The 15 Best Watches of 2023

Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire's regular column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world.

It has been a bumper year for watch nuts. Kicking off with the horological nerd fest that is Watches & Wonders in Geneva and continuing throughout the year, our favorite watch brands have surprised, amused, and confounded us with new riffs on old favorites, groundbreaking innovations, and flat out gorgeousness. Here, we lay out Dialed In’s 15 best watches of the year.

Oyster Perpetual 41 Celebration Dial

Rolex surprised and delighted with a number of playful riffs on some of its most iconic designs this year. But none was more talked about than the “Celebration” dial of the 41mm Oyster Perpetual. The dial is, in effect, a celebration of the brightly colored dials the house introduced to the Oyster in recent years, but here, they are gathered together in 51 micro-sized enamel circles. Your normal Rolex this is not. Rolex fans quickly dubbed it “the Bubbles” by lunchtime on the first day at Geneva and it has been the subject of animated discussion and feverish sleuthing ever since.

Fifty Fathoms 70th Anniversary Act 3

There are plenty of OGs in dive watches. But the OG of OGs is arguably the Fifty Fathoms, which first surfaced—or make that submerged—in 1953. Regarded as the first modern divers watch it was water resistant to fifty fathoms, or 300 feet. This was the combined result of a double-gasketed crown and the chunky (for the time) 42mm steel case created by the then CEO of Blancpain, Jean-Jacques Fiechter, himself a keen scuba diver. This September, Blancpain unveiled “Act three” of the 70th anniversary year offerings for the Fifty Fathoms, and it's perhaps its most surprising manifestation yet. At 41.3mm, it’s not the largest Fiddy, but it’s the metal from which its made that makes it unique. It comes not in gold, despite appearances, but in 9K bronze gold, a special alloy that fades less than traditional bronze and was developed in conjunction with Blancpain’s Swatch Group stablemate Omega.

Ingenieur 40

IWC is known principally for its aviation- and automotive-inspired timepieces, yet this year it decided to revisit the Ingenieur, arguably its simplest design. Dating back to 1955, the Ingenieur featured IWC’s first in-house automatic movement and anti-magnetism via a soft metal Faraday cage to protect its delicate workings. But what makes the Ingenieur a compelling watch for us, especially in the version made for the first time this year in titanium, is the iconic design of its case, updated back in the seventies by watch design guru Gerald Genta. It looks as new today as it did back then.

Octo Roma Chronograph

While much of Bulgari’s energies of late have been focused on making multiple award-winning, expensive, super-thin watches in its Octo Finissimo line, this year saw the addition of new watches inspired by those mind-bending pieces’ unique angularities but with a price that's a little easier on the wallet. The Octo Roma Chronograph comes with a blue or black dial, but we're always suckers for a good blue.

Pasha de Cartier

Cartier revisited the Pasha, one of Gerald Genta’s lesser-known contributions to watch design, a couple of years back after a long hiatus. This year, it added a rather eye-catching footnote, the three-hand Pasha in steel with a beautifully contrasting salmon pink dial. We love the simple contrast of the two metals in this 41mm automatic, offset with those classic blued needle hands.

Carrera Skipper

In the 60th anniversary year of the storied Heuer Carrera chronograph—the first watch created by Jack Heuer when he took the reins of the family biz back in 1963—TAG Heuer pulled out all the stops to create something for 2023 that was both familiar and oddly new. A slew of new Carreras debuted in the spring, featuring suitably automotive design language familiar since way back. But they also offered new twists, including a "glassbox" sapphire crystal that wraps around the entire case, maximizing the readability of the display. For us, the top of the pile was the Skipper, which came out later in the year. It is a new rendition—not strictly a replica—of a very sought-after Carrera first created in 1968 and inspired by the victory of the yacht Intrepid in the 1967 America’s Cup races. Like the original (of which only a few hundred were ever made over the space of a decade or so) the new Skipper—though not limited—is bound to be just as sought after.

Legend Diver

If you’re used to your dive watches sporting a chunky unidirectional bezel as the sine qua non of subaquatic authenticity, it pays to look at the new Longines Legend Diver, a rethink of an equally serious though less known part of dive watch history. Back in the late 1950s the super compressor was one of the ways watchmakers, Longines included, sought to maximize the water resistance of dive watches. Put simply, these watches exploited the natural propensity of water pressure to crush things at depth to render watch cases more waterproof. A two-part case flexed with increasing water pressure to seal the case off against water ingress. At the time, one of the ways they ensured this was to put the diver’s vital oxygen timing ring under the glass. Which meant two crowns, one to change the time and one to operate the dive timer. Somehow that twin crowned look stuck longer than the actual compressor technology. So, this year’s 39mm steel Legend Diver has all the looks of its predecessor but with a conventional case.

