FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Tudor Pelagos 39 200M Automatic Watch

 

M25407N-0001

Of all the non-TAG Heuer watches I have the closest affinity with, number one is probably the Tudor Pelagos LHD. This is almost entirely because my good friend Rich owns one and as such I have seen and handled this watch quite a bit over the last few years. It is not without it's faults; I'm not 'crazy' about the red/black date wheel and the (admittedly clever) clasp is a bit weird, but overall I like it a lot and it is pretty much the only watch in the world with fauxtina that doesn't make me want to puke in a bucket. 

But of course an awful lot of people wanted the Tudor Pelagos in a smaller size and so there is understandable excitement for the release of this 39mm variant. I don't doubt for a second that this will sell like hot cakes, indeed I'm sure the waiting lists are already growing since as ever these days Tudor will have done a thoroughly terrible job of providing adequate inventory on release. But then of course we all know a lack of stock only feeds the hype; nothing makes a watch enthusiast crave a watch like being told they can't have one after all...

My issue with this new release though is that it seems like, perhaps wary of killing enthusiasm for the elder sibling like they did with the Black Bay (seriously who talks about the 41mm Black Bay, ever?) Tudor seems to have gone out of their way to avoid giving the punters what they actually asked for, and so instead they delivered a somewhat compromised piece that looks a lot like a Pelagos at first glance, but actually fails to deliver on the details.

But apparently no one seems to care about that, except perhaps people who already own the Pelagos. Allow me to explain... when people say they love the new Pelagos 39mm it's not necessarily because they've finally gained access to a slightly smaller version of the original Pelagos, it's largely because they've got something approximating the Tudor Submariner they know they're never going to get.

Naturally I asked my friend what he thought of the new Pelagos and he really didn't like it. Which seems odd considering it's supposedly the same watch but a little bit smaller. In fact he gave me a fantastic quote, he said... 'It looks like a Pelagos that has lost its soul'. Wow! Hodinkee put it another way, they called it 'a more classic take on the Pelagos', or in other words.., a Pelagos that's more acceptable to people who like the Black Bay 58.

I get that it's probably due to the thinner case, but removing the dial step found on the original 42mm version has robbed this Pelagos of a lot of character in my opinion, and using solid blocks of lume without surrounds also changes the overall look of the watch too, and not for the better. In an odd way it kinda reminds me of when TAG Heuer brought out the 45mm Heuer 01 skeleton and then the 43mm skeleton. Part of me thought, oh that's slightly annoying... until I realised that the 43mm version looked similar from the front but instead of a black coated titanium case it had a plain brushed steel one. On first glance it looked the same, but in reality it wasn't. I imagine a lot of 42mm Pelagos owners will potentially feel a similar slight pang of regret, until they look closer and realise that there still isn't really a 39mm version of the watch they own. 

But while I disapprove of the removal of the dial step, this isn't the main bone of contention for me. While no one needs a helium escape valve or a 500M water resistance rating, the Pelagos was born as a hardcore dive watch (Pelagos is ancient Greek for 'sea', just saying...) and to produce this weak facsimile seems like a bit of a slap in the face to me. Imagine if Omega released a Planet Ocean 200M or if TAG Heuer released an Aquagraph 200M, it would be laughable, but somehow Tudor get a free pass. 

Still, I'm sure my little post will glance off the side of Tudor's well armoured cheek. There must be 50 videos on You Tube about this watch already, praising it like the second coming that it really isn't - such is the fanboism surrounding the Tudor brand these days. And fair play to them, they've managed to release a ton of fairly dreadful looking watches (the 'Fast Rider Black Shield' immediately springs to mind) since they relaunched themselves in the UK a few years ago, but hit gold with the Black Bay 58 and milked every bit of credibility out of it. It's just that they now seem intent on turning the Pelagos into the 'Black Bay 58 Titanium' and that just won't do.  

Like I said at the start, I understand why people who are smaller of wrist wanted a less bulky Pelagos, but it seems that what they've actually been presented with is a sort of 'fashion-watch' version of the real thing, and the crazy thing is it's only £250 cheaper. No doubt it will sell like hot cakes to people who actually wanted a Tudor Submariner all along, but a smaller Pelagos it really isn't.