You could be forgiven for taking a first look at Ball Watch Company’s new Engineer Hydrocarbon AeroGMT II USA Edition and thinking that you’ve seen this colorful design before. The Ball representative who showed it to me acknowledged up front the influence of Rolex’s famous GMT-Master on this model, but take a closer look and you’ll find that this sporty travelers’ watch offers up some of its own unique charms.
The Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon AeroGMT II USA Edition features a red-and-blue bezel.
To start with the basics: the 42-mm stainless steel case is designed, like those of most timepieces from this Swiss-made, American-born brand, for toughness in trying conditions: water resistance to 100 meters, impact resistance to 7,500 Gs, antimagnetic resistance to 4,800 A/m, and sealed by the maker’s patented crown protection system. The case is attached to a tapered steel bracelet with a folding buckle with extension (also patented), with a rubber strap with standard buckle also available. The 24-hour bidirectionally rotating GMT bezel, in the red-and-blue “Pepsi” colorway that first debuted on Rolex’s iconic aviator watch, is here made of scratch-resistant sapphire (it’s ceramic on contemporary versions of the GMT-Master) and also boasts Ball’s most emblematic element, micro-gas tubes filled with tritium to illuminate the numerals. Tritium, used by Ball and very few other watch brands, glows brighter and longer th...