The Latest MoonSwatch Is a Disappointment After the Previous Edition

New moon.

Yellow Omega x Swatch Speedmaster MoonSwatch with white tachymeter bezel and white textured strap on an orange background.

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By Johnny Brayson

Published 2 hours ago

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Four years on from the groundbreaking first generation in 2022, the MoonSwatch had arguably grown stale.

That is, until the Swatch x Omega collab got a shot in the arm last month with the Mission to the Moon 1969. That watch wasn’t just one of the most attractive MoonSwatches ever, but it was also one of the most creative and easily the best value: the real gold in the watch is worth almost double its retail price.

I was hoping the 1969 marked a turning point for the MoonSwatch and that we’d continue to see exciting, inventive new releases in the series.

But the new MoonSwatch Mission to the Sun Solar Eclipse out today shows that Swatch is back to its disappointing old tricks.

Total eclipse of the Swatch

Yellow Omega x Swatch Speedmaster MoonSwatch with white tachymeter bezel and white fabric strap on yellow textured surface. — Look again; this is not the new release.

There is a solar eclipse happening today, August 12, which is the reason for the new MoonSwatch. Now, you’d think an eclipse would be a great excuse for Swatch to flex its creative muscles, but that’s not what we have here.

Instead, you’d be hard-pressed to find the differences between the “Solar Eclipse” and the standard Mission to the Sun, which was one of the 11 original MoonSwatches.

Close-up of a yellow watch case with a textured crown engraved with "Ω x S" and a black pusher against a dark blue background. — A black Bioceramic pusher is your only clue from the front that this isn’t the standard Mission to the Sun.

The yellow Bioceramic case, yellow dial and white tachymeter bezel are all unchanged. The strap remains white, but it has been upgraded from the original fabric Velcro strap to the newer (and nicer) rubber version.

The only other differences are that the pusher at 2:00 is now in black Bioceramic rather than yellow, and the battery cover on the caseback depicts the new moon rather than the sun. That’s it.

Close-up of the back of a yellow Swatch watch with a moon image and red text "MISSION TO THE SUN. — An image of a new moon replaces the sun on the battery cover.

Otherwise, this is the same watch we’ve had for four years.
This might go down as the laziest MoonSwatch update yet. Rather than doing something cool for the eclipse, we get a barely noticeable update to one of the most basic MoonSwatches.

Making things worse is the fact that this is one of the hardest MoonSwatches to acquire yet. It’s only available today, August 12, and only in Spain, one of the countries where today’s solar eclipse will be most viewable.

Availability and pricing

The boring update and the forced scarcity of this release are great representations of why the MoonSwatch gets so much hate these days. I was hoping we’d turned a corner with the awesome Mission to the Moon 1969, so this feels like a big step backward. Hopefully Swatch rights the ship on the next release.

The Mission to the Sun Solar Eclipse is available exclusively today at select Swatch stores in Spain for €280 (~$323), five euros more than the standard Mission to the Sun.

Yellow Omega x Swatch Speedmaster MoonSwatch with white tachymeter bezel and white textured strap.

Omega x Swatch Bioceramic MoonSwatch Mission to the Sun Solar Eclipse

Specs

Case Size	42mm
Movement	quartz chronograph
Water Resistance	30m

$323 at Swatch

About the Author:

Johnny Brayson is an editor at Gear Patrol mostly covering watches. He enjoys watches that are packed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em details and believes nearly every watch could stand to be a tad smaller.

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