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The 56 Best Watches for Men in 2025
The Esquire editors pick their favourite models to suit your budget
The watch world keeps on ticking, and there's never been a better moment to spend some quality time really considering that tempting new watch purchase.
A lot of great new men's watches have been released over the past few years. From world-famous brands like Rolex, Tag Heuer, Breitling to more under-the-radar names that have caught the Esquire editors' eye, this is the place to find them.
Below you'll find the best men's watches of 2024, alongside this year's big new releases as they arrive. Whatever your budget our aim is to keep you in the loop on the best new releases across the spectrum of the watch world, and let you know why we think they're worthy of your time.
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Raúl Pagès RP2
Hand-decorated, elegant, minimalist and with a balance wheel inspired by marine chronometers, the new watch from independent Swiss maker Raúl Pagès, announced on Thursday, is the stuff to reduce hardcore horologists to tears. Pagès won the first Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives back in 2024, and this deceptively simple time-only watch, its dial white agate on a light blue cerulean base, shows they backed the right horse. Production of the RP2 is limited to the amount the watchmaker can produce over the next five years – exactly 50. And also, at CHF 89,000 [£78,000] excluding taxes, your budget.
Produced in collaboration with menswear's Todd Snyder, this solid chronograph comes with authentic military stylings: a reverse panda dial out of an olive green sandblasted DLC case, its subdial hands tipped in emergency orange. A limited edition of just 100 it sold out online on release on Thursday, though a few remain in Snyder's US stores.
One of the UK's greatest watchmakers has launched its first porcelain dial. Press-moulded, glazed and kiln-fired by the brand's porcelain artist, it will initially be hand-produced at the rate of 30 per month, available for existing customers, before general release. The bespoke numerals and hands glow green and blue respectively, with hand-painted Super-LumiNova. A beauty.
Each year, the design-led German brand releases new colour experiments into its competitively priced Club Campus line. The vibrant yellow Starlight and the deep blue Night Sky are the newest additions to the set. And very nice they are, too.
The second meeting of two of horology's most singular design minds, this week's surprise release reimagined Bulgari's reptilian Serpenti watch through MB&F's avant-garde lens. The resulting retro-futuristic, automotive-adjacent Bulgari x MB&F Serpenti comes in three limited editions of 33 – titanium, black PVD-coated steel and 18k rose gold (above). Two rotating domes display the hours and the minutes, said to resembles the eyes of a serpent. It's... a lot. But you've got to be happy it exists.
The third and final watch in a series designed by Timex's creative director Giorgio Galli, formerly of Seiko, Citizen and Swatch. That modernist, minimal dial has polished silver-tone hands, and a stainless steel minute track. The bracelet and case are also titanium – the latter with a forged carbon fibre section in the middle. The Galli series has been called the brand's "concept car", and though £1,450 might be high for a Timex, this looks like a watch worth multiples of that. Timex is on fire right now.
Modelled on traditional "digital" pocket watches, the Convergence displays the time via two satin-brushed discs, one for the hours and one for the minutes, visible through two windows at the top of the face. The 37mm polished case is 18ct pink gold. Louis Vuitton's latest is a world away from what people used to sniffily call "a fashion watch".
In the About Time newsletter's 2024 round-up edition, our panel of experts all agreed that Omega's strategy of giving Daniel Craig unannounced watches to wear, sometimes months and months before their release, had proved a very effective way to ignite hype.
In January, David Beckham got stuck into some strategic leaking of his own, wearing an unseen Tudor while promoting his new range of vitamin supplements. Not only was the watch hard to miss, Tudor fans had just 24 hours to wait before the official drop. Known as the Black Bay “Flamingo Blue”, it is said to evoke "the very tone of turquoise that is so distinctive of the tropical waters flamingos are known to love". And very nice it is, too.
Casio
Ring Watch
For the 50th anniversary of Casio watches, the brand has come up with something pretty novel. Its first ring watch. The 19.5mm "digit-al" release is a fully-functional steel timekeeper that comes with a seven-segment LCD screen that displays the hours, minutes, seconds and date, and packs a second time zone and a stopwatch. There’s even light that functions as an alarm. The Casio CRW-001-1ER was released on 13 January, though “Singapore sold out on Tuesday in four minutes, and the US sold out in under one minute," according to our man at Casio. A case of fastest finger wins.
Unimatic
MoMA Unimatic Modello Cinque
A 36mm model that riffs on Jack White's favourite De Stijl art movement, celebrated for its use of primary colours. The limited edition is (or was, depending on when you get there) available from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as well as from the gallery's online store. £1,050, or £840 if you're a member.
Apollo Instruments
DSKY Moonwatch
In December, British start-up Apollo Instruments announced it had created a 4:6:1 scale recreation of a part of the Apollo Guidance Computer (ACG) which played a key role in every spacecraft used in Nasa’s Apollo missions to the moon. For the “wearable representation of the astronaut interface”, the company has used the original design specification from the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory to create a wrist-sized replica of the guidance computer with a built-in display and a keypad. The DSKY Moonwatch can also be connected to a computer-based spaceflight simulator, where the watch can then be used to input the same commands used by Apollo astronauts.
