Tudor Pelagos FXD 42mm

With a long history of military issued dive watches, it's no surprise that the french Marine National turned to Tudor when designing a watch for their troops. What is a surprise is how focussed the resulting tool watch ended up being, with the Pelagos FXD showing what you get when you build for purpose rather than modifying an existing model to fit a marketting brief. 

The basic formula for a tool diver is there: big, blocky hands and indices, a lack of a date complication to maximise lume area and legibility, and a fully graduated bezel for timing. But beyond that? This is a purpose built watch and while not for everyone, that just makes it cooler in my opinion. After handling this watch, I have some thoughts on what this approach means for us as collectors, so let's dive into that.

Let's take the bezel, for example. Unlike most dive watches, it uses a countdown bezel that rotates in both directions rather than a unidirectional upwards counting timer bezel. Why? Well, in the real world, divers don't use mechanical watches to time their dives, they use digital dive computers with built in depth sensors. They're much more precise and will automatically calculate decompression intervals instead of the diver having to use dive tables at the surface. So why bother carrying a mechanical dive watch at all then? When underwater with no visual references to rely on, divers navigate by using a compass and estimating how far they've swum by timing themselves; deep under water there's no GPS signal, using chronograph pushers for timing tends to encourage water ingress and destroy the watch, and swimming to the surface to look around is counter to the whole "using divers to covertly infiltrate enemy occupied space" thing. So, a countdown bezel is really useful for calculating waypoints and navigating underwater. Not as good for timing your eggs in the morning, but great for infiltrating enemy territory. Having tried my hand at under water dive navigation before, I can see the appeal. As I said, built for purpose.

Then we get to the case. The "FXD" in the name stands for "fixed," as in this case has fixed, solid lugs and doesnt use spring bars. If you're the type of person that won't buy a watch without a bracelet, you're out of luck with the FXD because it's pass thtough straps only here. Tudor does include 2 straps with purchase to soften the blow and lack of ability to use your extensive 2 piece strap collection, but some may not like this design feature. Why did they go down this route? Fixed lugs mean no spring bars to fail when the watch gets bashed about, increasing durability. Simple as that. It's a design decision anchored in increasing functionality. Personally, I think it looks awesome and helps the watch stand out in a sea of same same dive watches.

The case itself is titanium, chosen for light weight and corosion resistance. For a true tool watch, that makes complete sense. Another underrated feature of this watch is how close the dial sits to the crystal; it seems to reduce glare and shows off the tight tolerances Tudor are able to work with. It's something you dont see often but a feature I always appreciate.

No timer bezel, incompatible with your strap collection, no date complication, only available in black or blue... why would you buy one of these to daily? Because they're awesome, that's why. If we're truly honest with ourselves, most of our watch buying is more about cosplay than capability. Most of us don't take our chronographs to race at Le Man, or to time burns on our rocket ship to the moon. We don't actually dive with our dive watches. Our pilot watches will likely never see the inside of a cockpit. But they're cool little machines and we love the stories and design decisions that come with them. The Tudor Pelagos FXD has an awesome story that can be read through careful examination of its design, and for that reason alone I plan, funds permitting, to add one to the collection someday. Awesome watch.