At this year’s Baselworld, Omega introduced the Seamaster Aqua Terra Worldtimer Master Chronometer Limited Edition, a totally new Aqua Terra with a 43mm platinum case, in-house METAS-certified Master Chronometer 8939 movement, and a hand-crafted enamel world map on its dial. It serves as a halo piece for the rest of this year’s new Aqua Terra collection, which we broadly covered here. Somewhat surprisingly, the noble Omega Seamaster replica watches are the first worldtimer watches that Omega has produced and one of only a few watches which Omega has elected to case in platinum.
Over the years, the Seamaster Aqua Terra range has been reimagined several times. Omega’s new-for-2017 Seamaster Aqua Terra collection has been updated with more symmetrical cases, a redesigned conical crown, horizontal as opposed to vertical grain on the dial (which Omega calls their “teak concept”), a new six o’clock location for the date, and most notably, the inclusion of the METAS-certified Omega Master Chronometer 8800 or 8900 co-axial calibers.
While there are visual cues that help easily identify it as an Aqua Terra family member, the Omega Seamaster copy watches with mechanical movements are a largely different animal from the rest of the Aqua Terra line.
Starting with the dial, Omega has combined high-end materials like platinum, 18k gold, and of course the elegant hand-enameled world map to produce something striking. The dial’s outermost portion is produced from “sand-blasted platinum-gold” and is printed with 24 world cities. Color choice for the world destinations is coded, with red representing GMT, black to mean these locations are plus one hour in the summer, and blue to demonstrate locales which do not observe daylight savings.
Inside the outer ring of world destinations, there are 18k yellow gold applied hour markers filled with Super-LumiNova. The inner dial is sapphire crystal with an enameled map of the Northern Hemisphere as seen from the North Pole. Surrounding the world map is a 24-hour register which is also color-coded black and white for day and night. Note that the time zone often represented on the delicate Omega replica watches by Paris or Geneva is here represented as Bienne, Switzerland, where Omega is based.
Worldtimer dials can be a cluttered mess, and while Omega fake watches with brown leather straps have a lot going on, the wealth of information is carefully organized and spread out over enough dial real estate to make the functions actually useful and easy to read. The contrast provided by the gold hands and indices also makes the main time very legible. Upsizing the case to 43mm from the 41mm width of most men’s Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra helped create dial space for all that information but also called for more of that sweet, sweet platinum.