Farer Upgrade World Timer for 2024 with Improved Movement and New Colours

Farer absolutely loves to take a classic concept in watchmaking and present it with a unique twist and colourful design. Back in 2019 the subject of their attentions was the world time complication, which they turned into the very popular Farer World Timer. Now, five years later, they’re revisiting this concept with an updated Farer World Timer collection featuring improved mechanics, better legibility and new colours.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Farer World Timer, it’s a 39mm steel watch with an internal rotating bezel that depicts 24 important global cities to represent the world’s time zones. That bezel is then used in conjunction with the watch’s inner 24-hour display to show the time in every time zone simultaneously. Notably, where a standard world time complication uses a GMT hand to show the time in a singular place on the world time scale from which the time in the other time zones can be extrapolated using a fixed 24-hour scale, the Farer’s 24-hour scale rotates on a disk.

It’s difficult to describe in words but intuitive to understand how the rotating 24-hour scale works. As the time points towards a city on the bezel, it’s that time in that place. So while the 1 is pointing at London, it’s 1am in London, 2 am in Bienne, midnight in the Azores and 1pm in Auckland. Then an hour passes, the disk rotates and it’s 2am in London, 3am in Bienne and 1am in the Azores and 2pm in Auckland.

One of the updates that has happened with the Farer World Timer 2024 launch is that some of the significant locations on the bezel have been changed, including the addition of Bienne which used to be Paris on the 2019 edition. Bienne is regarded as the home place of the world time complication, hence its inclusion. Other changes include the swap from Hong Kong to Beijing and Mexico City to Chicago. Although the more visually impactful change is the update to the hand set, which now uses the blunter and more modern ‘alpha’ shape.

In terms of colour, there are three versions available and in typical Farer fashion they each have a unique name. The Roché II and Markham II are based on the original Roché and Markham, featuring the same colourways of navy blue or red, white and blue respectively. However, the third edition is brand new. It’s called the Foxe and it has a dark forest green design across the varnished guilloché of the dial, accented by light green lettering, numerals and central globe. There is a splash of red on London and the tip of the seconds hand.

The final update for the new Farer World Timer is the movement visible through the exhibition caseback. It’s a heavily modified version of the Sellita SW330-1 Elaboré that Sellita have produced exclusively for Farer. It swaps the GMT hand of the SW330-1 for the Farer’s signature rotating 24-hour complication. It’s also has been upgraded with the mainspring of the SW330-2 in order to improve the power reserve to 50-hours. It’s well documented at this point that Sellita have upgraded the majority of their movements to improve the power reserves but this is the first time I’ve heard of them going back to apply one of those updates to an existing older movement.

All that remains to discuss is the price, which is £1,495 and £150 for an additional stainless steel bracelet alongside the standard St Venere leather strap. For one of the most unique interpretations of the world time complication, I think that price makes sense. Arguably it’s also the truest expression of the complication because the current time in each time zone is always being displayed directly in relation to that time zone. Plus, there are all the nice quality of life improvements to the legibility, style and design of the piece and the new colourway.

More details at Farer.