TheOverAnalyzed

At this year’s Baselworld, Tudor unveiled it’s Black Bay GMT—a first for the Black Bay lineup.

As Stephen Pulvirent of HODINKEE notes, the bezel is something special. It’s got this “soft, matte finish,” which is unlike the Cerachrom bezels on Rolex’s current GMT-Master II lineup. I think it’s more subtle than the Cerachrom bezel; more confident.

I am 95% in love with this watch, except for a few details. And these are the same two details I’ve disliked on all the Black Bays since 2016:

1. Loss of the Tudor “rose” emblem on the dial, and a switch to the more modern “shield” emblem

   • Tudor’s first series of ETA-powered Black Bays featured Tudor’s original rose emblem—a nod to the 16th-ish century English dynasty that was the House of Tudor
   • Tudor did away with that when they started using their own in-house manufacturer movement
   • That’s too bad, because the rose emblem was neat 🌹

2. Riveted bracelet

   • From 2016 onwards, Tudor started using a riveted bracelet instead of the non-riveted ones of the previous years’ Black Bays
   • While “period correct,” I think the riveted bracelet is too masculine
   • This is Tudor, the perpetual^[1] little brother to Rolex. These watches aren’t supposed to be masculine (🚫💪🏼)—they’re supposed to classy
     • Tudor/Rolex is like Porsche. Both have long histories and famous offerings. Just as you won’t ever see a 911 with blown V8 poking out of the front hood, we really didn’t need to see a Tudor with rivets in the bracelets

While this new Tudor GMT still has the shield emblem, and it still has a riveted bracelet, it looks like a real winner for the brand.

Priced at CHF 3,700, this is an absolute steel of a deal compared to Rolex’s GMT-Master II lineup.^[2]