Longines Legend Diver 59 Embraces A Vintage Look; The Very Light Synchron Ti300M Poseidon; Eska In Blue; Perrelet Puts A Roulette On Your Wrist; Hublot Goes Muted With The New Spirit Of Big Bang

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. We have lots of depth today, literally and figuratively.

In this issue

• Longines Legend Diver 59 Embraces A Vintage Look With Matte Dial And Improved Bracelet

• Synchron Ti300M Poseidon I Loses A Lot Of Weight Without Losing Any Character

• Eska Adds A Classic Blue To The Amphibian 250 Collection With The Blue Dolphin

• Perrelet Turbine Casino Roulette Brings A Fun And Colorful Game To Your Wrist

• Hublot Goes Muted With The Spirit Of Big Bang Essential Taupe Chronograph

👂What’s new

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Longines Legend Diver 59 Embraces A Vintage Look With Matte Dial And Improved Bracelet

The Legend Diver is one of those watches where the revival almost eclipsed the original in the public imagination. Since Longines brought it back in 2007, the collection has been through size variations, date additions, colour rotations and bronze experiments, all building on the appeal of that 1959 EPSA compressor case with its twin crowns and internal rotating bezel. Of course, this isn’t a true EPSA compressor case, but it looks the part. The 39mm no-date version introduced in 2023 sharpened the formula considerably, but the 42mm no-date remained the one gap that real fans kept pointing to. The Legend Diver 59 closes it.

The case is 42mm wide and 12.85mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50.1mm. It follows the familiar compressor-style profile, which means the dual-crown arrangement is intact: the crown at 2 o'clock works the internal bidirectional bezel, and the lower crown does the winding and time-setting. Both of them screw-down. A domed box-type sapphire crystal sits on top, and the caseback is slightly angled for wrist ergonomics. Water resistance is 300 meters, and the watch has ISO 6425 certification.

Previous 42mm versions had glossy lacquered dials that looked good in photos but flared in direct light. The 59, which takes a lot of vintage inspiration, takes a different approach: a lightly grained matte black surface. Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 anchor the layout alongside elongated markers and a peripheral minute track, with the hands and numerals sandblasted to match the matte texture. Lume is old radium-tinted Super-LumiNova, which gives the whole dial a pleasant warmth.

Inside is the Longines calibre L888.6, the same COSC-certified automatic used in the Heritage Legend Diver 39. It’s built on an ETA A31.L11 base, beating at a slightly unusla 25,200 vph (3.5Hz), delivers a 72-hour power reserve and uses a silicon balance spring for anti-magnetic performance. The watch ships on a steel Milanese mesh bracelet with double-folding clasp and a micro-adjustment system that improves on earlier bracelet hardware, and a black rubber strap with diver's pin buckle is included.

The Longines Legend Diver 59 is available now at EUR 4,000. See more on the Longines website.

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Synchron Ti300M Poseidon I Loses A Lot Of Weight Without Losing Any Character

Rick Marei is best known for building up Doxa to the powerhouse it is today. He has left Doxa and has been focusing on rebuilding Synchron, the legendary dive watch manufacturer. These look very familiar, thanks to their Doxa 300T connection, but carry a lot of their own character. I’ve written about the Poseidon when it launched in 2023 and it was a chunky diver, made even more massive by its all-steel construction. And you could feel it. The new Ti300M Poseidon I fixes the one real problem with those earlier versions: it weighs almost nothing. 50 grams total, in fact, thanks to a Grade 5 titanium case, caseback, rotating bezel, and crown.

The case measures 41mm wide with a lug-to-lug of a fairly compact 45mm and, more critically, drops to 11.9mm thick. That's more than 2mm slimmer than the stainless predecessors. Those are some pretty great proportions. The bezel has depth markers in feet, and a 60 minute scale. Three layers of anti-reflective coating are applied on the flat sapphire crystal make this a pleasingly easy watch to photograph. A screw-down crown and screw-in solid titanium caseback back up the 300 meter water resistance rating.

The bright yellow dial will be instantly familiar to people who are fans of dive watches. Applied, polished metal indices carry greenish white Super-LumiNova X1 stripes. The handset follows the signature formula: a comically small hour hand, a large minute hand, and a sweep seconds hand with a rectangular pip. A black-on-white date wheel sits at three o'clock. The fish and trident Poseidon logo appears on the dial, a callback to the 1970s.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G100 in Soigné grade, the top tier of LJP's calibre lineup, adjusted to four positions. It runs at 28,800 vph, offers a 60-hour power reserve, and is rated to ±7 seconds per day. The watch ships on a 20mm yellow Tropic strap with a stainless steel pin buckle; a black version is also available. Either choice looks the part.

The Ti300M Poseidon I is limited to 500 numbered pieces. The first 100 ship in the second half of May. Early-order price is $1,290, rising to $1,490 afterward. See more on the Synchron website.

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Eska Adds A Classic Blue To The Amphibian 250 Collection With The Blue Dolphin

The Eska Amphibian 250 has been one of the better stories in the French microbrand revival space. Two enthusiasts brought back a defunct diver brand, sorted out the movement situation along the way by swapping the NH38 for a Sellita SW200 in the White Shark, and have been rolling out new colorways at a steady pace ever since — red, green, white, black, and a warm-hued destro version we covered back in March. The Blue Dolphin is the latest in line.

The case is unchanged from the rest of the Amphibian 250 family: 40mm wide, 46mm lug-to-lug, stainless steel with 250 meters of water resistance, with a screw-down crown. The double-domed sapphire crystal and coin-edge unidirectional bezel with large, beige-tinted numerals are both unchanged. This version gets the updated bezel design introduced on the Green Turtle and Red Viper, with square pip markers replacing the earlier baton style.

