Design Overview: Tissot Sideral

I have just recently got into Tissot because of the magic of trying a watch on in person. That story is here, but the important thing is I tried on a PRX and a Seastar and my world changed. All of a sudden Tissot made cool watches and I wanted to own a PRX, this was a big deal. Sure, maybe I’m over exaggerating a little bit, but the point is I like Tissot now. The story develops, just a few days ago Tissot announced a modern reinterpretation of another 70’s era dive watch, the Sideral. Using a special stainless steel case cushion case with marble forged carbon, bright primary colors, and a decently reasonable size at 41 millimeters, I fell in love again. As usual this is not a review, and all pictures come from Tissot’s website.

What’s interesting to me is how similar this new version is too the old version, and that Tissot decided to re-release such an oddball watch, and I’ll be honest, the layout of this watch is so different that I can’t quite decipher it. And I don’t want to scour the internet to find a tutorial on how to read an obscure dive watch no one remembers. Most of the watches color is determined by the rubber strap included, especially on the red one where the only color comes from the red and green segments, that I can only assume are for thing dives. The blue gets a bit more interesting with the color marbled into the case and a blue ring for the minute track, whereas the yellow one misses out on that colored marbling but keeps a yellow colored minute track. The dial is completely printed, and has some really nice Lume, it also features an older version of Tissot’s logo. This is the funky kind of watch I will always be drawn too, my only problem is the movement.

At the end of the day, good looks only go so far, and the movement brings the price up too much. I have a feeling this watch would be expensive no matter what because of the unique method of making the case, but I personally would’ve preferred a quartz movement in this watch. There are two problems with what I want, first, the original watch used an automatic movement, second, mechanical movements are superior to quartz movements and whatever. I’m still holding out hope, because I love a good quartz movement, there’s still a lot of cool stuff we can do in that space, like what Grand Seiko has shown with the 9F series of movements, but for now the people still predominantly want mechanical movements.

For $995 USD, I still love this watch and would buy it in a heartbeat. This has all the signs of being a great watch and maybe I’ll even be able to find a place to try it on someday. The case is cool, especially considering other options for funky case materials tend to be a tiny bit more expensive. But the Powermatic 80 inside ruins it, not because of the actual movement, but because this feels like a perfect quartz watch.