The New Q Timex Continental Just Might Be The Simple GMT You’ve Been Looking For; Rado's Ceramic Captain Cook Chrono; Depancel's Allure Mono Eye Mint Green; MB&F SP One Introduces Special Projects

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. It’s getting warmer so it’s time to start looking at summer watches. This Depancel might be a good starting off point.

In this issue:

• The New Q Timex Continental GMT Just Might Be The Simple GMT You’ve Been Looking For

• Rado Gives Their Captain Cook Chronograph A High-Tech Ceramic Case And Bracelet

• The New Depancel Allure Mono Eye Mint Green Is A Fantastic Summer Watch Option

• MB&F SP One Introduces New Special Project Collection In Which They Can Really Do Whatever They Want

👂What’s new

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The New Q Timex Continental GMT Just Might Be The Simple GMT You’ve Been Looking For

Timex has been making some moves over the last few years. Some of the models that caught our eye are just great colors used on existing models, like the Q Timex, while others are all new creations that are original, great looking and are usually very affordable. This latest release from Timex is somewhere in the middle — it’s based on the ubiquitous Q Timex model but with plenty of tweaks to make it very original. The new Timex Q Timex Continental GMT is a very interesting take on a GMT, one that minimalists will appreciate.

The case of the watch looks and feels familiar to the Q Timex line, but with some pretty great upgrades. The stainless steel case measures 39mm wide and just 9mm thick. I don’t have the lug-to-lug measurement, but seeing as how the watch doesn’t have traditional lugs and has integrated bracelets instead, it should be very comfortable. The finish is a satin crushed one, including on the fixed and unmarked bezel. That’s interesting because the majority of Q Timex watches have functional rotating bezel, and one would expect to see the same on a GMT watch. On top is a mineral glass crystal, which is expected. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Where the Q Timex Continental GMT gets truly interesting is on the dial side. There are two colors available, a white and a black-grey, both of which have a snailed texture over the entire surface. You get applied baton hour markers, a silver Q at 12 o’clock and a small aperture for the date at 3 o’clock. However, instead of a third or fourth hand that that points to a 24 hour scale on the bezel or somewhere on the dial, the second time zone is indicated on a wonderfully charming disc, seen through the half-moon aperture above 6 o’clock.

Inside, you’ll find an unnamed quartz movement that’s not given much detail by Timex. The white watch comes on a black rubber strap, while the black one comes on an H-link bracelet that looks much sturdier than what you might expect from the rest of the Q Timex line. But I might be wrong on that.

The new Timex Q Timex Continental GMT is on sale now, priced at €189 for the white watch and €209 for the black watch. See more on the Timex website.

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Rado Gives Their Captain Cook Chronograph A High-Tech Ceramic Case And Bracelet

The thing we know Rado the most for are certainly their explorations with materials, primarily with ceramics. But the second thing that comes to mind when I think of Rado is their Captain Cook line. A couple of months ago, for example, the released a pretty spectacular reissue of the Captain Cook Over-Pole, a very classy watch. The Captain Cook was first introduced in the early 60s, then it went away, and it was reintroduced in the late 2010s. After a number of different material iterations, in 2022 Rado introduced the Captain Cook Chronograph. It took a while, but we’re finally getting the Chrono done in the brand’s signature material, High-Tech Ceramic.

Like so many of the High-Tec Ceramic models, this one comes in a full monobloc ceramic case that can be had in two colors — one is a matt black ceramic case with a rose gold PVD-coated stainless steel bezel, crown, and pushers, while the other is a matt plasma ceramic case with a stainless steel bezel fitted with the dark green polished ceramic bezel insert. The case measures 43mm wide, 16.2mm thick and has a 49.8mm lug-to-lug. On top is a box-shaped sapphire crystal. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dials have the same setup, with slightly different colors. You get three subdials, including the introduction of the new chronograph hour counter. The black watch gets a black dial with rose gold-colored applied hour markers and polished hands, while the plasma colored watch gets a green dial that matches the bezel insert. The applied markers and hands are rhodium-coloured.

Inside, you’ll find the calibre R801, an automatic chronograph movement. It has a Nivachron hairspring, beats at 4Hz and has a 59 hour power reserve. The watches come on high-tech ceramic bracelets that match the color of the case and they are closed with a titanium three-fold clasp.

The new Rado Captain Cook High-Tec Ceramic Chronograph is available now, priced at €5,935. See more on the Rado website.

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The New Depancel Allure Mono Eye Mint Green Is A Fantastic Summer Watch Option

Around this time last year, the french watch brand Depancel teamed up with Worn & Wound for a very cool take on their Allure watch, which is already a really nice retro-inspired chronograph. That Allure featured a very pretty mint dial, a single sub-dial and it was powered by an actual vintage Valjoux 92 movement. It was also priced at $4,000 and limited to just 20 pieces. So, tough luck if you wanted one, right? Wrong, because Depancel is now recreating the watch with the same minty dial, a reversed sub-dial setup and a much more accessible movement that brings the price way, way down. This is the new Depancel Allure Mono Eye Mint Green.

