Good news, friends. Our time, no pun intended, has come. GQ has identified inexpensive watches as "the coolest flex." No more do you have to take out a second mortgage or sell a kidney to style with confidence. In fact, our carefully curated weekly watch selections are definitely high on flex. Flex away, we say.
Of course, for the horologically curious, and you’ve got bank, check out John Mayer's ridonkulous watch collection. Uber-flex.
What’s new in Watches
Image: Casio
In a week where the watch world went a bit mad over the re-release of the Seiko Rotocall (read about that watch here), we were taken by a different release: the Casio CA-500WEBF 'Outtatime' collab with the Back to the Future franchise.
Styled like the watch Marty McFly wore, with the buttons an homage to the DeLorean time machine, the watch goes on sale on October 21, 2025, also known as Back to the Future Day. Oh! There's a flux capacitor etched into the caseback. What's not to like, butthead?
Image: Sheffield Watches
Sheffield Watches are not based in Yorkshire. It's the brainchild of Jay Turkbas, who loved the original Sheffield Watches (from NYC) when he was a kid and stylises his offer to fit the brand's original 60s vibe.
Sheffield is popular among micro enthusiasts, and since more than a few hail from Britain and Ireland, the brand introduced a limited edition ‘Steel City’ (named after the British Sheffield) in 2024. The 2025 sports a Union Jack, a 38mm case, and will make a welcome addition to any collection. No matter what side of the Atlantic you hail from.
Image: Hoffman Watches
NY-based Hoffman Watches is approaching its first decade of making unique, vintage-inspired divers and racing watches. Like a lot of micros, Hoffman needs to keep its inventories tight, which means that sometimes there's a bit of a wait to get your hands on one.
Hence, we were thrilled to see that the Hoffman Racing 40 will soon be back in stock, in five different colours. We're partial to the Midnight, with its dark grey dial and black bezel. The Racing 40 will be re-released on October 23. Join the wait list by clicking below.
Watch Brands A - Z: E is for Erebus Watches
Images: Erebus Watches
What are they? A microbrand based in Oz. Cofounder Jody Musgrove hosts the Just One More Watch YouTube channel, and his partner Steven Parker has a collection of over 400 watches. These lads know the biz.
What's the Vibe? Styling that is tried and true. Erebus keeps it simple: the Ascent is the GADA, the Origin is the diver, and the Titan is a sizeable diver rated to 500 metres. But here's the cool thing: Erebus gets what watch nerds get when it comes to getting the right watch - the size. Other than the Titan (it's just big), Erebus offers each model in multiple sizes: the Ascent, for example, comes in a 34, 36, 39 AND a 41mm model. You will find a watch that fits.
What does $500 get you? Spends pretty well across the brand. Each of their three models plays above and below our $500 price point, and because they offer lots of sizes and lots of colours, we suspect you'll find a watch that works for you with a few dollars (US dollars, that is) to spare.
Because you want to know - GMT
Image: Wikipedia
So what is GMT, exactly? GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, began as Britain's grand attempt to make the world run on the same clock. Before it, every town set noon by its own sun. Then came the railways, and with them, chaos. In 1884, the world agreed to set its watches by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, where the astronomer royal, Sir George Biddell Airy, had fixed the prime meridian through his telescope. GMT became the clock that timed the world.
So fair enough. So how did GMT end up on a watch? Trans-Atlantic air travel and two legends: Pan Am and Rolex. In the 1950s, Pan Am's pilots were crossing oceans faster than their body clocks could keep up, so the airline asked Rolex to make a watch that could track two times at once.
The result, in 1954, was the Rolex GMT-Master, featuring an extra hand and a red and blue bezel (the ‘Pepsi’), where red means day and blue means night. Suddenly, you could glance at your wrist and know the time from whence you came, but also where you were going.
Gotcha. So if GMT is GMT, what is Zulu Time? And UTC? Zulu Time is simply GMT in military fatigues. Pilots, sailors, and other assorted professionals use the letter Z to mark Greenwich Mean Time on their charts and radios. ‘Zulu’ is the NATO phonetic code for ‘Z’, so when you hear someone say "We'll rendezvous at 0900 Zulu," they really mean 9 a.m. GMT, but with Top Gun gravitas.
UTC, meanwhile, is Greenwich Mean Time's modern successor. Instead of being based on the sun crossing an old observatory in London, it runs on atomic clocks so precise they wouldn't lose a second if the Earth lasted another billion years. It's the official time the world runs on now, though it still matches GMT within a second or two.
So: GMT is the grand old original, Zulu is how Maverick, Iceman, Goose and Viper say GMT, and UTC is the lab-grown version we use today.
Watch4Million Showdown - Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Haute Joaillerie Versus the Bugatti Divo Hypercar
Image: Patek Philippe
Image: Wikipedia
With $4 mil, give or take, you could own an emerald-covered Patek that chimes at the time you want it to chime, and chimes the date when you want it to chime the date. It’s hard to overstate how hard that is to do, but hey, that's Patek.
Or, you could drive away in a Bugatti Divo Hypercar, which goes from 0-60 in 2.4 seconds while looking awesome. The Divo is Bugatti's first "coach built" hypercar, whatever that means.
Our verdict: The Grandmaster Chime is high-high horology, where the Divo isn't even the most expensive Bugatti you can buy. That said, Patek's ads, which double down on pretension, have always rubbed us the wrong way. Bugatti, on the other hand, is all "We're Italian and these cars are badass."
Bugatti all day.
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