MoonSwatch picked as Hodinkee’s 2022’s Watch of the Year

This year’s GPHG jury awarded its preeminent “Aiguille d’Or” to MB&F for its CHF 160,000 Legacy Machine Sequential Evo, whose Twinverter switch allows several chronograph timing options including split seconds and lap timer modes.

Hodinkee chose the $260 Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch as its Watch of the Year.

In a way, the MoonSwatch award from Hodinkee is a welcome counterbalance to the GPHG, which all-but ignores commercial innovation and success in favor of pure horological excellence.

There is a place for both.

Hodinkee lists the models that have had the greatest impact on the watch business this year: “Tudor seemed to release a new classic every other month. Rolex went left-handed. AP celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Royal Oak with a brand-new Jumbo reference. Vacheron brought back the 222. Patek revived the Nautilus,” it senior editor Danny Milton writes.

But the MoonSwatch trumped them all in its Watches of the Year review.

“Fans camped out for it. Police showed up to control the crowds. For a brief moment, the most popular consumer product on Planet Earth was a wristwatch,” Mr Milton says.

“As far as we’re concerned, any watch that generates that kind of excitement is a good thing – especially when the watch in question draws its design cues from one of our all-time favorite models, the Omega Speedmaster.”

Hodinkee concludes that the MoonSwatch was the biggest release this year in every quantifiable metric.

“Its release almost broke Hodinkee’s servers, generated the second-highest number of page views in Hodinkee history, and registered more than 1,100 comments on our introductory story – a record-breaking show of reader engagement,” it concludes.