The Omega Speedmaster Chronoscope occupies a strange place in the world of Speedmasters. It was introduced to considerable fanfare in 2021, but hasn’t yet connected in a meaningful way with the enthusiast world. And yet, everytime I see one at a meetup or watch related event, I find myself really enjoying it. It’s the kind of watch that you forget about until you can’t forget about it anymore, if that makes any sense, and it feels like it’s one or two iterations away from figuring out exactly what its niche is in the Omega catalog. Today, Omega has announced two new versions of the Chronoscope to celebrate the upcoming Paris Olympics, offering a new chance to connect with one of the least discussed Speedmasters.
Watches made to celebrate the Olympics are nothing new for Omega, and they really love counting down to the big event, releasing watches to remind us that the games begin in a year, 100 days, and so forth. Olympic themed watches have often featured the Olympic rings in fairly obvious ways, but Omega seems to be steering away from that strategy, favoring the use of gold instead to signify a more thematic connection to the games. That’s what we get here, with a pair of Speedmaster Chronoscopes, one in steel with golden highlights, and the other in solid Moonshine Gold with a full gold bracelet, each featuring the distinctive, 1940s inspired chronograph scales that are the Chronoscope’s calling card.
The two watches feature the same dial, which Omega describes as a silvery white opaline. Each has black subdials at 3:00 and 9:00, and a “snail” style scale that includes a tachymeter, a pulsometer, and a telemeter. There’s a joke to be made here about a “snail” timing scale, the olympics being held in Paris, and escargot, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t complete the connection, still being somewhat jet-lagged from a weeklong Watches & Wonders trip.
The Chronoscope case measures 43mm in diameter, which is just a tick larger than a standard Speedmaster Pro. Everytime I’ve handled one of these watches in person, I always come away thinking that it wears, well, like a Speedmaster. The watches run on Omega’s caliber 9908, a manually wound caliber with a stacked handset at the 3:00 subdial for tracking both hours and minutes. It’s a Master Chronometer and METAS certified, but is not, however, visible through a sapphire caseback, as Omega has elected to use this space to highlight the Olympic connection with a medallion featuring the Paris 2024 logo.
Both the gold and steel versions of the watch are available on a strap or a matching bracelet. The steel reference starts at $9,500 on leather, and jumps to $9,800 on the bracelet. For the gold version (the first Chronoscope in this material) you’re looking at $32,700 on leather, and $51,400 if you opt for the bracelet. Omega
