The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.
We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.
In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.
Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.
If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
Our quotes are based on historical sales and real-time market data allowing us to give fair prices without all the hassle.
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As many of you may know, I have a long-standing penchant for both travel complications and watches that manage to make the most out of genuinely unconventional design. This usually means either the likes of the jaw-dropping Patek 2597 or some weirdly lovable dive watches from Doxa, because these two fascinations don't commonly overlap. Occasionally, though, they do, and I was thrilled to see what Oris launched for their 2022 Holstein Edition – a recreation of a travel-ready model from the mid-90s that is commonly known as the Oris Worldtimer.
Dubbed the "Full Steel" in this modern guise, the Holstein Edition 2022 is a 250-piece run of a niche design that has been on my radar for much of the past decade. I've bid on original examples on eBay, tried to chase down one of the very cool TT1 versions (which blended the same functionality into a dive watch), and I once came close to picking up a dressy Artelier expression of the complication a few years ago when they were more readily available. It never worked out, but now there's a surprisingly faithful new one.
The best place to start this review is with the movement because it – along with the physical interface for the travel complication – is the connecting thread between all of the watches I just mentioned. It's the Oris Caliber 690. Starting life as an ETA 2836-2, the 690 is an automatic movement that ticks at 4Hz and offers 38 hours of power reserve. To become a 690, Oris modifies the movement to support a unique layout that allows for a very straightforward manner of displaying local and home time.
The main time display forms your local time, while home time is displayed on the sub-dial at three. That sub-dial shows both hours and minutes and even integrates a white-to-black AM/PM indicator that is linked with the time shown on the sub-dial. There is a small seconds display at nine and a date at six o'clock.
When you're at home (and assuming you want to use the travel function in the manner of a flyer GMT), the main time display and the small-time display would be set to the same time. Then, when you travel to another time zone, you can use the buttons mounted at eight and four in the case flank to jump-set the main hour hand forward or backward. The date is tied to this hand, so if you cross midnight, it adjusts in step. No taking the watch off your wrist, no fiddling with the crown, no loss to timekeeping, and you still have a full home display with the ever-helpful AM/PM indication so that you're not calling home in the middle of the night.
It's a simple, straightforward, and almost sneakily elegant way of offering a dual-time indication. For those wondering, while the 690 does a whole lot of tricks when it comes to travel, both of the minute hands are linked and cannot be adjusted independently. Thus, the Full Steel is best suited to full-hour time zone offsets.
So that's the 690. In short, it's rad and I'd love to see it used in more watches, especially with the push-button -/+ interface (though props to Oris and the now discontinued bezel-actuated version on the ProPilot Worldtimer).
Here is the Full Steel with an 18mm lizard leather strap swapped in. Less of a match for plaid, sure, but still a very distinctive look. I think a blue rubber strap would be very good.
Now to the Full Steel – it's 36.5mm wide, 12mm thick, and 43mm lug-to-lug. But look closely as the lugs aren't quite what they seem. The "horns" and the center link are actually part of the case itself. The bracelet starts at the second visible link and this means that a straight bracelet end (or a conventional strap) can be fitted into the 18mm hooded lug design (which is also drilled). It's a rather faithful recreation of a mid-90s Oris Worldtimer 690 (though fellow nerds of such watches will note that Oris did, in period, produce a version with conventional lugs).
By today's standards, the Full Steel is a bit on the baroque side, with a whole lot of bracelet and case for what is a rather small (29mm) blue dial. Weighing in at 143g with the solid steel bracelet sized to my wrist, it's heavy for a small watch. The balance is such that it wears a bit like a traditional bracelet (in the jewelry sense of the word), where the proportions of the case blend neatly into those of the included bracelet. Wearing the Full Steel reminds me of watches like past-gen Breguet Marines, with a lot of lug, case, and bracelet.
Thankfully, despite that diminutive dial, the Full Steel is not at all hard to read. The dial is a dark blue with graining under the luminous applied markers and each sub-dial has an iridescent finish that flashes with a brighter blue. With a date at six and the red accents for the seconds hand and the -/+ markings for the pushers, it's a busy dial but I had no issue reading any of the displays.
Likewise, the lume is good, better than I expected, and Oris has even gone to the trouble of applying lume to the hands for the home time sub-dial. A nice touch, indeed, though I do wish they had color-matched the date wheel.
In terms of handling, the screw-down crown is oversized (and supports 50m of water resistance) and easy to use, and both of the pushers feel very mechanical and each jump of the hour hand is met with a heavy mechanical click.
On wrist, the Full Steel offers a unique experience as it manages to feel and look reassuringly chunky while being on the small side of any dimension you might normally attribute to a sporty Oris. It wears and looks small, tiny even, but feels substantial. Furthermore, from the original images, I had expected its wrist presence to be somewhat awkward, but in person I found the Full Steel to be quite charming and confident. This is perhaps unsurprising given my taste for the format and should be taken as deeply subjective.
If you're looking for something to fill a GMT-Master II-shaped expectation for your wrist – look elsewhere. This Oris is something else entirely and for 250-some folks with a specific taste, the lack of conventional thinking is a feature, not a bug.
With a list price of $4,300, this is usually the point where I find a list of competition for the watch in question, but really, what is there? Push-button jumping GMTs are not common, and the 690 and its layout make this an entirely Oris consideration. Then add in the 36.5mm sizing. Is the Holstein Edition 2022 a screaming deal? No, but your cash does get you a distinctly idiosyncratic experience in watches, which I would argue is indeed uncommon at this price point.
As a watch, I think the Full Steel Holstein Edition 2022 offers a unique wrist presence supported by a useful and well-executed travel complication. As a limited edition, I think it works beautifully by offering a niche experience to a niche audience, rather than being limited in an attempt to stir up some additional fervor in an otherwise run-of-the-mill watch.
It's loveable and useful while being rather strange in both its proportion and appeal. While I might be giving myself a bit too much credit, maybe this is why the little Oris resonates so strongly with me.
HODINKEE is an authorized retailer of Oris watches. For more information on the Holstein Edition 2022 Full Steel, click here.
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