The fun and comfort of a moon-watch are to return to your childhood home years or decades later, having endured the trials and tribulations of adulthood, to find your bedroom just as it was before, even with a well-worn Steiff bear on a faded countertop.
So changing any detail of the Moonwatch has the potential to cause the same reaction in Speedmaster loyalists as if you were moving a deer’s favorite salt stain. But change is exactly what happens with the Moonwatch.
Visually, the changes are relatively minor, and the biggest change is probably the bracelet, not the replica watch itself. In fact, the new bracelet probably gets as much attention as the changes to the dial and bezel. The biggest change is under the hood, where we find a new movement: the Co-Axial caliber 3861, which is Master Chronometer certified, making the Moonwatch a thoroughly modern member of Omega’s Co-Axial escapement watch family.
But the gap between the press release photos and the actual, hands-on first impressions can be huge, and I was worried about all sorts of things. Would it feel too vintage for its own good? God forbid, would it be out of touch with the glorious history of manned space flight, which is what distinguished previous lunar watches? In short, would it feel like an impostor rather than a legitimate heir to the throne?
We all know that a new bracelet or a new strap can make quite a difference to your experience of a replica omega watch. The new Master Chronometer bracelet improves on a point that I loved unreservedly about my previous Moonwatch watch. The bracelet on that watch was nice and well made, but it didn’t quite live up to the hype.
But is that really a problem? For comparison, take a look at the writing instruments used in space. The Fisher Space Pen, which uses a nitrogen-filled refill to maintain ink pressure, was developed for crewed space flights; there’s a joke that NASA spent millions of dollars developing it while the frugal Soviets stuck with pencils. This myth was repeatedly debunked, and it turns out that both the Soviets and NASA quickly got rid of pencils because the particles of graphite and wood chips were potentially undesirable contaminants. I can imagine that a shattered sapphire crystal could pose a similar hazard – although replica watches with sapphire crystals have been worn on crewed missions, so apparently, NASA isn’t superb at this point.
In any case, the new bracelet is really impressive. At least at first glance, you get the sense that if someone is a Speedmaster fan and doesn’t know that the Master Chronometer version has been released, and they see this watch on your wrist, their first reaction might not be “Hey, where did you get that new Speedmaster?” Instead, it’s “Wow, where did you get that bracelet?”