The sandwich dial goes from a lighter blue that deepens toward the periphery, the kind of gradient. Applied indices and oversized Arabic numerals at 3, 6, 9, and 12 are cut through to a lume layer underneath. Eska went with blue-glow Super-LumiNova here, matching the watch's general personality.

Inside is the Sellita SW200, running at 28,800 vph with a 38-hour power reserve. Both standard and destro configurations are offered from the start, which is a choice I love to be offered. Strap choice is either a white rubber or a navy rubber with white stitching made by Rub Strap, which looks the more serious of the two in press photos. Unlike several previous Amphibian editions, the Blue Dolphin isn't a numbered limited edition.

The Eska Amphibian 250 Blue Dolphin is priced at €908 without VAT, with deliveries beginning July 15, 2026. See more on the Eska website.

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Perrelet Turbine Casino Roulette Brings A Fun And Colorful Game To Your Wrist

Perrelet has been in a playful mood lately, and that’s what they do best. The Turbine range went stone dial with the Weekend Malachite earlier this year, and now, presented at Geneva Watch Week 2026, the brand is pushing its signature spinning dial in an entirely different direction. The Turbine Casino Roulette replaces the usual propeller-style blades with a miniature French roulette wheel, and the result is one of the more committed pieces of wrist theater I've seen in a while.

The case is grade 2 titanium, 41mm wide, with brushed and polished surfaces and an integrated five-link titanium bracelet. Despite the width, it actually wears quite well because of the integrated short lugs. Water resistance comes in at 100 meters. Perrelet also throws in a black rubber strap, which is a nice touch.

The Turbine collection has been most recognizable for the turbine-style fan on the dial side of the watch, connected to the winding rotor, spinning as the rotor spins and creating a very interesting visual. The Turbine Casino Roulette uses the same concept, but turns the turbine into a roulette wheel, which is a very fun concept. The wheel is sandblasted stainless steel, shaped like a French roulette table with alternating red and black numbers from zero to 36, a green zero at 12 o'clock, and a small arrow that acts as the pointer. Move your wrist and the wheel spins; stop and you've got a result. Hours, minutes, and seconds are displayed centrally over the wheel, with Super-LumiNova on the hands.

Inside is the calibre P-331-MH developed by Soprod, the same movement that powers the Turbine Splash. It beats at 4Hz, delivers 42 hours of power reserve, and comes with both COSC and Chronofiable certifications.

The Turbine Casino Roulette is a limited edition of 100 pieces, priced at €5,250. See more on the Perrelet website.

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Hublot Goes Muted With The Spirit Of Big Bang Essential Taupe Chronograph

The Essential series is one of the more interesting things Hublot does. Once a year, online-only, they take one of their core case shapes and strip it down to a single color. Last year's Essential Taupe was applied to the Classic Fusion; this year the same treatment goes to the Spirit of Big Bang, in two sizes.

The 42mm comes in a titanium case, bumpers included, measuring 14.1mm thick. The smaller is 32mm wide and 10.8mm thick, but the case is made out of stainless steel.. Both share the same mixed finishing across satin, polish, and sandblast, a flat sapphire crystal on top, and 100 meters of water resistance.

The taupe dials diverge more than the cases do. The 42mm gets the chequerboard treatment Hublot introduced on the Coal Blue collection earlier this year, alternating satin and polished squares in a weave pattern that creates a real three-dimensional texture. The sub-dials at three, six, and nine have snailed interiors. The 32mm takes a softer approach, with a sloping taupe flange and applied hour markers that extend out over the dial surface to suggest depth. Both versions have lumed hands and indices, and both have date windows.

The 42mm has the HUB4700, Hublot's El Primero-derived high-frequency automatic beating at 5Hz with a 50-hour power reserve and 1/10th second chronograph accuracy. The 32mm gets the HUB1120, a Sellita SW1000 base beating at 4Hz with a 40-hour reserve. Each watch ships with two interchangeable taupe straps via the One Click system, in high-tech fabric and rubber.

Both references are limited to 200 pieces each. The 42mm is priced at €24,300; the 32mm at €14,600. See more on the Hublot website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Mahjong, the Chinese tile game, is having a mainstream moment in the US. Online, you may have already seen ads for luxury designer sets; pricey instructor-training courses; and the new Hallmark movie, All’s Fair in Love & Mahjong, featuring a mostly non-Asian cast. Nicole Wong, author of Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora and creator of The Mahjong Project, examines the growing divide between Asian diasporic communities—for whom mahjong is a cultural inheritance—and those who have newly embraced the game as a lifestyle trend, a demographic that skews largely white and female.

• What brings us to the desert, and what keeps us there? In this Offing essay, Zoe Kurland writes about the Marfa Lights Viewing Center, an unassuming roadside stop in West Texas where travelers hope to glimpse the mysterious Marfa lights over Mitchell Flat. More like an open-air church than a tourist attraction, the center has become something else for Kurland: a place of both “emptiness and promise,” of romantic encounters and quiet reckoning, where visitors become lovers and then disappear, and where she continues to wonder what exactly she’s looking for.

• Alessandra Ram is currently wrangling two babies in her household: a 10-month-old daughter and an LLM. For Wired, Ram writes a dispiriting yet sharp and funny piece about being to be married to someone who is the head of AI at a company. Spoiler: not so fun. Ram speaks with other “sad wives” like herself—women in relationships with “AI-pilled spouses” who are desperately trying to capitalize on this moment in tech.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

My new thing is to have YouTube documentaries playing in the background while I work. But be careful, some of these are so good you’ll just watch them through instead of writing this newsletter.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk