When Tissot announced their Heritage Navigator Automatic COSC 160th Anniversary watch, I knew this was a piece I wanted to get in to spend some time with. What the Tissot Heritage Navigator (ref. T078.641.16.037.00) watch offers is a classic-looking world time complication in a watch recreated based on a model from the 1950s. While GMT-equipped watches tend to veer towards the sport watch end of the spectrum, world timers seem to tend towards dress watches – or at least the ones I’ve reviewed lately have.
As of late, world timer and GMT watches have really captured my attention, and I’ve had the pleasure of checking out quite a few different ones from different brands as well. While I still think I prefer the tried-and-true method of a secondary GMT hand, there is something alluring about the use of a world city disk that allows you to see the time in any of the main 24 time zones around the world at a glance.
With the Tissot Heritage Navigator, there’s no mistaking that this is a watch that can fit in well for a dressier situation – you’ve got a high-polish bezel and indices, a dark brown (and slightly shiny) leather strap (with a high-polish deployant), and the feature that every dress piece should have – a slender profile. In the Heritage Navigator, Tissot managed to keep the 43mm steel case to under 10mm thick (9.62mm, to be precise). This may not be the thinnest production watch, but it’s an amazing measurement, especially considering the fact that it’s housing an automatic movement.
Last but not least, the blued hands are definitely indicative (in my eyes, at least) of a watch not intended for sporting situations. As these hands make their way around the dial (with the main time marked via the bezel), the city disk that comprises most of the dial also makes its way around. To read these, of course, you just look for the city you’re interested in (say, Geneva) and then check out where on the inner 24-hour scale it is.
This disk, of course, can be set independently of the main handset, allowing you to get it adjusted to wherever your local time happens to be. This is accomplished by pulling the crown out to the first position, where you’d normally adjust a date wheel. At first, that lack of a date was a bit off-putting for me. Then, as I used the watch, I realized it wasn’t really that critical. You likely have one or two other ways of getting the date on your person at any one time, and in the scheme of a dress watch, a date display is generally something left out.
As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of polished surfaces to this watch, which includes the dial. The inner 24-hour track features both polished indices and numerals, meaning that you’re going to be catching the light with this watch quite easily. Fortunately, the main portion of the dial has a bit more of a matte finish, and the side of the case (well, what there is of the sides) is brushed, which helps to keep down fingerprints.
As you would expect from a fairly “simple” watch like this (at least in terms of what the movement is doing, in this case an ETA 2893-3, adjusted to attain the COSC rating), coming to terms with the operation was intuitive. Crown in, and you can manually wind; out one stop to adjust the world time, out to the second position to adjust the time on the hacking movement. Those adjustments made, and an initial bit of power applied to the movement, I slipped the watch on, and let the rotor do the charging.
Well, let’s back up a step, as I did need to adjust the strap within the deployant first. Often times, the clasp point around where the tang slips through the strap holes will be hinged, allowing for an easy adjustment. Here on the Tissot Heritage Navigator, this part of the clasp is all one piece, which can make things a bit tight to slide through to the appropriate sizing. Then again, once you have it set, you’ll likely never need to worry about adjusting it again.