This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Rolex Explorer II, which debuted with the reference 1655 in 1971. Today, Rolex is commemorating the occasion not with a redesign, but with a new movement in the reference 226570. No ceramic bezels, no resized cases, no new dial. So much for a few years worth of speculation on that front. Surprisingly, the bigger news comes over in the Explorer I family, which gets the Rolesor treatment in steel and gold, and more importantly, moves back to its original 36mm case size.

The Explorer II

The new Explorer II, now ref. 226570 may not look all that different from the previous generation ref. 216570, but it gets a full overhaul under the hood. The little crown appearing between the Swiss Made at the bottom of the dial signifies the caliber 3285 inside, a movement we?ve seen slowly make its way into all of the Rolex GMT models in recent years. Its appearance here should come as a surprise to no one. What is raising a few eyebrows with these new watches is the subtlety of their visual changes. 
The case remains at 42mm (sorry, 16570 fans), however Rolex says it has been redesigned. The lugs look a hair trimmer and we hope the case has trimmed up a smidge as well, but from the images we?ve seen, what those differences actually are remains a mystery. The bezel is still brushed steel, which frankly makes the most sense for this reference, and it retains the same design etched into it as the prior reference. Likewise, the dial look...