Favorite Watches of 2022, Part 1
Favorite Watches of 2022, Part 1
Doing an end-of-year list is kind of a rite of passage or sorts for a lot of blogs, YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, you name it. As the first year of I&M closed out, I thought I’d do a “Favorite Watches of 2022” list. I’m not so filled with hubris that I can declare any one of these watches as “the best of” any given category, but these are timepieces that struck a nerve with me.
The rules are as follows:
Without exception, these are watches that I have gotten my hands on in the metal for an appreciable amount of time (around two weeks at least).
For consideration to this list, the watch had to have been released (as in deliverable) in the 2022 calendar year.
For Kickstarter campaigns, that means that the watch was delivered in 2022. So, the campaign itself could have launched in 2021 or even 2020, but if the reward item wasn’t delivered until 2022, then that’s the qualifying calendar year.
Same thing for preorders: delivery to buying customers must take place in 2022.
The watch has to be from an independent or microbrand maker (this is Indies & Micros dot com, after all).
New editions of a past release qualify for consideration.
New colors of a past release do qualify for consideration.
New restock of a past release do not qualify for consideration.
So, those are the rules. To make this a bit more organized, here are the categories I divided all the watches into:
Favorite Field Watch of the Year
Favorite Dive Watch of the Year
Favorite Dress Watch of the Year
Favorite Chronograph of the Year
Favorite Beater of the Year
Favorite Kickstarter Watch of the Year
Favorite GMT of the Year
Favorite Watch of the Year
Favorite Brand of the Year
That’s a decent number of categories, so I’ve broken this post up into three parts. In this one, I’ll cover the Field, Dive, and Dress categories. So, let’s begin.
Favorite Field Watch of the Year
I didn’t get my hands on a lot of field watches this year. The one I ended up buying and can honestly say that got a lot of time on my wrist was the ADPT Series 1.
ADPT (All Day, Purpose, and Terrain – pronounced “adapt”) is, as best I can tell, part of the Worn & Wound/Windup Watch Shop family of brands. The brand began with the purpose of producing American-made nylon watch straps. I personally love their straps (I’ve got three of them) and when I saw the announcement about the Series 1, it was a no-brainer.
The ADPT Series 1 is a collaboration between the ADPT and the folks at BOLDR Supply Co. In fact, it appears to be an excellently modified Boldr Venture, which is a field watch I’ve had my eye on since March of this year.
The Series 1 isn’t for those looking for the kind of muted colors, classic design, and straightforward dials you’d find on, say, a Hamilton Khaki field watch. Rather, ADPT has gone right off the deep end in the best possible way. The Series 1 is available in four versions that make full use of color, graphics, typography, materials, and texture. I picked up the Petrol colorway, which drops a waffle-textured blue dial into a brushed titanium case on a red nylon strap.
The Series 1 is powered by the workhorse Seiko NH35. The date function is in excellently implemented; a color-matched date wheel shows through the window at the 6 o’clock position. In a very nice touch that I think more watchmakers should embrace, double-digit dates are stacked vertically on the wheel. I thought it would hurt legibility a bit, but I’m happy to be proven wrong; it took a few minutes to get used to and then was completely fine.
The ADPT Series 1 is available here.
Favorite Dive Watch of the Year
Here’s the deal about “dive watches” – to me, they have very much become more of an aesthetic category than actual tools. When I look at a dive watch, I know it’s going to spend all its time being a desk diver. It’s been more than a couple of decades since I donned my mask, regulator, and BC and stepped off the back of a dive boat in the Florida Keys, into the crystal-clear waters of the Atlantic over a sunken Coast Guard cutter serving as an artificial reef, the sound of every exhalation a storm of sound and sparkles as sunlight formed crepuscular dancing rays in the hundred-foot-plus visibility and bounced off the air bubbles floating upward …
…
Sorry, where was I?
Oh yeah. Dive watches. Right. So, I made the decision that rather than restrict my choices to those watches that ONLY served as divers’ tools, I’d expand this category a bit to include those watches that were also dive inspired. This allowed me to choose a watch that may not “technically” fall into the category of a diver, but definitely keeps its dive-inspired heritage.
So, my favorite this year so far has been a dive watch that is also a GMT: the Christopher Ward C65 Aquitaine GMT.
I first saw this watch at the Windup Watch Fair in San Francisco in April 2022. Initially released in a cream dial/blue bezel combo, the vintage-inspired sapphire bezel and beautifully domed crystal caught – and kept – my attention for much of the show. On Day 2, I placed an order for one.
About three weeks later, before my lovely Aquitaine shipped, CW released the Orca version of the watch. Gone were the gentle cream and blue tones, replaced entirely with a black dial and bezel with gilt markers, indices, and hands. The new “Orca Black” colorway looked utterly badass and on a stainless steel bracelet, it stood out beautifully.
I was sold. I called CW and had them change my order. When the Orca arrived a couple of weeks later, I felt utterly justified. The cream and blue version is very nice, but the Orca was, in my opinion, much cooler.
As I mentioned, even though it is a GMT, the Aquitaine very much retains its dive watch heritage. Sporting 200m of water resistance and a 24-hour bidrectional bezel, you may can definitely wear this on a decently deep dive. You can even set the triangular top indice to your minute hand and do some quick mental math to calculate elapsed time; it’s basic addition, folks.
And, if you don’t want the GMT and really do want the unidirectional dive time bezel, any of the other watches in the C65 Aquitaine collection will scratch that itch, including the very nice COSC-certified Bronze unit.
You can buy the C65 Aquitaine here.
Favorite Dress Watch of the Year
This was another find at the Windup Watch fairin NYC: The Lorier Zephyr with the white dial.
When I first started out with watches, I gravitated towards large watches. I’m talking 40mm and above. I’ve owned some G-Shocks and Seikos that comfortably crossed the 42mm and into as large as 45mm.
At some point, probably thanks to the influence of brands like Traska, I started gravitating towards smaller watches. Still, 38mm was the absolute smallest I would go. No way would anything look acceptable on my 7-inch wrist – or, more importantly, against my 250lb frame. Not a chance in heck.
Boy was I wrong.
Worn under the cuff of a dress shirt with a sportcoat thrown over it, the Lorier Zephyr is 100% at home on my wrist. I never expected a 31mm watch to be something that I not only owned, but actually fell utterly in love with. Lorier says that the watch – a tonneau-shaped art-deco beauty with a fantastic guilloché dial and blued hands – is about the size equivalent of a 35mm round watch. Even that is smaller than the smallest other watch I own (and the other contender for my favorite dress watch of the year) – the Baltic MR01. Still it somehow just… works.
I snagged one of the few pieces Lorier had available for sale at the fair and it became the first Lorier in my collection – though by no means my last.
You can buy the Zephyr here.
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That’s it for Part 1 of my Favorite Watches of 2022. Next up: my favorite Chronograph, Beater, and Kickstarter specials. That’s gonna be an easy one too.