There are few brands that the watch community collectively holds in higher esteem than Jaeger-LeCoultre. Think about the truly historic names in watchmaking and you’ll find vocal groups of detractors for just about every single one. But JLC is different, and always seems to be above the fray. The “watchmaker’s watchmaker” stuff is a clever bit of marketing, but it’s actually true, and keeps the brand both insulated from the watch world’s hot-take culture protected by legitimate ties to some of the most important watches ever made. But if there’s one thing, one very small thing that enthusiasts and collectors can poke at with Jaeger-LeCoultre, it’s their recent fumbling in the area of sports oriented watches. 

Now, you might be saying to yourself that JLC just isn’t a “sports watch” brand, and that refined dress watches and expert technical watchmaking is their brand and butter. Of course that’s true, but JLC has made great sports watches in the past with innovative cases and movements by their own design made to be robust enough for nearly any activity. It’s a genre they’ve played in for decades. The Reverso, of course, now thought of as a dress piece, was originally conceived for polo players. If you do a Chrono24 search for Memovox references from the 1970s you’ll find no shortage of oversized, funky, cases. And of course we can’t forget the last great sports watch line Jaeger-LeCoultre had, the impressively overbuilt Master Compressor collection from the late 2000s and early 2010s. These were the first JLC watches I encountered on the internet as a burgeoning and curious watch person, before I actually was a watch person, and will always hold a special place in my memory. 

And then there’s the Polaris, another historic sports watch collection from the JLC archives that is currently the one and only sporty collection in their catalog. The Polaris was revived in 2018 to a great deal of fanfare, but over the last several years the collection hasn’t caught fire with collectors, even in an environment where steel sports watches have been dominant in the market and the larger watch conversation. The reasons for this can be debated, but it likely falls to a perception that JLC is somehow out of their wheelhouse with a watch like this, an idea that could not be further from the truth. 

To the brand’s credit, they’ve kept at it, releasing new Polaris variants here and there in a variety of colorways and complications. Some of them work better than others, of course, but they are all clearly tied to a design language that hasn’t changed much since 2018. Now, they’ve released what might be the most interesting Polaris yet, the Polaris Geographic. 

It was probably only a matter of time before the Geographic complication made its way to the Polaris. It’s a signature JLC complication and has been found in a variety of executions throughout the Jaeger-LeCoultre range over the years. It’s a unique travel watch platform that goes a step beyond a simple indication of the hour in a second time zone, combining world time functionality with a GMT. With the Geographic, we get a 24-hour day and night indicator and the complication’s signature feature: an aperture in the bottom half of the dial displaying one of 24 cities in each of the world’s major time zones. Turning the 10:00 crown moves the city ring and adjust the time on the 6:00 subregister, making it easy to either track a reference time from afar or use it as a local time indicator while traveling. 

The debut of the Polaris Geographic also sees a new dial color enter the lineup: ocean-gray. Like other dials in the Polaris collection, it has a complex double gradient finish and is lacquer coated (35 layers, according to the brand). In addition to the multiple time displays and small 24 hour indicator, there’s also a power reserve indicator in the upper left section of the dial. The orange accents throughout the dial are meant to draw the eye to important bits of information, and also offer a nice contrast to the gray tones of the main dial. 

The Polaris Geographic’s steel case is 42mm in diameter and 11.54mm thick, which is quite a bit more slender than you’d expect for a watch with this level of complication and a 70 hour power reserve. It also has a full 100 meters of water resistance. It ships on a black rubber strap and a blue-gray canvas strap is also included. 

An elevated, sporty travel watch feels like the right lane for the Polaris collection in a way that the more straightforward dive watches that launched the collection six years ago did not, at least in my opinion. There’s still plenty of opportunity, I think, for Jaeger-LeCoultre to expand their sporty offerings, but the Polaris finally seems to be settling into something more premium (on the same day the Polaris Geographic is being launched, JLC is also introducing a new colorway for the Polaris Perpetual Calendar in pink gold). The retail price on the new Polaris Geographic is $16,100. Jaeger-LeCoultre