Sometimes, it’s not enough to have gear that looks great: it has to perform to exacting standards as well, especially when it comes to picking out the right watch for everyday carry. Hamilton has been in the mechanical watchmaking game for more than a century now, and they’ve made many a field and military in their time. But when they were called on to design a watch for an exacting movie director making an unprecedented spy film, they had to put together all their expertise to make a timepiece that went above and beyond being a prop. The result is the new Hamilton BeLOWZERO Auto, a sleek and low-profile automatic field watch cased in titanium with a blacked-out aesthetic that you can buy today, and you don’t even need to be a movie star to afford one.
Where most watches feature a stainless steel or even base metal watch case, Hamilton took that time to precision machine titanium for the job with the BeLOWZERO Auto. As a result, this is one of the lightest 46mm case width timepieces you can put on your wrist right now. The watch is available in two colorways, but to tell the difference you have to gaze at the lightly-colored tip of the sweeping second hand of the watch itself. You can pick between red and blue, which correspond to a theme in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming spy movie Tenet, the movie these watches were designed for. Those second hands are the only source of color in the design language of this watch, as from the strap to the dial the watch is made to be discreet black and grey.
That doesn’t mean it’ll be hard to tell time with this watch though: the Arabic numeral legends on the face are big and bold but they don’t disrupt the look of the watch like you might find on lesser field and military-inspired designs, with contrasted hands from the dial for easy time-telling at a glance. As the BeLOWZERO uses Hamilton’s Swiss H-10 Khaki Automatic movement, the watch requires no winding and it has a full 80 hours of power reserve. Not that you’ll have to take off this watch often wherever you find yourself: the 100 bar water resistance means it can stand up to the elements, and most time-manipulating situations you may find yourself in.
Whether you end up being a fan of the movie tied to the design of this watch or not, the BeLOWZERO Auto stands on its own as a fine piece of gear for the most discerning watch collectors. That it’s a limited edition model for which only 888 pieces have been made only sweetens the cake. If you’re interested in this one-of-a-kind low-profile automatic field watch for your own operations, pick one up below before time runs out.