Yours for £779, including VAT.
Gérald Genta
Carpe Diem
I’d just about given up on finding a good Halloween-y watch, when I came across this on a possibly Rivals-adjacent Instagram feed called @jetsetclassics. The one-off model was designed for an Italian businessman by watch royalty Gérald Genta, and opens up like a little book to reveal the dial. It’s got nothing to do with 31 October, really, but the seize the day message is surely more effective than any amount of boggling skulls or blood-red eyeballs. Either way, it’s a pretty cool thing.
Berneron
Mirage Sienna
The "the Oscars of the watch world", otherwise known as the GPHG Awards, celebrates the greatest watches of the last 12 months. There are about 79 categories, and this year newcomer Sylvain Berneron won the 'Audacity' award for his Mirage. It was deserved: the Mirage is the best release in years and a one-watch riposte to anyone who doesn't get why people can get excited about extraordinary watchmaking an age of Garmin and Fitbit. You can read our long interview with Sylvain from back in May here, obsessive nutter that he is.
Bell & Ross
BR-X5 Blue Lum
The cockpit-instrument obsessed Parisians haven't just applied Super-LumiNova to the hands, markers and subdial of their new watch, they've done the entire case. Sacré blue!
Maen
Maen × IFL Manhattan Graffiti
Swedish brand Maen has been knocking out it of the park with well-designed, well-priced wristwear. Each of its new Manhattan Graffiti watches, a collab with British custom company IFL in tribute to NYC's five boroughs, features a hand-painted dial, making it unique. Available to pre-order, priced €1,119.20.
Omega
'First Omega In Space' Speedmaster
It's impossible to count quite how many variations of Omega's defining Speedmaster there have been since it launched in 1957. This version, known as the 'First Omega In Space', originally came out in 2012, a reproduction of the a model made from 1959 to 1962 and worn by NASA astronaut Walter "Wally" Schirra. It's long been a fan favourite. Now its back, with vintage-inspired lume, a flat link bracelet and a handsome blue-grey dial. And a lovely thing it is, too.
Audemars Piguet
Hermano da Silva Ramos's Royal Oak
French-Brazilian F1 driver Hermano da Silva Ramos really is the last of his kind. Now 98, he is one of two surviving participants of 1955's ill-fated 24 Hours of Le Mans. His personal life has been equally interesting – wives include a celebrated Swiss supermodel and the daughter of the president of the Bank of Brazil. He also has an eye for a nice watch. This year, his circa 1974 Royal Oak "A series Jumbo" ref. 5402ST went up for sale at Sotheby's Paris Fine Watches Sale.
Omega
Seamaster Aqua Terra 150m Titanium
As the official timekeeper of the Olympic Games, a precisely-worded declaration The Fourth Wheel newsletter recently spent 693-words anatomising, Omega's name was omnipresent in Paris. While it was there, the brand stealth-launched two new watches in the coolest ways possible. First, the very attractive yellow and blue Seamaster Aqua Terra 150m Titanium, which debuted on the wrist of Swedish-American pole vaulting champ Armand "Mondo" Duplantis, who set a new world record wearing it. And a second mystery Seamaster that's outfoxed laptop detectives with its atypical specs, including he absence of a date window, worn in the stands by Omega ambassador and Forever Bond, Daniel Craig. Hats off, Omega. Roll on LA 2028.
Q Timex 1975 Enigma Reissue
A £180 reissue of a 1975 watch. The Enigma was noted for its "mystery dial", a kind of watch where the hands give the illusion of being free-floating. Here the effect is created by the majority of the hands being painted the same navy blue as the dial, leaving two white rectangles and a red dot to appear untethered. In reality you need to be in just the right light for the effect to be convincing. But for the price, this is a worthy throwback.
Sharkhunter Sub 300T Clive Cussler
Dirk Pitt was a Doxa man.
The fictional hero of novels including Iceberg (1975), The Mediterranean Caper (1973) and Pacific Vortex! (1983), wore an orange-dialled Doxa Sub 300T – a quintessential 1960s dive watch. So did Pitt’s creator, the late author Clive Cussler.
Last year the watch brand issued the Doxa Sub 300T Clive Cussler Special Edition, in tribute to Cussler's pulp lineage and Pitt’s shipwreck-hunting prowess. It had an eye-catching design. Its steel case had been given a PVD-based treatment that made it look corroded and worn, like an artefact found abandoned on a coral reef.Now comes a sequel, the Doxa Sub 300T Sharkhunter Clive Cussler.
Released on what would have been Cussler’s 93rd birthday, it features a case that’s even more oxidised and dredged-up-looking. The limited edition run of 93 also recognises the author’s birthdate by colouring the numbers ‘15’, ‘7’ and ‘31’ red on the date wheel.
“I think my father would really have got a kick out of the end result,” Dirk Cussler, Clive’s son and co-author of the later books, told me over the phone from his home in Connecticut.
“Giving the case the weathered look, the compass rose on the dial that plays into underwater exploration, the homage to his birthday. It’s something I think would really, really suit him and he would appreciate.”£3,500, doxawatches.com
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