The 5 Best GMT Watches
Breitling
“For those who are able to appreciate the Royal Oak design and travel a lot, this Audemars Piguet seems to be the right choice.“
Together with luxury-watch-market platform Chrono24 and Ebner Publishing (also known for WatchTime magazine), I started a company called Chronolytics to analyse and structure the behavioural data of Chrono24. We noticed that there was no real source of information regarding consumer behavior in the watch market, so we decided to fill that gap for watch manufacturers.
Besides being a data vendor for the watch industry, Chronolytics also culls data that we consider to be of interest to everyday watch fans.
In each week of March, we will show you the most popular complication timepieces based on the behavioural data we collected from watch enthusiasts.
This week, we’re featuring the Top 5 GMT watches — watches that are able to display a second time zone. GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone of the United Kingdom. Besides that, GMT is a time system that was adopted in 1884. It originally referred to the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in London. In Greenwich, London, to be exact.
This time system divides the globe into 24 parts, based on 24 meridians of longitude. Greenwich in London is longitude 0° 0′ 0″, which makes it GMT. Amsterdam, for example, is in the next zone, and is GMT+1. New York, for instance, is GMT-5 (during winter).
The GMT is one of the most popular complications a watch can have. Although it was meant for pilots who travel through different time zones, business travellers also found their way to these watches.
Most of the time, a GMT watch just features an extra hand that is able to display home time in the 24-hour format (to make a distinction between night and day). The normal hour hand is used to display the time in the current time zone you are in. In some cases, the watch has an extra dial with hour and minute hands to display an extra time zone.
A very useful complication for people who travel a lot to different time zones (and not +1 or -1 only) and want to know what time it is in their home country. It can also be a useful complication if you do a lot of business with people in a certain time zone. Anyway, we also believe a lot of people just buy these watches because they like ‘em without having particular use for the extra time zone indicator.
The Top 5 Most Popular GMT Watches
5. Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Dual Time 
Based on the original Royal Oak Jumbo model from 1972, this Royal Oak Dual Time has the same beautiful finish on case and bracelet and same diameter case. However, where the original Royal Oak had a very plain dial (only hours, minutes and date), this Dual Time has a bit more functionality. Besides an extra dial (located at 6 o’clock) to indicate the second time zone (or home time), there is a separate day/night indicator, a power reserve indicator and a small dial to indicate the date. For those who are able to appreciate the Royal Oak design and travel a lot, this Audemars Piguet seems to be the right choice. Buy it here.4. Breitling Navitimer World
Another classic in this Top 5 list is this Breitling Navitimer World. The Navitimer goes back to 1952, when Breitling introduced this watch for pilots. With its slide rule, it enabled them to calculate things like remaining fuel and ground speed. Actually, it can be used for a whole range of basic math like multiplications and divisions and so on. Anyway, Breitling decided to add another useful complication for pilots and travelers on their Navitimer. The Navitimer World features an extra hand to indicate a second time zone. The slender long hand with the red tip indicates home time on a 24-hour scale. Buy it here.Next Page >>