How many sides does a sphere have? Luckily for OMEGA’s marketing department, the answer is: an infinite number. After visits to the Dark, the Grey, and the White Side of the moon, the Swiss giant invites us to discover one we didn’t even know existed: the Meteorite side.
Modeled after other Speedmaster Co-Axial chronographs, the new GSOTM is the latest two-register, with small seconds at 9 o’clock, a 60-minute and 12-hour recorder at 3 o’clock, and a date window at 6 o’clock. Again, it is presented in a brushed and polished case measuring 44.25 mm across and 16.14 mm tall. But the watch looks a whole lot different from its predecessor.
A follow up to the Grey Side Of The Moon, the “Meteorite” borrows only the original’s grey ceramic case, ditching the sand-blasted platinum dial meant to romantically mirror the Moon’s surface, for one that actually orbited our planet before crash landing into it.
Meteorite dials seem to divide opinion. They are the marmite of the watch industry. Love them or hate them, they have a way of transforming the look of a watch. Many have experimented with such dials in recent memory – including OMEGA, who released the Speedmaster Professional Apollo-Soyuz a few years ago. Since then Jaeger-LeCoultre, Zenith, and Jaquet Droz have all released watches with meteorite dials, triggering a quick response from OMEGA, who may feel their self-proclaimed monopoly on space was being infringed (the Apollo-Soyuz Speedmaster, which had a meteorite dial, is no longer in production).
OMEGA’s meteorite is quite dark, which makes the information on the dial easy to absorb. To ensure optimal legibility, they’ve turned to their proprietary Sedna™ gold alloy to highlight the indexes, hour and minute hands, chronograph hand (which all contain Super-LumiNova), as well as the bezel, while the tachymeter scale is made with OMEGA Ceragold™. They’ve also inverted the colors of the date window. However, the Speedmaster logo remains red, in line with other next-gen Moonwatches.
Aesthetically, the Grey side of the Moon “Meteorite” falls somewhere in between the Grey and the Dark Side Of The Moon, although I suspect the latter will continue to be OMEGA’s most successful Speedmaster 9300, simply due to its versatility and lower price point.
But the latest addition to the Moonwatch family is undeniably cool. Neither man – nor OMEGA – has placed a foot on the Moon’s surface in the past 40 years. And yet, the Swiss giant continues to find inspiration in its narrative, passing it along without a stutter thanks to fresh and innovative designs.
The Omega Grey side of the Moon “Meteorite” will come on a grey leather strap with rubber insert and a fold-over clasp, and will be priced at CHF 13,000, which is CHF 2,500 more than the original GSOTM. More from OMEGA here.
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