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The 40 Best Watches for Men 2024
The Esquire editors pick their favourite models, to suit your favoured 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, and there are plenty more lined up for 2024. 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.
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This list will be continuously updated through the year with the best men's watches of 2024. 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. For now, we've included some standouts from the past twelve months and beyond, too.
Rolex
Rolex Daytona ‘Le Mans’
Last July Rolex dropped a surprise white gold Cosmograph Daytona to mark the 100th anniversary of Le Mans 24-hour race. The ‘Paul Newman’ reverse panda dial model instantly became the most desired chronograph release in decades.
Last week, it discontinued that watch and replaced it with this, a yellow gold version. This ‘Paul Newman’ reverse panda dial model instantly became the most desired chronograph release in, erm, ten months.
“Unless you’d won an Oscar, you didn’t get a white gold ‘Le Mans’,” says Paul Altieri, founder and CEO of major Rolex trading company Bob’s Watches.
“Rolex seemingly soft-launched a yellow gold version in its place. It wasn’t on public display and it’s still not yet on the Rolex website. So, we were all wondering if it was even real… but apparently it is, and there are now photos of it floating around. While I don’t normally wear yellow gold watches, I am willing to make an exception here. I want one.
"We have also been curious to see how the watch community will respond to this new model vs the white gold ‘Le Mans’. So we polled our IG audience. The response has been very positive.”
You surprise us, Paul.
Tag Heuer
Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph
More of a calling card for the capabilities of its manufacture than something you are ever likely to see in the wild, Tag Heuer’s turbo-charged £121k version of a £7k watch with its movement made from titanium and all manner of other spiffy details makes quite the statement.
“While the Carrera has enjoyed its moment in the sun – and nothing shone brighter than the 18k gold version that closed out its 60th anniversary year last year – 2024 is all about the Monaco getting the attention it deserves, with the split-seconds chronograph being put into full production” says Bill Prince, editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* and The Blend.
“Underlining its race to the top of the horological food chain, LVMH Watches CEO Fréderic Arnault was seen wearing one at [Geneva trade fair] Watches And Wonders earlier this month.”
Nomos Glashütte
Tangente 38 Date
Are you a ‘Bubblegum’ or a ‘Super Sardine’ kind of guy? Perhaps you favour ‘Sportburnt’, ‘Flamingopink’ or ‘Lemonbiscuit’?
Or is ‘Tiefseegrau’ (‘deep sea grey’) or ‘Lakritze’ (‘liquorice’) more your vibe?
German minimalists Nomos had as much fun naming the 31 models (one for every day of the month!) in the splashy remixes of their flagship Bauhaus-inspired Tangente model as it did designing them. Eg: ‘Chilli’, with its hot-pink and magenta-shaded dial on a grey textile strap or the red and cream ‘Rambazamba’.
“There were many, many more colour mock-ups left on the studio wall,” the brand tells me. Fruity, fun and fairly-priced at a little under £2k, these engraved limited editions are selling out fast. (Yes, even the sardine one).
£1,925.00; goldsmiths.co.uk
Czapek
Antarctique Green Meteor
“The Antarctique has so much going for it,” says Substack supremo Chris Hall of The Fourth Wheel.
“It came out as a response to the Royal Oak and Nautilus fever of the last few years, but now Czapek has equipped it with dials that tap into the popularity of glam, slightly fabulous 1980s watches that we’re now enjoying.
"It’s rare: only a few hundred will ever be made. It’s highly in-demand: bringing out the Antarctique transformed Czapek’s business, and they could sell as many as they could possibly make. It’s beautifully made: with a more interesting bracelet than its rivals, a dial that’s both vividly colourful and made from outer space rock, and a contemporary, unusual movement.”
£27,200; jurawatches.co.uk
Tag Heuer
Carrera Chronograph 39mm
Following on from last year's 60th anniversary remix of the Carrera, this new version adds a classic panda configuration and pops of bright red to the dial, emphasising its motorsport origins to the max. The 'glassbox' crystal remains a winner, keeping vintage-heads and people who just like nice-looking watches equally satisfied.
£6,100; tagheuer.com
Tudor
Black Bay 58 GMT
Fans of fizzy drinks rejoice: the long hoped-for partner to Tudor's 'Pepsi' Black Bay 58 has arrived. That one from 2018 had a very lovely red-and-blue bezel, and now a Coca-Cola coloured bezel decorates this new piece which was unveiled at Watches and Wonders in Geneva. Waterproof to 200m and impervious to magnetic fields up to 15,000 Gauss – that's the unit measuring the strength of magnetic fields, who knew – and there's a very glitzy gilt tone to the numbers and hands.
£3,960; tudorwatch.com
Rolex
Perpetual 1908
Another one launched at Watches and Wonders, this is a slight update on the 1908 which launched last year: now there's an icy blue dial with fine guillochage engraving – that means it's machine-turned, for the non-Francophones – and rice-grain motive around its edge, and a 39mm platinum case. Alligator strap? Don't mind if we do.
£POA; rolex.com
Panerai
Submersible QuarantaQuattro Luna Rossa Ti-Ceramitech
A big beefy boy here, and another Watches and Wonders debut. With a 44mm case in Ti-Ceramitech, a blue sun-brushed dial with small seconds dial, a three-day power reserve, waterproof to 500m and an Incabloc anti-shock device, there's brains as well as brawn here.
£14,300; panerai.com
Tudor
Black Bay Chrono ‘Pink’
In late March, Tudor surprise-released a new iteration of its 41mm Black Bay chronograph. It's pink! And an apparent nod to two Tudor ambassadors, David Beckham, whose Inter Miami football club is kitted out in the same colour, and Taiwanese musician Jay Chou, who (it says here) loves a bit of pink. In an usual bit of marketing Tudor announced that the watch was 'not for everyone'. Since only a small number will ever be produced, perhaps that was a polite way of managing expectations. Because this pink is hot pink.
