Watches and Wonders 2021: Nearly Every Watch Brand Just Announced New Releases—Here Are the Best Ones

Patek Philippe 5236P In-Line Perpetual Calendar

While the clout chasers, waitlist rubberneckers, and hype followers are slobbering over the new super-limited line of Nautilus watches, the true Patek heads are losing their minds for this 5236P In-Line Perpetual Calendar. This is one for the nerds—truly appreciating the piece requires a basic knowledge of the perpetual calendar, a function that displays the day of the week and full date. The perpetual calendar is typically a busy function: it requires a lot of real estate to pack all that information on the display of a watch. (This Nautilus uses three different subdials to convey that info.) This new Patek spits it all out in a tidy single line. The result is one of the cleanest and easiest-to-digest perpetual calendars out there. Of course, simplicity is the result of synchronized madness underneath. Check out the two synced-up wheels below the surface that allow this watch to function.

Cartier Tank Must

Cartier is best known for pulling its most iconic designs out of the archive—whether it’s last year’s Asymetrique or this year’s Cloche. This new release, however, exhumes an entire program. Cartier Must first launched towards the tail-end of the 1970s as a way to combat the Quartz Crisis—thanks to quartz, watches were suddenly much more affordable, so Cartier responded with a kind of diffusion line in Must that brought quartz to the historic house. The watches were exceptionally affordable and, in some cases, extremely colorful. Now, Cartier is bringing the Tank Must back in blue, green, and burgundy at a cost of $2,720 each.