sixty-Five with the standard Calibre 400. It comes in the shape of a khaki dialed, 38mm limited edition piece. Time to find out more about the Oris Divers Sixty-Five Cal. 400 Limited Edition For Hodinkee.Things have been busy in the small Swiss town of H?lstein over the last 12 months. Oris has been focussing on releasing a great variety of watches. Here at Fratello, we even had the pleasu...

Roll up, roll up! The summer has hit The Hague and Fratello is keen to celebrate. After the fizzing success of March Mania, we are back with the Summer Splash. A new knock-out competition conceived to find the very best summer watch out there, according to YOU, the Fratelli. And guess what? You can win prizes! No, there won t be a watch available this time but there WILL be some of the finest water-firing weapons money can buy: the Spyra 2 water cannon is reputedly the strongest of its kind ever made. Fancy getting your hands on one? Read on and take part in the comments section of this article.This time around, eight writers will choose three of their favorite summer watches and pitch them ...

Bezels. They split opinions almost as often as they are themselves split by two contrasting colors. While the two-color GMT bezel has a practical origin (to communicate daytime and nighttime hours at a glance), they have become just as appreciated for their aesthetic qualities as anything else. The GMT-Master II Pepsi still stands atop the mountain when it comes to the most sought-after releases in the last five years. But haven t we supped enough Pepsi? Isn t it time for a fresh flavor to carry us into 2022? Here are my top five suggestions of what should do next.Given that the bezel of a GMT watch is a painfully obvious canvas for expression, it is kind of crazy we don t see more wild co...

Friends, watch lovers, Fratelli, lend me your ears: you have spoken and we have listened. After the roaring success of the March Mania tournament, we put our heads together to conceive our next vote-based extravaganza, and we are pleased to announce that from tomorrow and for the next month, the Summer Splash tournament will take place on the pages of Fratello. Our goal? To find the best summer watch. But we need your help. Sign-up for a Fratello account and play along. You never know, you might even win a prize…The rules are simple: watches must be water-resistant to 100 meters at least, they must cost less than $5,000, and they must be available. That means sold-out limited models, v...

The two brands Porsche Design and Porsche are often assumed to be one and the same. But only recently, the Design Studio became part of the car manufacturer. Since then, the ties between Porsche Design watches and Porsche cars have become even stronger. Although there have always been links between the two companies, Porsche Design has created an impressive portfolio of non-car-related products - including watches. Let s go back and explore the history of Porsche Design s watches.The history of Porsche Design starts in 1972. Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, generally known as F. A. Porsche (but also as Butzi) founded the Porsche Design Studio in Stuttgart, Germany. F. A. Porsche had been respons...

OK, it s confession time. Ana-digi watches have never really been my jam. Other than a G-Shock from my wife that I wore as a beater years ago, I have never expressed any interest in owning (or heaven forbid purchasing) an ana-digi timepiece. So when Rob assigned me this article, I was, admittedly, less than enthused by the subject matter. However, if there s one thing I ve noticed so far in my short time at Fratello, it s that I. KNOW. NOTHING.Or, at very best, not nearly as much as I thought I did three months ago. Therefore, every research article I tackle ends up becoming an incredibly beneficial learning experience. Indeed, each is an adventure that opens my mind to a wider world of horo...

A few years ago, when I was examining my own vintage Datejust from 1969, I concluded that the dial inside was a service dial. I got it in 2002, and at the time there was little to no information available on the topic. But even a few years ago when I decided to finally replace it with an original dial, I realized that it can be very confusing to determine whats correct and what isn t. On eBay, theres a ton of accessories such as dials, hands, and bezels. I quickly found out that authenticity is not always guaranteed. With the help of some friends, who know more about dials than I do, I managed to source a nice one (also from eBay). Of course, I paid a stupid amount, but at least my Datej...

Here at Fratello, we love GADA (Go Anywhere, Do Anything) watches. For those of us collecting on a budget, having something hardy and reliable to take the knocks life throws at it is high on the list of purchasing priorities. While the watches from Casio in question today are about as far removed from a dress watch as you could imagine (and thus cannot go literally anywhere or do literally anything), they are, in the spirit of the term, exactly the kind of value proposition quartz behemoths our team covets.While I m firmly in the Mudmaster camp (as a long-time lover of both the modern reference GG-B100-1A3ER and its forerunning range mate, reference GWG-1000-1A3ER), I ve recently found mysel...

Fans of vintage chronographs may well be familiar with the Airain Type 20. The first time I came across the brand was trawling through vintage watch eBay listings, on the hunt for a potential bargain - sadly, to this day, I have never found anything to cause me to pull the trigger. I don t remember exactly which Airain model I saw on my searches, but it was indeed a chronograph and could have been a vintage example of the watch I m looking at today. That is the Airain Type 20 Re-Edition Brown Limited Edition.Now owned by a Dutch team that resurrected Airain‘s sister watch brand, Lebois & Co, Airain originally operated out of Besancon, at the base of the Jura Mountains in France. Th...

Well, folks, I am honored to be holding the fort during RJs summer holiday absence. Earlier this month, I was at Fratello HQ in The Hague when RJ shouted at me from his desk. He said he was going on holiday (yes, even RJ needs a holiday sometimes) and asked me if I could make sure that Speedy Tuesday went ahead as usual. He suggested lending me a Speedmaster for a week on the wrist type of review.While that may seem a little vanilla at first, I think I am probably the only member of the Fratello team that doesnt actually own an Omega Speedmaster. I know, I know: on paper, that is absolute sacrilege. For some of the team members, joining Fratello was the catalyst for their first Speedmaster p...

Why are most watches round? Why not triangles? And for those few watches that arent round, why are they square? There are more than a handful in the realm of quadrangular watches, but we need only investigate the few with historic provenance, industry-shaking developments, and direct lines drawn from designs already present in time to gain the answers to these questions. These few are, of course, the Cartier Santos, Casio G-Shock Square, and Bell & Ross BR 03, all with many variations of their own to explore.Watches are round only for a couple of reasons. (Actually, watches are round for many reasons, but Im trying to make a point.) First, the circular sweeping of the hands naturally pro...

For whatever reason, the Datejust glides past almost invisibly. Perhaps the reason is that its so ubiquitous. Or is it overshadowed by its catalog mates with more tool-like intentions? Whatever the reason, this watch is a standard and deserves a bit more credit.Yawn, another Datejust. Theyre truly everywhere and if youre not seeing an actual example, someone is probably wearing some sort of imitation. The watch has been such a go-to choice for white-collared professionals that it has caused so many other brands to release a copycat or a nearly dead-on competitor over the past 30 to 40 years. As watch enthusiasts, we tend to focus on the sportier models from the brand, but the DJ moves the ...

Watchmaker jargon can be difficult to understand. You read a review about a watch youre interested in, but there are lots of words being used that dont make a lot of sense. Sometimes in the watch industry, we forget that people of all experiences are trying to enjoy the same products. We can be a little non-inclusive when it comes to our vocabulary, instead preferring to stick to traditional verbiage rather than laymans terms. So with that in mind, what is Anglage?Anglage is a French word that literally translates to chamfering. Thats a word you may be slightly more familiar with. Unfortunately, that still doesnt really help explain what it is. When reading reviews where a watch s movement i...