After what seams like years of trolling by the Tudor social media team, we finally get another dive watch inspired by Tudor’s diving and military heritage. Put aside thoughts of a Tudor Submariner re-edition – it will never happen. Gloss over the P01 nobody asked for, a quirky watch that has its own unique charm. And forget the range within a range that is the Black Bay 58. The original edition some would argue to be the true re-imagining of the Tudor Submariner.
Tudor Pelagos
No, what we have here is something else, another range within a range, but for once, without the comfort of the Black Bay name. The FXD is nestled within the small Pelagos family consisting of essentially 2 variants since it’s 2012 release, blue and black. This is a hardcore dive watch with 500m of water resistance in a lightweight titanium case and bracelet.
The bracelet is a work of art with the spring loaded extension system that allows your wrist to shrink and swell by some margin, or allow you to throw it over a dive suit. They’re joined by the odd left hand drive version, obvious by the location of the crown to the opposite side of the watch but also by the addition of red text and date. Arguably the coolest of the bunch, you can wear this on your right of left wrists depending on how you hold a pen, or just keep it on the left having the crown point up the arm instead of digging in the wrist. At just over £3,000, these are great value.
Tudor Dive Watch Heritage
The Pelagos is closest in design to the original Tudor Snowflake from 1969, an evolution of the Submariner look-a-likes that came before. This new face with the squared off indices was designed to max out the lume to give divers better visibility of the dial. This is where the snow flake nickname came from with the hour hand gaining those right angles at the tip.
This design language is echoed once again in the Black Bay range and forms part of Tudors design DNA. The Black Bay with it’s round lume plots remain the link to the Tudor Submariners dating back to 1954 and man marking the development of the Rolex Submariner up to it’s removal from the catalogue some 20 years ago. And why we’re unlikely to see that name again.
So with the Pelagos now the divers choice, a proper tool watch next to the Black Bay heritage line, it makes sense to use this range to launch the new alliance with the Marine Nationale, or French Navy. This is a relationship that goes back to 1956 when the GERS, a research arm of the French Navy took in a selection of watches for try outs. It was the Oyster Prince Submariner and it’s waterproofness that were judged to be ‘Perfect’, and so started a long association with the French Navy.
Looking at the FXD, so named because of the integrated strap bar arrangement. There’s no removable spring bars. Typically military watches would have the spring bars welded in place and use a NATO strap. Here, Tudor have machined the retention feature into the block, so this watch can only be used with a NATO style strap. Proper hard core.
There are differences to the regular Pelagos, some pretty significant ones as well. You’d almost excuse Tudor if they created a new range or just had this one stand on it’s own as a special, but maybe this also points to a potential replacement of the existing Pelagos, now 10 years old. It’s certainly food for thought.
On the back the watch is engraved the Marine Nationale emblem of an anchor with NM21 designating the year of the relationship between both parties.
Apart from the strap system, this watch has a different dial. The lume plots don’t sit inside the chapter ring as on the regular Pelagos. Is this better or worse, well it certainly gives the dial more room to breathe, and losing a line of text at the 6 o’clock gives the dial a cleaner look. More legible I’d say. Handy if you want to take it diving.
The coin edging on the bezel and the crown are more pronounced to aid operation while wet or gloved, and the bezel sits a little wider to the case than the regular, also aiding purchase by the user, a little like the Submariner in that regard. I find the tight knurling of the regular Black Bay challenging to grip, so not cut out for life aquatic.
Tudor refer to the 12- notch bi-directional bezel as having a retrograde graduation for navigation by successive stages. So instead of the usual uni directional count up style divers bezel as required for ISO4625, this has a count down bezel.
Aesthetics apart, and there’s an argument that it’s a little fussy, I do think it achieves it’s job of looking different to the other divers in Tudor’s range. But just looking different isn’t enough, and the graduations adjacent to the numbers are non existent, making this potentially hard to read. Tudor describe this as a navigation bezel, not a dive timer. I assume then that the diver would have something else for air management, another watch maybe or a computer perhaps.
What this does is allow the diving pair to swim at a constant speed relative to a magnetic compass vector for a specified time using the count down feature of the watch to find your ship wreck or sunken treasure, similar to orienteering over land using map references.
Otherwise, this watch is pretty standard fair with 200m of water resistance, an automatic winding in-house movement with 70 hours of power reserve and COSC certification.
The case is fully brushed titanium, 41mm in diameter and 12.75mm thick. With a lug to lug of 52mm, this watch may wear large, but perhaps this will be less of an issue using fabric straps instead of a metal bracelet.
At under £3,000 for a titanium, hard core dive watch from a premium brand, what’s not to like. And this could be the best weekender, holiday beach watch available, as long as you have other means of checking your oxygen reserves.
