Say what you will of 2025, but by the end of the year a worrying amount of its 365 days will have been rammed with watch releases. Some were dull, some were nonsensical and some were good. Some, however, were great.
Granted, what makes a great watch is pretty subjective, but that’s fine. This is my safe space and you, dear reader, can’t take that away from me. So, it’s with the full, unjustified confidence of too much mulled wine that I’ve narrowed thousands of releases down to just five. From full-gold showstoppers to accessible metiers d’art and a downsized late-comer, here are my five favourite watches of 2025. Enjoy.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Tribute Milanese
Despite coming out way back in Watches & Wonders, I’ve yet to find a better feeling dress watch than Jaeger-LeCoultre’s full gold Reverso. I’m a sucker for monochrome at the best of times, but pair it with the single most beautiful Milanese bracelet on the market and you have both a hefty chunk of rose gold and a pitch-perfect show-stopper. The way that woven metal feeds into the buckle is genuinely sexy and while the 45.6mm x 27.4mm case is relatively large for a Reverso, it feels as good as it looks – fantastic. Yes, it’s slightly out of my price tag at £37,600, but given the rest of my favourites of 2025 there are plenty of chances to save up.
Awake Fragments
The delicate Vietnamese lacquer of the Son Mai put Awake on the map, but the microbrand’s not stopping there. In one their latest releases, they’ve leveraged a tragically underutilised Japanese technique called Raden. Essentially, it’s a way of setting shards of mother-of-pearl into lacquer and it looks dramatically different depending on the size of said shards. Each of the three Awakes in the Fragments uses different sizes of pearl shards, the largest being my favourite micro release of the year. It looks less like delicate metiers d’art, more like a galactic nebula, largely thanks to the purple tint. It’s gorgeous and at under £2,000, more accessible than it looks.
Tissot Rock Watch
When Tissot relaunched a limited-edition version of their quartz-equipped chunk of Alpine rock, I was instantly obsessed. I ended up trawling eBay for vintage numbers and now wear one on a semi-regular basis. While I prefer the older, smaller 35mm versions, the new edition’s 38mm wide disc of granite is nothing to sneeze at. It’s slightly smarter, having dropped the coloured hour and minute hands, the larger size gets more of the railway tunnel rock’s grain across and honestly, just seeing Tissot rebuild something this rooted in arty 80s fashion warms the cynical chambers of my heart. There’s a good chance they’ve all sold out by now, which is tragic – but you can always join me on the tiny, vintage bandwagon. It’s fun here.
Grand Seiko Moonlit Birch
This is one of the least ground-breaking Grand Seiko releases of the last few years… and yet you don’t need revolution to reach perfection. And as far as I’m concerned, this is the perfect interpretation of the Japanese maestro’s Birch texture. It’s darker, cooler, more romantic and evocative than the eye-catching silver versions. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll spot across the room, but up close the subtle bark-like texture comes across almost like silk. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Paired with the watchmaker’s usual razor-sharp finishing, a 38.6mm case and hi-beat mechanical movement, it might well be their most refined watch to date. Which is saying something.
Tudor Ranger 36 Arctic Dune
Nothing else quite scratched that smaller, 36mm Explorer itch in quite the same way as Rolex… until Tudor one-upped their semi-group sibling with this little bad boy. Slightly chunkier than the Explorer, with flatter planes and an overall more rugged look, it’s not just the new sizing that Tudor have nailed but the dial colour too. Dubbed Arctic Dune, it’s a fitting kind of sandy white that approximates beige, with striking black hour markers and numerals. If you really want to finish that Arctic expedition vibe (and if you’re a Tudor history buff you most certainly do), the striped, fabric strap option not only looks great but shaves a bit off the price, too. Not that it’s hugely expensive either way, starting at £2,650.
