Black ceramic, darker opinions
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ยท
I have never liked it, and I have given up pretending otherwise at dinner.
In fairness to the Dark Side of the Moon, it did something new when it arrived in 2013: a Speedmaster made entirely of black ceramic, light on the wrist, impossible to scratch in ordinary life, and on a leather strap that suits it. The automatic 9300 gives 60 hours and a date, with the elapsed hours and minutes sharing one sub-dial, and you can watch it work through the open back.
But it is 44.25 mm across and 15.6 mm tall, black on black is hard to read in anything less than daylight, and ceramic, for all its toughness, can crack if you drop it on a stone floor. At thirteen and a half to fourteen thousand dollars, it costs nearly twice the Moonwatch. It belongs to a certain moment in the 2010s, a fashion for large dark watches, and that moment has passed. Fifty metres, for the record.
It is the watch for a man who wants a big modern Speedmaster and enjoys being asked about it. I would not.