The new Mono Eye has some pretty great proportions. The stainless steel case, which has deep brushing and polished details, measures 39mm wide, just 11.5mm thick and has a great lug-to-lug of 45.8mm, despite the fairly long looking lugs. On the side are piston style pushers and a polished crown that has a red band down the middle. The one thing I, and I assume a lot of people also won’t like, is that on top you’ll find a box-style mineral glass crystal on top. Mineral glass helps keep the price down, but it’s not as scratch resistant as sapphire, while being kind of brittle. Perhaps a plexiglass crystal would have been a better option, as it would have fit in with the retro vibe. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is beautiful. A central black ring is surrounded by a mint colored one and another black one on the very edges. The hour and minute hands feature red racing stripes and are filled with white luminous material and there are tiny red dots on the applied hours markers. Another pop of red is found on the central chrono hand, which can be used to track speeds on the tachymeter scale on the outskirts of the dial or a pulse on the pulsometer scale that’s in the internal black ring — that’s a very cool setup. While the Valjoux-powered version had the 30 minute totalizer at 3 o’clock, this new version has the running seconds at 9 o’clock.

Inside the watch is the Seiko Mecha-Quartz caliber SII VK63, meaning that it combines a quartz movement for the regular timekeeping and a mechanical chronograph. The watch comes on a black perforated rally-style leather strap, closed with a pin buckle.

The new Depancel Allure Mono Eye Mint Green is available now and not limited, with the price set at a pretty great €495. See more on the Depancel website.

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MB&F SP One Introduces New Special Project Collection In Which They Can Really Do Whatever They Want

One of the watch groups on WhatsApp I’m part of exploded today. Maximilian Büsser, the head of MB&F, is part of the same group and he made a comment that blew everyone’s mind. “For our 20th anniversary I gave myself the most beautiful gift a creator could hope for: NO MORE boundaries”, he wrote, commenting on the introduction of the MB&F SP One, the first watch in the companies new Special Projects line. How in the world can the creator of some of the wildest watches we’ve ever seen say that he ever had boundaries ever put on him? As it turns out, the fact that Büsser had to define what MB&F actually is for 20 years meant putting boundaries on what they do. With the Special Projects, things are about to get really wild. But for now, we have the MB&F SP One duo.

According to Büsser, the first sketch of the SP One dates back to 2018 when it was dreamt up by Büsser and his longtime design partner Eric Giroud. While the majority of MB&F watches have a huge wrist presence, this is the exact opposite. It measures 38mm wide, 12mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of just 41.9mm. Sure, that 12mm thickness might sound a bit much, but the fact the watch has a thin metal band on the side, with a box-shaped, ultra-domed sapphire crystal on top, with no bzel, making it look much thinner. The case can be had in either 18k rose gold or 950 platinum, with a fully polished finish. It’s all very subdued for an MB&F watch, expect for the slightly unusual position of the crown at 10 o’clock.

Moving to the dial, there is none. And not in a sense that it has a skeletonized dial. There is no dial. The entire thing is completely transparent, with three distinct minimalist circular elements. At 6 o’clock is a small signature MB&F inclined dial which has a DLC-coated base and classic polished markers and hands. Since the entire watch was designed around the tri-part movement, which means that the other two elements visible are parts of the movement — the barrel and the balance wheel. The three elements sit on three arms which are practically invisible behind the elements. The single-barrel architecture is elegantly suspended and framed by a bevelled flange with a spiral brushed surface, colored either sky-blue on the platinum and anthracite on the rose gold.

The movement, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a name. But it does beat at 2.5Hz and has a single barrel that gives 72 hours of power reserve. The finishing includes hand-angled wheels, gold chatons to hold the jewels in place and beveled bridges. The watches come on calfskin straps, beige on the platinum and green on the rose gold, with pin buckles in matching metals.

The new MB&F SP One is, quite suprisingly, not a limited edition. It will be limited in production capacity, but everyone who wants one will get one eventually. The rose gold version is priced at €64,000, while the platinum is priced at €69,000, both without tax. See more on the MB&F website.

⏲️Wait a minute

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

• On at least two occasions, Thomas Keller, the exhaustively acclaimed chef of the French Laundry and Per Se, has served mushroom soup to restaurant critics via a glass bong—an allusion to a negative review published nearly ten years ago. MacKenzie Chung Fegan, restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, encounters a decidedly less playful Keller during a recent visit to the French Laundry, where she is separated from her table, made to wait in a courtyard for Keller, and ultimately informed by the chef that he would like the critic gone from his restaurant. Fegan manages to stay at the French Laundry for another three hours; throughout, Keller’s power intrudes in ways subtle (“apology truffles”) and not.

• “Pigeons’ average flight speed is 40–50 mph,” Matt Joyce writes in Texas Highways. “The world’s fastest human, Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, once clocked in at 27 mph.” In this delightful piece, Joyce shares a short history of messenger pigeons across the ages.

• The Guardian journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed while investigating the impact of deforestation. In this extract from the book Phillips was writing at the time of his death, he reflects on his encounters with the rainforest and its people – and why it is so vital to save the Amazon.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

AD travels to Pleasantville, New York, to tour Toy Hill House, one of the architectural gems in Frank Lloyd Wright’s visionary Usonia neighborhood. In the 1940s, a group of New York City architects, guided by Wright himself, set out to build a modern, affordable utopia—a community rooted in design, nature, and innovation. This resulted in a stunning group of mid-century modern homes nestled in the woods, just an hour from Manhattan.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk