At first glance, a three-hand, time-and-date watch feels wildly out of place in Seiko’s Speedtimer collection, home of its most storied chronographs.
Upon closer inspection, one detail connects the dots, and it is something you don’t often see from the Japanese masters of horology.
The new SPB513 and SPB515 are part of a massive Prospex Speedtimer expansion that Seiko released this week. It includes the most interesting update to the mechanical Speedtimer in years and a collaborative trio with Datsun.
The rest of the drop greatly overshadows the two time-and-date watches, but it would likely be a big deal if they were released individually. This new Prospex Speedtimer model features an inner rotating bezel with a countdown timer.
Seiko rarely makes inner rotating bezels, with the Prospex Alpinist with a compass bezel being the only contemporary example. You have to dig through the Seiko archive back to 1982 to find another watch resembling this new Speedtimer, and it’s a deep-cut gem.
