On the sea floor off the coast of the Florida Panhandle lies a sunken military hovercraft from the 1980s. Feeling a bit like a steampunk astronaut with my oxygen tank, tubes, gauges, mask and mechanical watch on my wrist, I’m hovering alongside it — and I’ve temporarily lost my dive buddy in the cloud of baitfish that swirl maddeningly around the aluminum wreck. Visibility isn’t great and, frankly, it’s a little disorienting.
It seems fitting to test a watch like the Tudor Pelagos FXD in this environment, as I did, for a few reasons. While Tudor dive watches are popular, to say the least, the Pelagos FXD is an enthusiast’s watch. It’s got a technical feel with its titanium construction, it’s conceived for not-so-everyday situations, a callback to the brand’s military history and it can only be worn on a single-pass strap such as a NATO. Here’s what you need to know about it.
Tudor took a group of journalists and influencers to dive the Jeff A hovercraft wreck in the Florida Panhandle to test its new Pelagos FXD. Jason Heaton
The model I tested for a day is the first that’s not presented as an official collaboration, and it immediately feels like the collection’s flagship. It’s similar to the original but has a black colorway (instead of blue), with a unidirectional (instead of bidirectional) bezel featuring a more traditional count-up (rather than countdown) scale.
Tudor Pelagos FXD: What We Think
The Tudor Pelagos FXD is 100% tool watch.Jason Heaton
“I don’t remember it being more important than my ka-bar knife or any other piece of equipment,” reminisced retired Navy SEAL officer William Jebb about the Tudor watch he was issued after Hell Week and which he wore throughout his tours during the Vietnam War. “It was a tool just like a ka-bar knife, like a compass, like a 9mm, like an M16. It was a tool we used, and it was reliable because if it wasn’t reliable, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Ironically, this unsentimental authenticity is exactly what military watch fans fetishize. In some sense, it’s the kind of pragmatism that should underpin any watch (though not necessarily to the same degree). And it tells you exactly what kind of watch Tudor intends to make with its modern Pelagos FXD. This might not be the most practical watch for daily urban wear, but it’s certainly tough, functional underwater and has a genuine, if indirect, military connection. It’s a tool watch through and through, built to modern Tudor standards.
To learn more about our testing methodology and how we evaluate products, head here.
The Pelagos FXD is Tudor’s modern milspec watch for civilians
Like a number of other brands, Tudor has claim to have supplied various militaries around the world over the decades. The Pelagos FXD, however, is meant to specifically recall the brand’s history with the US Navy, which has seen various models supplied to different units. It doesn’t reissue a specific vintage reference, but rather cherrypicks elements from different watches while mixing them into a fully modern watch.
A 42mm diameter isn’t small, but 12.75mm thickness and lightweight titanium construction makes the Tudor Pelagos FXD highly wearable.Zen Love
The (non-FXD) Pelagos is Tudor’s serious dive watch, whereas the FXD does away with unnecessary elements, just as military specifications would call for. Rather than a (reassuring but mostly superfluous) hardcore rating to 500m, the FXD is rated to a quite sufficient 200m. It does away with the date display, but it does add hashmarks all the way around the bezel. This might help time minutes more exactly, but for most buyers it’ll probably be an aesthetic consideration.
A watch like this is most at home on a dive boat, if not underwater. Zen Love
And, like famous Mil-Sub (military Submariner) watches, it features a fixed (hence, “FXD”) strap bar, meaning the bar that holds the strap between the lugs is machined as part of the case: there’s no spring bar that can be removed for attaching different straps, and it’ll only take those that can slip through in a single pass.
It’s Tudor’s milspec (military specification) watch for civilians. Fans often fantasize about a return of theTudor Submariner such as those worn by soldiers like Lieutenant Jebb in Vietam, but the brand in fact continues to quietly produce watches on special order for military units and organizations. So, it could very well also be the brand’s milspec watch for actual military use.
It’s highly wearable, but best as a tool watch
If you want an excellent everyday dive watch, almost nothing in the same price range can compete with Tudor’s Black Bay and Pelagos collections. But you don’t get a Pelagos FXD as the kind of versatile watch that can transition between office, bar and beach. You get an FXD as a tool watch.
The thick clouds of baitfish occasionally parted for the camera lights. Jason Heaton
Firstly, the aforementioned fixed strap bars limit how it can be worn. A lot of people are more than happy to exclusively wear watches on a NATO or similar straps every day, but here you have no other choice. Moreover, at 42mm wide and 52mm lug-to-lug, this isn’t a massive watch, but it isn’t exactly playing to the modern vintage-sizing trend. It’s not crazily thick, either, at 12.75mm. Lightweight titanium further helps it wear easily, but something in the range of the 39mm-wide Pelagos 39 is more my speed — and equally dive-capable.
“We had the watch,” says Jebb, “but let me tell ya, I never, ever remember seeing a teammate go in a bar and say, ‘hey, look at the watch I’ve got, look at this Tudor watch.’ It was a tool.” Somehow this kind of sentiment makes the watch even cooler and more desirable.
