For the past several years, we have seen annually a number of watch brands grasp at the Chinese market with Lunar New Year watches. The efforts range from lazy to intensive, with some brands simply offering a different dial color, some using Chinese characters, and some doing both (if you can believe such boldness). There…

Last week, in the year’s final episode of Fratello Talks, RJ, Lex, and Nacho presented their favorite watches of 2024 to you under six predetermined categories. In the episode’s accompanying article, there was a poll through which you, dear Fratelli, could vote for your favorite watch among the 18 nominees. After a week of voting,…

Small brands often launch and carry on with singular elements. These brands have thought of a novel dial, or a neat bezel, or maybe even a wild case. Even with those who design every component — or claim to — it’s often easy to tell which part was the seed from which the rest sprouted.…

Anti-hype watches provide an opportunity to look further afield at options that fly under the radar despite hailing from renowned brands. Today, I am looking at examples of such watches that I would consider adding to my private collection. When thinking about anti-hype watches, it was important to me to explore options I found interesting,…

Welcome all to a new year and a new season of Fratello Talks, your favorite watch podcast in the whole wide world. What should we expect from the world of watches in 2025? Nacho, RJ, and Lex share their predictions on today’s show. Some of these are wishful thinking, but others are educated guesses based…

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you celebrated in style last night! As you may know, every year, we recap all the Seiko and Grand Seiko releases we covered here on Fratello. Last week, we published an overview of all the 2024 Seiko releases we wrote about. This time, we’ll focus on the Grand Seiko…

Despite an impressively consistent run of solid releases in recent years, Longines remains something of a dark horse in the modern enthusiast landscape. For 2025, though, the brand seems intent on revamping its image to include a more contemporary, trendy feel, and to accomplish this Longines is ringing in the new year with a moody,…

With the new Ultra-Chron Carbon, Longines continues bolstering its already impressive lineup. Plus, the watch features the brand’s first-ever carbon fiber case. This is a beautiful dive watch with an outstanding movement. Longines reintroduced the stainless steel Ultra-Chron in 2022, and it was praised for its 36,000vph movement and design, which evokes the 1968 original.…