The 18 Best Sports Watches of 2024
We brought you the best dress watches of 2024 recently, and in that article we defined the dress watch. The sports watch is effectively the opposite of a dress watch. It must be waterproof, which often (though not always) makes sports watches thicker, wider, and heavier than dressers (except when crafted from ceramic and carbon, of course). A sports watch must be highly legible (unless diamond encrusted or otherwise prioritizing form over function). It must be durable, shock-resistant, scratch proof, and, above all else, a functional-yet-stylish watch you can wear 24/7/365.
The sports-watch category first emerged after World War II as profession-oriented tool watches—often developed for military use first (think pilots watch, or SCUBA watch)—became increasingly fashionable for civilians. The cultural impulse there is interesting: Some men, whose identities and adrenaline-cycles were wrapped up in having served as soldiers, began to chafe against their comfortable civilian roles in the suburban middle class. Khaki trousers, aviator sunglasses and bomber jackets—each a military staple—became a means for civilians to gain back some of that wartime masculinity.
In 1953, Marlon Brando took that look and attitude to extremes in The Wild One, and by the 1960s Steve McQueen and Paul Newman had become icons of a newly minted rugged, casual masculinity that called for tool watches. Look at how the commensurate Boomer Joe Biden dresses today—Ray-Ban aviators and Rolex Oyster Perpetual 41 always on—and you get the idea.
By the 1970s, the sports watch went upmarket, with precious metals, diamonds, and price tags to match becoming the disco-ready norm. During that decade, the Gerald Genta-designed high-end sports watch with an integrated bracelet was born: first was Genta’s Royal Oak for Audemars Piguet (1972), then his Patek Philippe Nautilus and IWC Ingenieur SL (both 1976). After that, the elegant sports-watch category flourished across brands, and it flourished again starting around 2018 in an overwhelming demand for integrated bracelet watches.
2024 is shaping up to be yet another banner year for the sports watch, though with some of the bigger brands—and most notably Rolex—taking the bling down a few notches and returning to the toolish nature deep in the genre’s DNA. Personally, I find this a refreshing break from the look-at-me aesthetics of the previous few years, and I’m pleased to present the following timepieces as the very best of 2024’s sports watches.
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