Given that I wear mostly sport or casual watches, I’ve never been particularly compelled to spend a lot of money on a nice dress watch. Assuming I was attending black-tie occasions with regularity, I’d look into something nice from Rolex, Chopard, Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, etc… Since I don’t, the idea of spending more than a few thousand for a good-looking dress watch hasn’t crossed my mind. With that said, people like me do need good dress or formal watch options. One of the newer dressy models I saw at Baselworld 2016 that impressed me was the Eterna Gent collection. With a simple name and a lot of styles, these under-$2,000 or even under-$1,000 models should be something you take a close look at if you want a watch of this type.

Swiss Eterna produces at least three types of watches. Models with their in-house movements, models with base Swiss mechanical watches, and then also models with Swiss quartz movements. The Eterna Gent collection models represent to two latter types of pieces. The mechanical models in the collection feature Swiss Sellita SW200-1 automatic movements (similar to the ETA 2824-2) and the quartz models feature the ETA 955.112 quartz movement.

What really drew me to the Eterna Gent collection are some of the more minor details and thoughtfulness of the design. Two good examples are in how Eterna handles the hands. The vintage-style domed dial has curved minute hands on many models, which really helps the dials look their best (not to mention helping legibility). If you look at the 42mm-wide versions with the Arabic numerals, you’ll notice that Eterna doesn’t use the ill-advised but all-too-common polished steel hands, but rather black-colored hands which make for a nicely matching look and enhance legibility, rather than hinder it.

With an elegant round case in steel, Eterna offers the Eterna Gent in a polished steel tone case or in various colors such as PVD rose gold or even black for one model. The automatic models are 40mm wide and 10.05mm thick, and the quartz models come in both 40mm-wide (7.25mm thick) as well as 42mm-wide (7.3mm thick) models with the latter being slightly more on the causal side. Dial variety is key here, with most options being suitably legible and interesting-looking. One set has a “vintage paper-style” dial that is interesting and attractive.

I would caution against people having an anti-quartz bias here for two reasons. One reason is that the prices are quite reasonable as the quartz models start at $750 bucks (OK, that is high for many quartz watches), but more importantly, these have quality along with fit and finishing that would equally work for automatic watches. Oftentimes, brands that otherwise produce mechanical watches will “cheapen” the quartz version in order to help add value to the mechanical watches. This means that components such as the case, dial, strap, etc… aren’t as nice in order to keep costs down or to otherwise help add value to the more expensive mechanical versions. With the Eterna Gent collection, I got the feeling that the cases and dials are “good enough for mechanical, but made for quartz.”

I also like that the quartz models remove the seconds hand, offering just the time and date for an elegant look. It really makes me feel as though, given the simplicity of dress watches, no one should have to spend too much for a formal timepiece unless they want a precious metal case and/or diamonds. Even then – nice solid gold dress watches exist at around $5,000-$7,000 – not only several times that price, as you sometimes see.

The Eterna Gent watches are water resistant to 50 meters and have AR-coated sapphire crystal. Eterna offers them on a range of leather straps (some in alligator-style print) or matching steel metal bracelets. Dial colors vary with most faces having baton-style hour markers, while the larger 42mm-wide Eterna Gent quartz models have Arabic numeral 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock hour markers, making for a slightly more casual look. I happened to like these latter two reference 2730.41.13.1396 and 2730.41.48.1746 models quite a bit.

The most casual and unique of the Eterna Gent Automatic models is the reference 2700.43.90.1392 that has a PVD black case with a “truffle gray” dial and matching camel brown nubuck leather strap. This one was certainly a crowd-pleaser among the aBlogtoWatch team. If these timepieces were double the price, we wouldn’t have given them nearly as much attention, but their good values and nice designs for a range of people and occasions made them stick out. Prices for the Eterna Gent Automatic models range from $1,600 – $1,950 USD and the Gent Quartz models range in price from $750 – $950 USD. Since there are so many models, I made a simple table below so that you know the price of each of the references, and each available reference can be seen in the gallery below our hands-on photos. eterna.com