£5,675; tudor.com
Omega
Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional
Five words. Daniel Craig. White dial. Speedmaster. That’s a powerful spell that’s just been woven right there, isn’t it? You might recall that the former Commander James Bond stepped out last November wearing this extremely lovely bit of kit at an Omega shindig, and now it’s available to buy. The Moonwatch was there on all six moon landings – we’re not sure whether Moonraker counts or not, will check – and sports a 42mm white lacquered step dial, three sub-dials and a general air of derring-do.
£7,600, goldsmiths.co.uk
Christopher Ward
C63 Sealander GMT
Three millimetres doesn’t sound like a lot does it? It’s a tiny amount of wiggle room. Put your fingers about three mil apart – you could scarcely get a copy of Private Eye through there. And yet three millimetres makes a world of difference to the C63 Sealander GMT. Previously only available in 39mm, this slightly scaled down version still gets in everything we already liked about its bigger bro: the six o’clock date window, the Super Lumi-Nova hands, the extra GMT hand to remind you what time it is back home wherever you’re gallivanting. It’s all stainless steel aside from the three dial colourways – white, black and dragonfly blue – and presumably the fourth which the 39mm offers, hunter green, is in the offing too.
£1060, christopherward.com
Blancpain x Swatch
Scuba Fifty Fathoms 'Ocean of Storms'
First things first: the ocean of storms here is altogether more peaceful than it sounds. It’s on the moon, for one thing, so no galoshes needed. The first five of the Blancpain x Swatch collabs were all inspired by earthly, watery oceans, and the sixth looks to the moon’s biggest ‘sea’ which spans more than 2,500km for the design you can see through the exhibition caseback. And like the other five watches, there’s a design of a nudibranch – a species of sea snail – on there too. Why? This one is the Okenia Luna. Luna, lunar: you get it. Elsewhere it’s a black-on-black feel, evoking the vast nothingness of the cosmos in which our old pal the moon spends much of its time. Lovely.
£350, swatch.com
Frederique Constant x seconde/seconde/
Slimline Moonphase Date
The second collab between Frederique Constant and the artist known to his mum as Romaric André is a treat: a playful, rose gold hued bit of whimsy, where the hour markers are three sheets to the wind, the logo’s drawn in crayon and the moonphase disc’s moon and stars are elegantly childlike. The artistry doesn’t stop on the face either, with an exhibition caseback giving a peep at the beautiful movement you’ve paid for.
£POA, frederiqueconstant.com
Rado
Anatom Automatic
Appropriately for an icon of the mid-Eighties, the deep tobacco sunburst at the centre of the dial here is very lovely in a low-key, late-night, lounge lizardy kind of way. But don’t let it take your eye off the rest of this 40th anniversary model: the curved ceramic case, the unfussily futurist bracelet, the bigger face and sympathetically tweaked proportions.
£3,150, rado.com
Grand Seiko
Quartz ‘Snowflake’
Upright and dignified, there’s a tranquility to the design here: the steel bracelet and case frame a dial which nods to the snowfall which the Grand Seiko design studio in Japan apparently often looks out on. The movement’s powered by crystals grown in-house and tested for three months before the best are slotted into the Snowflake.
£2,100, grandseikoboutique.co.uk
Casio
Casiotron 50th anniversary limited edition
This faithful reconstruction of original design of the Casiotron as it brings up its half-century is a reminder of what a gamechanger it was back in the day. No longer did you have to fiddle about with the date and month; this was the first automatic calendar on the market. There have been a couple of little tweaks though, most notably to the day and date readout at the top of the screen which is now unified into a retro-futuristic seven-segment display. Back to the future.
£449, casio.com
Panerai
Luminor Due PAM01424
That’s due as in ‘Italian for two’, not due as in ‘English for due’. It’s a little nod to how Panerai pitched this generation of the Luminor back in 2016 as a next gen design. The original was bigger, beefier, better – more is more, was the idea. The Due slimmed things down, shone things up, and presented a timepiece with a little more suaveness than its older brother. The new burgundy face here chimes very nicely indeed with the polished steel case, and with 50 metres water resistance it’s still ready to rough it should the need arise.
£6,300, panerai.com
Piaget
"Mr Piaget," Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s current head of patrimony told Esquire recently, "felt that the clientele that used to attend polo was really the clientele he wanted to target." And so he came up with the 1979 Polo, a timepiece built around the idea of creating of 'the world's most expensive watch'. Now it's being rereleased, and it looks a million dollars – so given it's a smidge under £70,000, that counts as an absolute steal.
£69,000, piaget.com
TAG Heuer
Mmmm. Let that minty, sage-y green lure you in to the latest of TAH's 60th anniversary rereleases of its Carrera watch. But then stop a second. Something's a little bit different here. The 'Dato' layout shifts the date window to the left hand side, and puts a 30-second sub-register in its place. Unusual. And a nod to the original design of the 3147N model from 1966, which was where the Carrera's nickname – the Cylops – came from. One in the eye for traditionalists.
£6,000, goldsmiths.co.uk
Omega
Omega's first watch of 2024 is a re-up of the 2018 Speedmaster Dark Side of the Moon which was first launched to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 flight. For this new mission, though, there's resharpened definition to the laser-cut moonscape relief on the face and caseback – the half on the back being the dark bit only astronauts see, hence the name – and yellow detailing and a small-hands clock at nine o'clock made from Saturn V-shaped titanium.
£10,100, chisholmhunter.co.uk
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