Alvin Wong 24 June 2022

The hugely popular Tudor GMT watch, now in a regal sheen.

‘Tis the season to have our passports renewed and get that travel itch properly scratched, yes? Given the healthy roll-out of GMT watches this year, many watch brands seem to agree, as they entice us to apportion part of our vacation budgets for new travel-friendly timepieces.

A great travel watch needs to be handy, of course. At the very least, it needs to help you keep track of time at home while you are away. For bonus points, it should offer plenty of style mileage – whether on trips, where you need to pack for both formal and casual occasions, or at home, where you can wear it from day to day.

When it was first launched in 2018, the Tudor Black Bay GMT felt like the perfect travel buddy (it still does). Costing a little below S$6,000, the 41mm steel watch leans toward a sporty disposition. But paired with a matching bracelet and endowed with the Black Bay’s retro spirit, it doesn’t look shabby either when worn with a sharp suit.

More importantly, the Black Bay GMT is equipped with robust and reliable two-time zone functionality. With the watch, one can tell the ‘local’ and ‘home’ times simultaneously. A separate 24-hour hand points to the 24-hour bezel to give you the ‘home’ time. Elsewhere, the main hour hand can be adjusted independently in one-hour increments both forwards and back, and is synced with the date display so that both the ‘local’ time and date are accurate. What’s more, the 24-hour bezel is bidirectional, which means that you can rotate and set it to ascertain a third time zone.

This brings us to this year’s Black Bay GMT S&G. The new version comes loaded with the aforementioned familiar features while emanating a distinctly more luxurious feel compared to the previous model. The watch’s ‘S&G’ suffix stands for ‘steel and gold’ and is exactly as advertised. It sports a stainless steel case middle with a yellow gold bezel set with a black-and-brown anodised aluminium disc, and is coined ‘root beer’ for the colour combination that recalls the refreshing beverage. (On the other hand, the steel-clad 2018 version with a blue-and-red bezel is popularly labelled as, you guessed it, ‘Pepsi’.)

The automatic Calibre MT5652 drives the new model, as it does the original – a trusted and reliable engine with 70-hour power reserve and COSC certification. And like before, the Black Bay GMT S&G’s 41mm case and heft are appropriate to the dive watch-inspired Black Bay collection. At the same time, it brandishes the Black Bay’s trademark features beloved by watch enthusiasts, such as large hour markers, ‘snowflake’ hands, and big crown that recalls Tudor’s vintage dive watches. Set against a black dial, the hands, markers, and brand logo are sheathed in a yellow gold tone to match the rest of the watch. As much as the Black Bay GMT S&G oozes sports-inspired allure, the gilded accents certainly amplify a sense of macho luxury.

Tudor offers three versions of the Black Bay GMT S&G: with brown leather strap, black fabric strap (both at a similar price and $220 more than the steel version with bracelet), and with steel-and-gold bracelet, which costs significantly more – at $1,740 extra compared to the leather and fabric strap models. One would definitely feel more of a sting, but we recommend the full bracelet version. That is where the regality of the steel-and-gold combination is fully expressed and, really, the whole point of having a bi-metal watch that, to be fair, will continue to give us pleasure long after we return from our holidays.

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Alvin Wong

Ex Editor-In Chief

Alvin promises not to be a douche when talking about watches. He may have scoured the Basel and Geneva watch fairs for the past 15 years, and played an instrumental role to the growth of Singapore's pioneering horological and men's lifestyle publications, but the intrepid scribe seeks to learn something new with each story he writes.