Oracle Time Magazine

The Ring 5 is 40% smaller than its predecessor – thinner, lighter and designed to actually feel like jewellery rather than a gadget on your finger. The titanium construction, 100m water resistance and six to nine days of battery life are all present and correct, but the real story is what it tracks: 50-plus health metrics including sleep staging, HRV, blood pressure signals and nighttime breathing patterns, with new AI-powered health tools on top.

There’s something special about wearing a watch that has already lived a life. Modern reissues can faithfully recreate the dimensions, dial layout and even the mechanics of a historic timepiece, but they can never recreate the feeling of fastening on a watch that has genuinely witnessed history unfold. That feeling hit me the moment I strapped on this Hanhart 417 ES, kindly loaned by @diversewatchcollector. This particular example stands out because of its remarkable provenance.

After producing limited edition semi-precious stone dial variants of the Sector II Sport previously for occasions like Hands On Horology, Nodus is introducing stone dials to the line-up permanently. There are two stone dials being introduced initially as core collection models, the Sector II Sport Tiger’s Eye and Onyx. At the same time, they’re also releasing a collaborative special edition with display case specialists Holme & Hadfield.

There are multiple methods with which watch brands can reveal the inner workings of their watches. The most common are skeletonisation and openworking – removing the physical portions of the dial and/or movement to showcase the movement. However, another method is to replace an opaque dial with a translucent one. That’s a method that Czapek have explored multiple times in the past with 2024’s Promenade Transparencies Viridian Green and 2025’s Antarctique Plique-á-Jour.

Norqain’s collections are split into three main families. There’s the Freedom, a retro chronograph model with many colourful and whimsical variations. The Adventure, a down to earth tool watch for daily use. Lastly, the Independence, a skeletonised sports watch that leans into a more urban aesthetic with bold shapes and multiple stealthy, DLC coated variants.

In La Chaux-de-Fonds, Maximin Chapuis and Jason Chevrolat are both still under 30, but have already been in the industry for many years. Both have spent two years quietly researching a name and a movement that horology mislaid a century ago, with a distinct British connection. Bahne Bonniksen was a Danish watchmaker who worked out of Coventry and gave chronometry the Carrousel.

Cloisonné grand feu enamel is usually the preserve of five-figure métiers d’art pieces from the big Swiss houses, which is what makes the Peacock Edition such an event.

Today, Japanese brand Minase are best known for their distinctive and unusual case designs like the Horizon and Windows, but when they were founded in 2005, they didn’t start with these outlandish concepts. When they were new to the scene, they created the M1, M2, and M3, which were by their own description ‘simple and minimalistic’. Two decades later, Minase are revisiting those minimalist designs by reinventing the M3 for the contemporary age, now called the Minase Mastercraft J3.

One of the pitfalls that some microbrands and small independents fall into is being ‘too’ niche. When you build your brand around a hyper specific concept, it’s all too easy to fall into familiar patterns and churn out repetitive watches. However, despite having a concept as narrow as ‘the City of Venice’, Venezianico have proven time and time again that they are far from running out of ideas.

Blancpain Manufacture (1735) Every year the watch world brings a slew of new anniversaries: the birth of a specific collection, the invention of a certain complication and, most loudly touted, the foundation date of a brand. I say touted rather than important for a reason. Most traditional watchmakers use their age as shorthand for horological expertise. That makes sense; the longer you do something, presumably the better you get at it.