One of the Most Elegant GMT Watches I’ve Ever Seen Is Also One of the Most Affordable

It’s been a few years since Seiko upended the GMT market and made it accessible to all watch fans.

Powered by affordable movements supplied by Citizen’s Miyota and Seiko’s SII, startups and boutique watchmakers have provided an avalanche of sporty, rugged and aquatic GMT watches.

Heron

However, the burgeoning affordable GMT category has sadly lacked dressy options — until now.

Canadian boutique watchmaker Heron has revealed the Mirabel GMT like a cool breeze on a sweltering day. It is a beautiful dress watch with a “true” GMT complication that stands toe-to-toe with luxury travelers’ watches selling for ten times the price.

Starting from the outside, the stainless steel case is perfectly sized at 38mm and has an elliptical shape that creates one smooth line from the end of one lug to the other.

Heron

Enamel is used for the dial, one of the many “how did they afford this?” details on the Mirabel GMT. It is topped with applied Roman numeral hour markers and alpha hands.

The GMT hand is a distinctive spade shape, pointing to a 24-hour track along the dial’s outer rim. Arabic numerals in a Times New Roman-esque font distinguish the track.

A Canadian beauty

Founded in 2021, Heron is cleverly making a name for itself by designing watches that fit into the less crowded niches of the watch world. The Mirabel GMT is a prime example of a watch with a potentially large audience and little competition.

Heron

The Montreal-based watchmaker leaned into vintage influences for the case and dial design. Brands like Seiko and Omega popularized elliptical cases in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tactfully blending time periods, the dial is heavily influenced by watches from the 1930s and 1940s with alpha hands, Roman numeral markers and a railroad second track. The hands have been blued with a flame treatment on the white dial reference and PVD coated with gold on the two gold-plated references.

Heron

Playing on the theme of a travel watch, the crown is styled like a pilot’s watch with a wide, flat shape that is easy to grip. It is capped with a cabochon gemstone, which is blue on the steel cases and black on the gold-plated cases.

Heron

In a clever partnership deal, all four references come with a leather pin-buckle strap, complete with quick-release pins, from the French watch strap brand Delugs.

A Japanese engine

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Mirabel GMT is the Miyota caliber 9075 movement, which is the most advanced affordable third-party GMT movement on the market right now.

Heron

The caliber 9075 is a “true” GMT, meaning the hour hand is set independently with the first position of the crown. The GMT hand is linked to the time on the second position of the crown, which adjusts the dial like usual.

It is worth noting that this movement does have a date complication built in, but Heron chose not to utilize it in favor of keeping the dial clean.

Enhancing the watch’s usefulness for travel, a world time chart is etched into the steel case back, which acts as a conversion chart for the GMT function on the dial.

Heron

Not only did Heron fill a long-neglected gap in the affordable watch market, but it did so with an attention to detail that challenges the competition in much higher price brackets.

The Mirabel GMT certainly has a luxury look, but it also delivers on that promise with a high-performance movement and enough intricate detailing to fawn over for years.

Availability and pricing

The Heron Mirabel GMT is available for preorder now for $690 but will not ship until October 2025.

It is a regular production model, but the first 200 pieces in each dial color come individually numbered on the case back.

Heron

Heron Mirabel GMT

Specs

Case Size	38mm
Movement	Miyota caliber 9075 automatic
Water Resistance	50m

• $690 at Mirabel

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