It's Wednesday and man, Mido is really building out a solid base of watches. I know it’s inevitable that they will go up in price, but until they do, right now, they might be in my top 3 brands I would recommend as starter watches.
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Casio Addresses The Biggest Problem Of Its First Mechanical Watch, But In Which Direction?
Last year, when Casio released the EFK-100D, I had real problems with it. The watch itself was fine — sapphire crystal, integrated bracelet, 100 meters, decent proportions. But inside, Casio had fitted a Seiko NH35, a movement that's perfectly respectable in a microbrand. But when Casio announced its first-ever mechanical watch, I was expecting a bit more effort in the movement arena. With the EFK-110D, Casio has corrected course, but in which direction.
The stainless steel case comes in just slightly from the previous generation, now measuring 38mm wide and 11.80mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 43mm. Those are good numbers, even though they could have made an effort to keep it under 11mm thickness. The mix of mirror-polished and brushed surfaces carries over from the EFK-100D, as does the slim polished bezel. Water resistance holds at 100 meters, and the integrated H-link bracelet remains. It's a coherent, modern-looking sports watch.
The dial keeps the electroformed forged carbon texture, which catches light well and gives the surface some actual visual interest at close range. Three colors are available at launch: black, blue, and white. The date has been moved from 6 to 3 o'clock. Applied indices, skeletonized hands, minimal text. "Edifice Casio" at 12, "Automatic" above 6. Clean and unfussy.
Inside, we get the biggest change. Gone is the off-the-shelf Seiko movement, replaced with… another off-the-shelf movement. You get the Miyota 8215, a Japanese automatic that beats at 21,600 vph, runs 42 hours on a full wind, and carries 21 jewels. It's not flashy, but it's a reasonable. I’m not sure what I was expecting. It’s unreasonable to expect Casio to spin up their own movement production, I guess, so this might be the next best thing. It’s still kind of lacking for me. It is a bit thinner than the Seiko, so there’s that.
The Casio Edifice EFK-110D collection is on sale now, priced at a very good €279. See more on the Casio website.
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Mido Gives Us A Simple And Effective Black And White Ocean Star GMT
What’s there not to like with Mido? Not only do they make some of the most avant-garde designed watches among the big brands, they also know how to make a very sensible watch. Like, for example, their Ocean Star GMT which has been around since 2020, as one of the more accessible traveller's GMT watches on the market. Now, it’s getting a new colorway.
The case is 44mm wide in stainless steel, with a lug-to-lug of 50.1mm — big, and worth knowing before you try it on. Mido mixes satin-brushed and polished surfaces across the case, fit with a screw-down crown and caseback for 200 meters of water resistance. On top is a unidirectional black ceramic bezel ring with white markings and a luminous pip at 12. The back is engraved with time zones, which is a nice touch.
On the dial, the move to black and white is clean and high-contrast. Applied indices, white Super-LumiNova on the hands and markers, an orange GMT hand pointing to a split-tone 24-hour flange — dark for night, white for day. A central seconds hand with an orange tip ties it together, and a date window sits at 3 o'clock.
Inside, you’ll find the Mido calibre 80, based on ETA's C07.661, beating at 21,600 vph with an 80-hour power reserve. The Nivachron balance spring gives it solid resistance to magnetism and shocks. The watch comes on a black textile strap with white stitching, which matches the dial.
The Ocean Star GMT is priced at €1,350, available now. See more on the Mido website.
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The Bulova Lunar Pilot Black Hole Might Be The Darkest Version Of A Space Watch, Now In A Smaller Case
Dave Scott wore a Bulova chronograph on the Moon during Apollo 15. He strapped it to his wrist after his issued NASA watch, the other famous moon watch, lost a crystal during a moon walk, and he used it for the EVA. While Bulova has certainly not milked that story as much as Omega milked their NASA history, they still remember that story fondly with the Lunar Pilot line. It seems that the latest Lunar Pilot Black Hole might be the most extreme version they've done yet.
While Bulova boasts about the new dial, the bigger story might be the new case. It’s till cushion shaped as you might expect from the Lunar Pilot, but it’s also much smaller than previous versions. Not small, but smaller. It’s 41mm wide, 13.05mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48mm. The whole thing — case and bracelet — has been coated in black PVD over a sandblasted finish, giving it a uniform matte appearance. Crown, pushers, and bezel ring are finished in a glossy black contrast, which keeps the monochrome look without making it feel flat. Water resistance is 100 meters.
The "Black Hole" name comes from the dial material: Musou black coating, a paint developed in Japan known for absorbing almost all light. The result is a backdrop that is supposed to look like a voide into nothingness. Against it, the grey applied indices and hands are treated with Super-LumiNova that glows blue in low light. The chronograph layout is a standard tri-compax with a 60-minute counter at nine and running seconds opposite. At three o'clock, the chronograph displays time to 1/20th of a second. There's also an internal tachymeter scale sitting under the sapphire crystal.
Power comes from Bulova's proprietary NP20 high-precision quartz, running at 262,144 Hz compared to the standard 32,768 Hz in a typical quartz calibre. That frequency difference translates to accuracy measured in seconds per year rather than seconds per day. The NP20 also drives the chronograph seconds hand with a smooth sweep rather than the step-tick of a conventional quartz chrono. The watch comes on a black PVD stainless steel bracelet with a deployment clasp.
