Tudor gives itself a birthday present, and it isn't a diver
By Julien Moreau, Geneva · · Tudor
Years ago a dealer in the Old Town showed me a Tudor Monarch from the early nineties, quartz, champagne dial, the sort of thing nobody fights over at auction. He apologised for it before he had it out of the drawer. I thought of him this week, because Tudor has taken that name for the watch that marks its hundredth year, and I suspect the new one will not need apologising for.
The anniversary is real enough. Hans Wilsdorf registered the Tudor name in 1926, and the brand has spent most of the century since being described in relation to Rolex. For the centenary it could easily have done a gold Black Bay and gone home. Instead the Monarch is something Tudor has never quite made: a faceted 39 mm steel case, 11.9 mm thick and about 46 mm from lug to lug, with sharp breaks between brushed and polished surfaces, sitting on a two-link bracelet with peaked centre links. It is the bracelet that sells the photographs.
The dial is the history lesson
The champagne dial carries Roman numerals in the top half and Arabic numerals in the bottom, the arrangement collectors call a California dial. Tudor prefers to point at a 1941 Rolex patent for an "error-proof" dial, and at the Bubblebacks that used it, which is fair; the layout was a Wilsdorf idea before California ever got the credit. The hands are skeletonised and black, a loose descendant of the snowflake, and there is a small seconds register at six.
That small seconds is the technical news. The MT5662-2U is, by Tudor's account, its first manufacture calibre with a sub-seconds hand, Master Chronometer certified, with about 65 hours of reserve and perlage and Côtes de Genève visible through a sapphire back. Tudor's earlier movements were built for closed casebacks and it showed. This one is meant to be looked at.
What I am less sure of
The hands carry no lume at all. On a dial this busy, with two styles of numeral and a curved Master Chronometer line above the subdial, I suspect that will matter more in a dim restaurant than Tudor would like. It is a deliberate choice, a nod to the old Bubbleback look, and I respect the nerve. I am simply not convinced a modern sports watch, even a dressy one, should give up legibility for a reference most buyers will never have heard of.
At launch it costs a little under $6,000 in the US, on the bracelet only. That places it above a Black Bay 58 and below the chronograph, which feels right. Whether it becomes a collectible in the way the 1990s Monarch never did, I will leave to the auction rooms of 2050. For now it is the most interesting thing Tudor has made in years, and quite possibly the first Tudor that does not need Rolex in its sentence.
Julien Moreau is a pen name of The Watch Quest editorial team. Opinions are based on the published specs, the brand's own information and the watch's reputation, not a long-term test.