I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Oris; many of their Big Crown and ProPilot designs are some of my favorites in their respective price ranges, and I think they bring tremendous value to both the brand and its consumers in the form of quality and recognition. Not all of the designs Oris makes falls into this hat as for instance I feel their Artelier line is incredibly boring and I feel that the Aquis line is one of the ugliest in the dive watch category, despite many of their extremely interesting dial designs and the praise it gets from a large part of the community for me it always falls way short of expectations.

Now, as the Geneva watch days are in full swing, Oris has started off with a bang. Two models that are very unique in their presentation and, in truth, new frontiers for Oris. One is a new Big Crown with a business calendar. The other, and the one I am more interested in, is the new Pro Pilot.

The new ProPilot is made in collaboration with the Bamford watch department, which makes personalized luxury watches and has worked with brands like Zenith and TAG Heuer. This new collaboration created a ProPilot space watch with an altimeter. The watch is automatic, and the altimeter is mechanical. This makes it the first and only watch to be mechanical and have a mechanical altimeter.

But what is an altimeter? An altimeter is a tool used to measure the altitude of an object above a set value. Take, for instance, the set level would be sea level, and you are 100 meters above sea level, floating in the air or on top of a hill, the altimeter can measure and tell you how high you truly are. There are a lot of things that can affect the accuracy of altimeters, and the most pertinent is heat and fluctuations in heat. The mechanical altimeter present in the Oris watch does not account for it, as that would make the watch nearly impossible to produce mechanically.

Now, design-wise wise this watch is incredibly unique, it is in a massive 47 mm case made out of carbon fiber composite, which makes the watch even more high-teck which definetly suits the mechanics. The dial is black with an incredibly intricate system to tell all the information from the altimeter as well as the standard time display.

As the size of the watch is hefty, so follows the price. Being limited to only 250 pieces, you can snap one of these up for 8.100 USD, but as I have said before, this watch is, in all likelihood, stunning to look at, but you need to be a true man to wear this watch. I, for one, cannot.