The past year has been an impressively vibrant and innovative time for the world of British watchmaking. From adventurous new independent brands to dynamic new complications, the United Kingdom has become a hotspot for watchmaking innovation, and Bremont stands at the forefront of this new “British Invasion.” With the introduction of the in-house ENG300 movement series alongside a trio of new watch lines in late 2022, Bremont took a major step forward in both its manufacturing capability and market positioning. While the integrated-bracelet Supernova tends to generate the most conversation among enthusiasts, the more traditional Bremont Fury pilot’s watch might well offer the best experience in day-to-day wear. With its impressively appointed in-house movement, attractive finishing, and unique stylistic touches paired with classic pilot cues, the Bremont Fury is a handsome, well-appointed, and proudly British contender against the established titans of the pilot’s watch segment.
Fans of the brand are likely acquainted with Bremont’s signature Trip-Tick case design, and the Bremont Fury uses this familiar architecture to great effect. At 40mm-wide by 13mm-thick, the case offers a compact – if not truly sleek – look on the wrist, but these proportions mesh well with the Trip-Tick layout. When viewed from above, this is a relatively traditional pilot’s watch case, with elements like a double-stepped bezel, broad flaring lug chamfers, and fully polished surfaces adding a luxe counterbalance to classic utilitarian pilot touches like the conical crown. When viewed from the side, however, the Fury’s case reveals its complexity. Like the majority of Bremont designs, the polished steel surfaces of the lugs and upper case form only a sliver of the side profile, creating a compelling fluid taper from the downturned lug tips to the 3 o’clock crown. The mid-case itself is coated in stealthy black PVD, highlighting the dramatic lug forms above. In addition, the twin grooves running around this black segment work to further visually break up the case profile on the wrist, allowing a relatively tall case to wear closer to 11mm-thick in real terms. In practice, this sets the Fury apart from similar pilot designs with even a minor tilt of the wrist, although some enthusiasts may gravitate toward the functional simplicity of its competitors. Bremont completes the case with a sapphire display caseback, and rates the watch for a solid 100 meters of water resistance.
Like the case, the dial of the Bremont Fury combines familiar pilot touches with the brand’s own unique embellishments. Most of the basic elements should be familiar to enthusiasts, such as the slightly shortened flieger-style handset, ultra-legible printed hours numerals, and the bold, simple minutes scale. However, Bremont dresses up these familiar items with a more refined presentation, framing the handset in polished nickel and adding complexity to the dial surface with a nuanced, heavily grained asphalt-esque texture. Rather than a purely functional matte surface, Bremont opts for a semi-gloss finish here, giving the Fury’s dial the look of a freshly paved road on the wrist and providing impressively dynamic highlights and shadows at changing angles. Of course, Bremont’s additions to the traditional pilot’s watch formula don’t end there, and the obvious centerpiece of the Fury’s dial is the oversized subdial at 6 o’clock. Touting the in-house movement’s 65-hour power reserve, this azurage-textured indicator offers a clean and classical display with a pair of eye-catching red highlights. The first of these is the traditional “low power” scale at the end of the power reserve, but the printed H1 emblem is the more significant mark here. Like the other models in the ENG300 movement family, this stamp indicates that the Fury is compliant with the brand’s own internal H1 accuracy standard, which is directly comparable to the familiar ISO3159:2009 chronometer benchmark. However, this large subdial eats up a sizeable amount of real estate on the dial, completely eliminating the hour numerals for 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock, and 7 o’clock. When coupled with the frankly disruptive cutout date window at 3 o’clock, it’s easy to find the Fury’s dial layout unbalanced and asymmetrical, with five of the 12 total Arabic numeral markers on the hours scale either absent or replaced by an index.
The real centerpiece of the Bremont Fury is its in-house ENG365 automatic movement. This stands as one of Bremont’s new flagship powerplants, and it certainly earns that honor on the technical side. With material innovations like a silicon escape wheel and a rhodium-plated tungsten rotor paired with a free-sprung hairspring, this is a thoroughly modern movement, and it offers a robust 65-hour power reserve at a 25,200 bph beat rate. As previously stated, Bremont eschews sending these movements for external accuracy testing, but instead certifies them through its own internal H1 chronometer standard. In our testing period, we were able to corroborate this new timing standard, with our sample Fury gaining slightly over +2 seconds per day through the review period. Bremont pairs this impressive technical capability with refined finishing. The ENG365 is divided between a trio of radially striped skeleton bridges, including an eye-catching flared central bridge in gold plate. Bremont caps this attractive movement layout with a vertically brushed skeleton rotor, featuring a wheel-motif cutout and a recessed engraved signature along the edge. In keeping with the largely classical pilot watch look, Bremont pairs the Fury with a classic black leather strap featuring off-white boxed contrast stitching. Right out of the box, this is a soft, pliable, and eminently comfortable strap design, with a richly textured semi-gloss surface and an attractively polished pin-buckle clasp.
With an impressively balanced and wearable case design, defiantly offbeat dial flourishes, and a genuinely excellent new in-house movement, the Bremont Fury provides a compelling high-end pilot’s watch contender. Furthermore, it might well be the most well-rounded and capable of the brand’s new flagship models. The Bremont Fury is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for the Bremont Fury stands at $6,795 USD as of press time. For more information, please visit Bremont’s website.
Necessary Data
>Brand: Bremont
>Model: Fury
>Price: $6,795 USD
>Size: 40mm-wide, 13mm-thick
>When reviewer would personally wear it: As a daily-wear sports watch, or as a conversation piece when meeting with British friends.
>Friend we’d recommend it to first: Seasoned collectors looking for a high-end pilot watch alternative to the standard options; Brits looking for a bit of national pride on the wrist.
>Best characteristic of watch: Impressive movement; attractive use of the Trip-Tick case concept; compelling dial texture.
>Worst characteristic of watch: Disruptive date window; divisive power reserve subdial; ambitious pricing.
