The Best Luxury Watches Of 2018

First designed back in 1904 for Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont, the Santos went on to become one of the watchmakers most coveted creations. It was first designed as pilot’s timepiece, but its slim size profile makes it the perfect dress watch.

35.1mm x 41.9mm (medium), from £5350

Audemars Piguet’s new Royal Oak Offshore marks 25 years since the brand first introduced the watch it called ‘The Beast’. As close to the original as it can be, only some of the materials (such as the rubber for the pushers) have been improved. So if anything, it’s better.

42mm,£POA

Simple, sturdy and in line with the trend for vintage-y sports watches, this chronograph is a great example of the Montblanc’s excellent 1858 collection.

42mm, £3480 (Available in June)

Lots of watchmakers are delving in their archives, but few are coming up with such handsome goods as Jaeger Le Coultre, as the Polaris Memovox – our favourite piece from the new Polaris range – attests.

42mm, £10,800

Our pick of the anniversary collection unveiled at SIHH back in January. This Big Pilot is the only piece in the collection to have the annual calendar collection, but it maintains that oversized pilot’s watch style so perfected by IWC.

46.2mm, £POA

Offering a new, slightly more affordable ‘entry level’ price point, the fantastic Fifty Six collection is perhaps Vacheron’s big story of the year, but it was the Overseas Dual Time, on steel, that stuck in our minds after seeing it for the first time in January.

41mm, £23,100

A thing of watchmaking beauty, the Triple Split is quite possibly one of the coolest and most impressive watches ever made. It allows multi-hour comparative time measurements; the first mechanical watch to ever do it. Beyond that, it looks great (and it’s the looks that get you first, eh?).

43.2mm, c. £103,000

Clean, simple and decidedly mid-century, B&M’s new auto date watch marks a big step forward for the Richemont brand. Fitted with a technically-advanced in-house movement, it’s incredibly good value.

40mm, £2500

The enfant terrible of the watch world, customiser George Bamford has been embraced into the bosom of a clutch of the biggest brands, and the latest result is this seriously cool reimagining of the Monaco. It’s limited to just 500 pieces so you’ll be lucky to get one, but worth a shot nonetheless.

39mm, c.£5760 ($8100) (available this autumn)

You’re not actually going to go diving in it (unless you’re a grade-A baller), but if you were to wear Patek’s new Aquanaut chrono into the briny deep, then you’d be the coolest man below sea level, hands down.

42,2mm, £33,510

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The Due is available in 40mm and 42mm, but it’s the 38mm that we love. The smallest Luminor Panerai has ever made. It reflects an industry move to smaller watches, which is good for those with slighter wrists.

38mm, £5100 (available from July)

Known (and celebrated) for its big, wrist dominating, statement making watches, Hublot has trimmed down the Big Bang to 42mm, but kept all of its incredible inner workings intact. The flyback chrono boasts a ‘double clutch’, which can be seen through the open work dial.

42mm, £27,800 (available September)

A perfect expression of Hermès’ brand of eccentric craftsmanship, the new Arceau is gleefully off-kilter, but – true to the Maison’s form – incredibly cool.

41mm, £4250 (available in June)

In true Bremont spirit, the new Endurance (named after Ernest Shackleton’s expedition) was tested in the harshest conditions: strapped to the wrist of Ben Saunders as he trekked unsupported to the South Pole.

43mm,£4795 (available in June)

At just 3.95mm, this is the world’s thinnest automatic watch. It’s hard to gauge the sheer intricacy of this watch until you see it up close, but we have, and it’s astonishing.

42mm, c. £82,500

We’re big fans of pieces in B&R’s Vintage collection (the recent Belly Tanker chrono is very cool indeed) and the Racing Bird – inspired by the Reno Air Races – is our pick of the latest releases.

41mm, £3650

Every year Tudor seems to come out with the watch that you (and every other man) will be pining after for at least a few months. The new Pepsi-Cola GMT is that watch for 2018.

41mm, £2790

One of the new iterations of the iconic Navitimer under the guidance of new company boss Georges kern, the Navitimer 1 is now aviailable in 38mm, and we love it.

c. £2960(CHF4000)

Definitely one of our highlights from the watch fair in Basel last month, the Sixties is seriously groovy, and incredibly chic when you see it up close.

39mm, £5000(available in June)