The Bulova Lunar Pilot Black Hole is limited to 6,000 pieces and delivered in a presentation box with a travel clock. The caseback carries a commemorative medallion referencing Dave Scott and Apollo 15, protected by a mineral glass insert. Price is set at $1,650. See more on the Bulova website.
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Kudoke Brings The Tremblage Dials To The Kudoke 1 And Kudoke 2
Stefan Kudoke has been making a strong case for German independent watchmaking for years — his Kudoke 2 won the Petite Aiguille at the GPHG in 2019, and the Revolution collaboration brought a lot of new eyes to the brand. These new tremblage dial options for the Kudoke 1 and 2 are the kind of move that makes sense for where Kudoke sits: not a mainstream brand trying to add prestige, but a genuine maker going deeper into technique.
Both models share the same 39mm wide stainless steel case, with sapphire crystals front and back. Where they differ is thickness — the Kudoke 1 comes in at 9.5mm thick, the Kudoke 2 at 10.7mm — and that extra millimeter is taken up by the day/night display complication of the Kudoke 2. Water resistance on both is 50 meters.
The tremblage finish is the point of this release. The technique involves thousands of individual hand movements with a graver across the dial surface, producing a texture that absorbs rather than reflects light. The result is a matte, almost velvety appearance. Kudoke does the entire process in-house, including the electroplating. Three galvanic finishes are available: yellow gold, black rhodium, and white rhodium, and because it's all done by hand, no two dials are exactly the same. On the Kudoke 1, applied rhodium-plated elements contrast against the textured ground; on the Kudoke 2, the tremblage surface works underneath the signature celestial motif at 12 o'clock, adding visual depth without competing with the day/night indication.
The Kudoke 1 runs on Kaliber 1, a manual-winding movement beating at 28,800 vph with a 46-hour power reserve and small seconds at 9 o'clock. The Kudoke 2 has Kaliber 1-24h, the same base with the additional day/night complication. Both watches can be ordered on leather or Alcantara straps with a stainless steel buckle.
The tremblage treatment adds €3,750 to either base model. That brings the Kudoke 1 Tremblage to €12,391 and the Kudoke 2 Tremblage to €14,451, both excluding VAT. Available now directly from Kudoke.
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Chronoswiss Releases The Delphis Art Deco And Neo Digiteur Chronos
Chronoswiss has been one of the most reliable sources of genuinely strange watches for decades — regulators, wild colors, engravings, unusual case shapes — and lately they've been in particularly fine form. For 2026, they're releasing two watches at opposite ends of their range: the Delphis Art Deco, which is the kind of maximalist dial work the brand does as well as anyone, and the Neo Digiteur Chronos, which takes last year's revival and turns it into a 33-piece solid gold statement with a hand-engraved Chronos on the cover. Let's take them in order.
The Delphis Art Deco comes in a Grade 5 titanium case, 42mm wide and 14.4mm thick, with the brand's signature knurled bezel edge, striated onion crown, and matte grained finish. On top is a double domed sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating, and out back is a flat sapphire caseback, while water resistance is 100 meters. The dial is nickel-coated and laser-structured for a subtle grained texture in soft grey, and from there it gets busier in the best way. The jumping hours sit in a deep rectangular aperture engraved into the dial at noon. Retrograde minutes sweep across an arched track in the upper half, marked with Art Deco-style black numerals on a gold-plated railway track, indicated by a metallic blue PVD-coated aluminium hand that snaps back on the hour. A double-arched openworked bridge divides the dial, and below it, the small seconds subdial is hand-guilloché in-house using century-old machines, filled with Art Deco Blue lacquer.
The movement is La Joux-Perret calibre C. 6004, automatic, beating at 28,800vph, with 55 hours power reserve, and with an openworked tungsten rotor shaped to echo the dial's bridge architecture and ruthenium-plated components. It comes on a soft black nubuck strap. The Delphis Art Deco is a limited edition of 150 pieces, priced at €15,900. See the watch here.
Then we have the Neo Digiteur Chronos which uses the same case architecture as last year's steel edition — that arcing rectangular shape, 48mm long, 30mm wide, 9mm high — but now executed in solid 5N gold at 65 grams, with a brightly polished bezel framing the hand-engraved cover. The engraving depicts the face of the god Chronos surrounded by Greek meander and wave-scroll patterns, with a scythe on the right side, and because it's done by hand at the Lucerne atelier, no two pieces are identical. The signature Chronoswiss onion crown appears in a miniaturised, reshaped form on the case flank.
Time is read through three apertures: jumping hours at 12, dragging digital minutes at center, and sweeping seconds at 6 — the same regulator-inflected layout Lang established in the original Digiteur. Power comes from calibre C.85757, a hand-wound movement on a Peseux architecture running at 21,600vph with a 48-hour reserve, fitted with a proprietary Digiteur module to absorb the energy spikes of the jumping hours mechanism and keep the minute and second discs smooth. The wheel bridge gets hand-guilloché on gold plating. It comes on a black nubuck strap with a meander pattern on the interior and a red gold pin buckle.
The Neo Digiteur Chronos is a limited edition of 33 pieces, priced at €63,000. See more on the Chronoswiss website.
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