Hands-On - Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph Openworked Black Ceramic ref. 26343CE (Specs & Price)
This year, at the SIHH 2018, Audemars Piguet unveiled a host of novelties. If the Extra-Thin 15202IP in titanium and platinum stole our hearts, and if there was a strong focus on ladies’ watches – see the?Double Balance Wheel Openworked 37mm Frosted Gold or the?Millenary Frosted Gold Opal Dial – there was clearly more to please us. This includes the?Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph Openworked Reference?26343CE, the first time this complex and powerful watch is cased in black ceramic.This new version of the?Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph Openworked once again demonstrates the expertise of the Le Brassus brand when it comes to the use of ceramics. AP already showed such mastery with the?Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar?26579CE, the first all-ceramic watch (bracelet included) of the brand – and when you have the chance of wearing this watch on your wrist, you understand what expertise means. The execution is simply brilliant. While not really a new wa

COOL FINDS: 3 rarities from indie watchmakers - Monochrome-Watches
After showing you some highly interesting vintage timepieces?from Heuer and some rare vintage chronographs from Airain or Universal Geneve, we wanted to move on to our favorite subject: independent watchmakers. Those type of watches are always made in very limited editions and finding pre-owned ones is complicated. Here are three rare birds that you might like as much as we do.A classical Speake-Marin J-Class ResiliencePeter (Speake-Marin) is a very good friend of Monochrome-Watches. We’ve always thoroughly enjoyed?his work. He has now moved on to building some very nice, more affordable, pilot watches (the Wing Commander, the Seafire Chronograph and the Spirit MkII) but he also has his classical line, the J-Class, represented by dress watches, with in-house calibers and even a tourbillon. Ad - Scroll to continue with article The one presented here is a Re

Swatch Sistem51 - Monochrome-Watches
The Swatch Sistem51 is certainly the cheapest watch we’ve ever featured on Monochrome-Watches and we are doing it without any shame or regrets. Why? The Sistem51 is clearly one of the most important novelties presented during the last 10 years. As the first Swatch did in 1983, this new automatic watch is a major industrial milestone that COULD (I have to insist on the ‘could’ because, for the moment, we are not sure of possible future developments) change the face of the Swatch Group and of the whole industry.History of SwatchSwatch (which stands for ‘second watch’, because of its affordable price and casual look) was born in the early 1980s, just in the middle of the ‘Quartz Crisis’. At that time, the actors of the watchmaking industry in Switzerland were all intensely affected by the arrival of cheap Japanese quartz watches and production numbers became lower than at any time before. However, a very simple but clever idea saved the industry.

The legendary Omega Seamaster Ploprof - The Kraken of Diving Watches - Monochrome-Watches
The world of diving watches has a very unique place in the industry. There are very cheap divers and very expensive ones, there are watches that can be used as a backup for the dive computers, because they calculate the depth as well other parameters as ascend/descend rate, water temperature etc, and there are watches that are very minimal. There are automatic, quartz, kinetic or solar driven. There are tools and there are jewels or as we call them the desk divers. Some of them though are so important because upon their inception they transformed the way the industry perceived the construction of the proper divers watch. One such icon we are going to examine today because in truth few examples possess the presence and the mystic that surrounds the Omega Seamaster Ploprof.*?Kraken is a legendary sea monster of large proportions. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the kraken have made it a recurring ocean-dwelling monster in various fictional works and movies.Elements o

Introducing the Oris Divers Sixty Five, now in Grey and "Deauville Blue" (specs & price) - Monochrome Watches
Remember Baselworld 2015… One of the most?discussed watches and one of our favorites was, surprisingly, a watch priced below 2,000 Euros – and not one of the ultra-complicated pieces from Patek or one of the latest es. Frankly, the Oris Divers Sixty Five is a tremendously cool timepiece, mixing?perfectly vintage elements with a modern and ultra-stylish look. We showed it to you in advance before Baselworld and we reviewed it later, just to confirm that, yes, we love this affordable, simple but inspired tool watch. Oris now comes with a new iteration, following the trend of blue dials. Here is?Oris Divers Sixty Five, now in Grey and “Deauville Blue”.Introduced first with a black dial, a black bezel and cream “faux-patina” indexes, the Oris Divers Sixty Five was paying tribute to an almost forgotten vintage piece made by the brand during the mid-1960s (most likely, this watch was launched in 1965). Expect for the evolution of the size (that evolved fr