Patek Philippe 24-Hour Display Travel Time

Patek Philippe has the singular ability, it seems, to wow us with equanimity on both serious functionality and eye-watering aesthetics, and it’s that deadly combo that makes the famous brand—for many the holy grail of watchmaking—capable of separating otherwise sane people from their fortunes. Witness this year’s 24 -Hour Display Travel Time in rose gold, which functions as a dual time zone watch whose double hands (tracking time in two distinct places) circle the dial once in twenty-four hours rather than 12. While the execution is elegant—even dressy—in a way only Patek Philippe knows how, the 42mm size gives it the stylish heft of a contemporary sports watch. Think of it as the best of both worlds.

BR 03 Military Ceramic

Sometimes the best watches are deceptively simple. Bell and Ross’s signature shape is the circle-within-a-square case derived from the cockpit instruments of jet fighters. This year saw the introduction of a military-inspired, black, ceramic-cased version with a matte, olive green dial and black indexes and hands. Driven by the in-house BR 03 automatic movement, it has a 54 hour power reserve.

Seamaster Ploprof 1200M

Celebrating 75 years of a watch line as diverse and as historic as Omega’s Seamaster meant revisiting many of the high points of its long history below the waves. In an unexpected turn, the house employed a new, proprietary shade of light blue and used it to color multiple special editions. As this is made in SuperLuminova, it also glows a similar blue under UV light. Our pick of the bunch is the behemoth, the Ploprof. First made in 1971, its whopping 55mm by 48mm monobloc steel case gave it a 600m depth rating but made it almost unwearable on dry land, unless you were Gianni Agnelli, who his famously wore one over his shirt cuff.

Chronomaster Sport Aaron Rodgers

Launched just last month is a new collab between NFL player Aaron Rodgers and Zenith using the Chronomaster Sport as its base. The 41mm steel chronograph, which like all modern Chronomaster Sports houses an updated version of the legendary El Primero automatic chronograph movement, which debuted in 1969. Of course, what most hits you in the eye is the electric green bezel and dial selected as a nod to the uniform of Rodger’s team, the New York Jets. You don't have to be a fan, but it helps.

44GS USA Exclusive

Arguably Japan’s leading watchmaker, and a brand fast gaining a passionate following of fans in the USA, Grand Seiko continues to wow with high-end and exquisitely finished timepieces that neatly hop between functional day watches and conversation pieces. A new, USA-exclusive offering—in a very of-the-moment 36.mm size—is the manual-wind 44GS, which is based on a design from 1967. The textured green dialed is inspired by the foliage on Mount Iwate, a Japanese peak visible from the brand’s Studio Shizukuishi design office.

Pelagos FXD Chrono

Sailing, with its critical time-keeping requirements and no shortage of glamour, continues to inspire watchmakers to create regatta watches for the new world of high-adrenaline, foiling sail racing. Tudor’s entry into the genre for the America’s Cup 2023 Alinghi Red Bull Racing team is a certified chronometer that comes in a carbon composite case with a titanium bezel insert, giving it a colorful, sporty vibe. The blue dial and signature snowflake hands mark it out as a Pelagos diver with a difference.

Radiomir Tre Giorni

Sometimes, with a watch design that is both familiar and loved, all it takes is an unexpected dial color to rekindle all sorts of old-fashioned feelings. For us, one of Panerai’s standout pieces of 2023 was the unofficially titled “Latte” dial Radiomir in steel. The 47mm Radiomir Tre Giorni features an in-house, 72-hour power reserve—hence the name, which translates to "three days." That's all fine and dandy. But it’s the gradated, coffee-colored dial that really caught our eye.

Reverso Tribute Monoface Small Seconds

With almost a century of history, the iconic Reverso has very little to prove these days. That does not stop Jaeger-LeCoultre from striving to improve this quintessentially Deco design for the 21st century. Created to order in 1931 for sporting customers looking to protect their watches from flying polo mallets and balls in the melée, this simple design has literally stood the test of time. Here, the contrast of a pink gold case and a jet black dial make for the ultimate dress watch with the added functionality of a nifty flip-over case.

You Might Also Like

• Kid Cudi Is All Right

• 16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks