Frederique Constant, Worldtimer Manufacture

This Swiss manufacturer, which emphasizes an impressive price-to-value ratio, expands its Worldtimer Manufacture range with a new brown-dial edition cased in 42mm rose-gold plated steel. The newest watch for globe trekkers maintains a traditional world time layout that features city names on the outer edge of a dial with a global map in its center.

Since its debut about five years ago the Frederique Constant Worldtimer Manufacture, with in-house automatic caliber FC-718, has offered a moderately priced true world time watch. Even with its reasonable price tag the watch offers one feature not seen in most world time models: single-crown activation. Rather than relying on one or more secondary correctors or pushers, the world time function here is completely controlled by the crown.

The 2017 Frederique Constant Classic Worldtimer Manufacture FC-718

The crown has three positions. The first lets the user manually wind the watch by turning the crown upwards; the second allows the user to set the date and city by turning the crown upwards and downwards, respectively; the third position allows the user to set the time by turning the crown downwards.

On this Frederique Constant Worldtimer Manufacture dial you’ll find two discs, one displaying 24-hour day-night indication and a second one listing twenty-four cities. The wearer sets the home time by rotating the crown counterclockwise. This moves the city or time zone ring, and when it’s set the wearer can look to any other time zone on the ring and see the time there instantly. The brown dial color here joins existing blue and silver editions with steel and gold-plated case options. The FC-718 caliber features Perlages and Côtes de Genève decoration, visible from the clear sapphire caseback. Price: $4,195