A Fan-Favorite Affordable Brand Drops a World-Class Travel Watch

Baltic is pulling a fast one here, but I don’t see anything wrong with it.

The new Heures du Monde Worldtimer, which means “Hours of the World” in French, doesn’t feature a traditional mechanical worldtimer complication. But it offers the ability to track every time zone through a clever mechanical hack, making it much more affordable.

Baltic Watches

Baltic’s beautiful new travel watch repurposes an automatic GMT movement, which has become far more affordable in recent years, to approximate a worldtimer. The clever design hinges on a semi-transparent disc atop the dial, attached to the GMT function.

The two-tone 24-hour track, which looks just like a GMT bezel, is printed on the outer edge of a transparent disc that replaces the GMT hand. It can be set as an alternative timezone, with an arrow at 6:00 as an indicator, and it works in conjunction with the world time bezel to track the time anywhere in the world.

Baltic Watches

The world time bezel features 24 notable cities etched into a black ceramic bezel ring and filled in with white lacquer. It sits in a steel coin-edge bezel frame that slightly overhangs atop the Heures du Monde’s 37mm steel case.

Heart of stone

The Heures du Monde dial balances the busy outer rings with minimal detailing at the center, set over ornate natural textures provided by three different stone dial options. There is an orange Tiger Eye, a blue Sodalite and a gray Labradorite.

Baltic Watches

The sans-seconds time is shown by beveled steel sword hands with white Super-LumiNova inlays. Local time is indicated by a simple dash hours track with a double marker at 12:00 and the 24-hour track indicator arrow at 6:00.

Baltic Watches

Along with the hands, the dial is thoroughly lumed, with the hour track, 24-hour disc and world time bezel track all marked in blue-glowing Super-LumiNova. It is perfectly suited for getting your temporal bearings in a dark airplane cabin.

The dial is capped with a double-domed sapphire crystal and the worldtime bezel is easy to adjust thanks to the overhanging coin-edge grip. My only gripe is that Baltic went with a 120-click unidirectional bezel, which helps keep the time zones locked in place, but makes it tedious to go back in time, so to speak.

Baltic Watches

Baltic’s hacked worldtimer function runs on a Soprod Caliber C125 automatic movement that beats at 4Hz and offers a 42-hour power reserve. It has a “caller” GMT complication, which allows the 24-hour disc to be set independently with its own crown position.

Availability and pricing

We’ve seen some brilliant reinterpretations of the mechanical worldtimer, such as the Nomos Club Sport Neomatik Worldtimer and the Alterum Worldtimer Horizon. But rather than developing a new complication that would result in an expensive watch, Baltic repurposed an existing one to keep the Heures du Monde Worldtimer affordable.

Baltic Watches

The Baltic Heures de Monde Worldtimer is available now from Baltic for $1,495 on a leather pin buckle strap that matches each dial color. For an extra $65, which is a very generous increase, you can opt for Baltic’s beads-of-rice or flat-link steel bracelet.

Baltic Watches

Baltic Heures du Monde Worldtimer

Specs

Case Size	37mm
Movement	Soprod Caliber C125 automatic
Water Resistance	100m

• $1,495 at Baltic

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add Gear Patrol as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

Related Topics