Tudor 's New Black Bay 68 Reminds Us Why Dive Watches Were Meant to be Big

Since its launch in 2013, the year that Rolex-owned Tudor returned in a big way to the U.S. market after a long hiatus, the sporty, historically inspired Black Bay has taken a firm hold as Tudor’s undisputed flagship family. The original model, which quickly garnered enthusiast admiration with its clever combination of elements from Tudor dive watches of yesteryear, begat a plethora of off-shoots in different sizes, materials, and complications. At last year’s Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva, Tudor introduced the smallest size yet in the extended Black Bay universe with the Black Bay 54. This year, the brand goes in the opposite direction, and bucks some industry trends in the process, with the launch of the Black Bay 68, which introduces a new 43mm case size and becomes the latest Tudor model housing the METAS-certified Master Chronometer movement.

Much like the “54” in the name of its smaller predecessor was a reference to the year 1954, when Tudor launched its first dive watch, the “68” in this new model’s name refers to 1968, the year that Tudor developed its now-familiar “Snowflake” handset, once a feature of Tudor Submariner dive watches and now an emblematic element of all Black Bay watches. The bold, 43mm case is in polished and satin-brushed stainless steel, mounted on a robust steel three-link bracelet with a “ladder-style” taper that harkens back to earlier models, and maintains the Black Bay models’ professional-grade water resistance of 200 meters. (Tudor also says this case is “slightly thinner,” but doesn’t provide specifics). The unidirectional rotating divers’ bezel, made of steel with an aluminum insert, has an easy-to-grip, prehensile edge and features curved Arabic numerals on its 60-minute scale.

The cleverly curated elements that make up the Black Bay DNA are all present on the dial, which Tudor is offering in both its signature, nautical “Tudor Blue” (with a sharp, light-catching radial-brushed finish) and also in sun-brushed silver. These features include the aforementioned “snowflake” hour hand, matched with a thin sword minute hand and a lollipop seconds hand, and the assortment of geometrical hour markers — round dots and rectangles, with a dominant inverted triangle at 12 o’clock — which is also derived from Tudor Submariner models from the ‘60s and ‘70s. The dial sits under a domed sapphire crystal, and the case’s water resistance is ensured by a screw-down crown with an engraved Tudor rose emblem. 

Tudor is well on its way to having nearly all of its in-house movements certified as “Master Chronometers” by the Swiss Institute of Metrology, aka METAS. (Only Tudor and one other Swiss watch brand, Omega, which established the standard, currently even strive for this prestigious badge of robustness and precision.) The Caliber MT5601-U inside the Black Bay 68 is no exception. Certified by METAS as well as by Switzerland’s original chronometric testing agency, this self-winding manufacture movement boasts a 70-hour power reserve, a stop-seconds function, and a non-magnetic silicon balance spring that renders it resistant to magnetic fields up to 15,000 gauss. 

The Tudor Black Bay 68, described by Tudor as an “all business” dive watch in the classical sense, also features a user-friendly technical element on its steel bracelet, which was itself influenced by : the brand’s proprietary “T-Fit” clasp, which uses a ball-bearing-driven system to allow the wearer to instantly adjust the length of the bracelet in five positions to a range of 8mm. The whole package comes in at an MSRP of $4,700, perfectly within the comfort zone of other Black Bays — the price, of course, being another factor in the model’s enduring popularity.