Best Watches — Curated from The Hiro Report

While I love the Oura Ring for everyday use, nothing beats the Apple Watch Ultra for me when out on hiking/running trails and in the weight room. The big display is perfect for quickly glancing at pace, cadence, and heart rate data while running, and I appreciate the first-class integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. While the ~2-day battery life is a big improvement from earlier Apple Watch models, I do wish we could triple or quadruple that in time.

All of my earliest watches were Casios, so they've got a special place in my heart. This new moonphase from them has this great 80's analog techno vibe to it that I'm really digging, plus I'm a sucker for a moon phase.

I love my analog watches but have been primarily wearing the Ultra 3 since it came out this Fall. I got it in Black and have really been enjoying both the look and the functionality. I still wear my nicer watches quite often, but I keep putting this watch back on. Having Chirp on my watch face is a huge bonus, giving me access to a smart LLM on my wrist at all times.

Thanks to Adam for flagging this gorgeous GMT field watch from Timex and The James Brand. It uses a super reliable Miyota 9075 automatic GMT movement, letting you track the time in two different time zones at once, and has the perfect amount of color pops for my liking. I have a few knives and tools from The James Brand and have always been really pleased with them—they look great and hold up to regular heavy use.

Seiko announced this week that they are re-releasing their famous digital quartz from the early 1980s that was worn by several astronauts due to its hardiness and that the bezel could be manipulated even while wearing spacesuit gloves. I love the retro digital aesthetic, and will definitely be looking to pick one up when they become available in the U.S. next spring. (They'll be available in Europe and Japan next month!)

I was simultaneously shocked and dismayed that Apple neglected to come up with a fun, orange-colored watch strap to pair with the new Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro. Fortunately, third parties have stepped up to the plate. I grabbed an Orange Sport Band from Nomad, which has been a delight. Feels extremely well made and is super comfortable. It’s not a perfect color match (they already had this orange strap for sale before the launch of the iPhone 17 lineup), but I’m really enjoying it.

Let me preface this by saying I am wary of featuring Kickstarter projects, but the folks at Big Idea Design have done an impressive 51 launches on Kickstarter, and I happen to own and love a good number of their products… They're a great company churning out good-looking everyday carry gear. So, with that all said, I'm really intrigued by the beautiful new titanium-bodied GMT watch that they just launched this week. It features a beautiful double-domed sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating over a bright, good-looking full dial lume. For those not familiar, a GMT watch features an additional hour hand that you can set to keep track of time in a different time zone by pairing it with the 24-hour bezel on the face of the watch. It's a handy feature for travelers, and also just a super fun complication to add to mechanical watches. They're limiting it to just 300 pieces and plan to ship to backers next month.

Does anyone else remember the Pebble smartwatch from a decade ago? It was an early phone-connected wearable with an e-ink display that looked neat but never really took off. Amazingly, Google has open-sourced the software that ran it, and some of the original team are bringing it back with new and improved hardware while staying true to its minimalist ethos. I’m very excited to see where this goes. Check out Eric Migi’s explanation for why they want to do this.

Well, this sets my nerdy heart aflutter– The DSKY is super-upscale calculator watch that takes extensive design cues from the Apollo program’s Mission Control boards. It nails the space race-era technology vibes, and I, for one, am completely here for it.

I found this cool little piece of tech art via Jason Kottke’s excellent Holiday Gift Guide. It’s a timer that starts counting whenever you pull out a pin, and then the self-contained unit will just keep counting upwards for 2,000 years on its own power. A really neat way to commemorate how long it has been since some major milestone—a wedding, moving into a house, launching a product, etc.

I love a gimmick watch, and boy is this one right up my alley. This nerdy little devil claims to be the first watch ever designed for table top role-playing games (TTRPG’s), due to the fact that it will let you roll virtual dice right on your wrist. It also nails the early 90’s digital watch aesthetic that was my bread and butter growing up. Unfortunately, it’s preorder only right now, so in the meantime I’ll keep playing with Dice by PCalc on my Apple Watch.