A Deep Dive Into 2025’s Best Sports Watches
Athletic watches are going through a stylistic sea change.
Lately, it seems every watchmaker has been channelling some serious waves of inspiration. This year’s standout sports watches have traded overt toughness for a sleeker, more fluid sensibility—built to withstand both deep sea dives and your everyday accessory rotation. Offering athleticism with a splash of refinement, they’re designed for those who crave a high-performance timepiece but aren’t willing to sacrifice style—and why should they?
These ocean-minded pieces also strike a rare balance between polish and practicality, with cool-toned palettes, smooth contours and just a touch of shimmer. So, if you’re ready to upgrade your wristwear collection with something that can support all of your adventures and chicest outfits, here are the best sports watches for men.
Surf and Turf
Breitling Superocean Heritage Automatic 36
With its redesigned Superocean Heritage Automatic 36, Breitling is rebranding this sporty classic as a “sea watch” rather than just a dive watch. The idea is to broaden its audience beyond deep-sea divers by appealing to those who like a water-adjacent lifestyle—like surfing, boating and splashing around at the beach.
Gear Shift
Frederique Constant Classics Vintage Rally Healey Automatic COSC
One way to elevate a sports watch is to swap out the stainless-steel bracelet for a leather strap. This limited-edition collaboration with the Austin Healey automobile brand features a perforated strap meant to evoke a supple leather driving glove.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Alpina Alpiner Extreme Automatic Titanium
In the watch class of 2025, sporty timepieces are generally smaller, making them comfortable to wear under a blazer or jacket sleeve. The Alpiner Extreme Automatic Titanium is Alpina’s first-ever all-titanium watch. Even the bracelet is forged from this material, making it lighter and stronger than most outdoorsy watches.
Subdued Elegance
Rolex Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller 40
At the Fall 2025 menswear shows in Milan and Paris, designers from Hermès to Louis Vuitton presented a flashier new spin on business casual. By contrasting a textured honeycomb dial with a shiny Oystersteel and white-gold integrated bracelet, the Rolex Land-Dweller best encapsulates this relaxed refinement.
Tunnel Vision
Tudor Black Bay 54 in “Lagoon Blue”
The stadium is the new runway now that our style inspo comes from NBA players like Anthony Edwards, Jerami Grant and James Harden. The textured, blue-faced, domed dial of Tudor’s signature dive watch is the horological equivalent of their easy-to-wear, colourful clothes.
Old Boy
Baume & Mercier Riviera Chronograph Flyback 10828
A vintage aesthetic is one way that watchmakers are making sporty styles look more elegant. The inspiration for this chronograph’s geometric case is the glamorous world of the French Riviera in the 1970s, and the luminous gold dial provides an extra touch of nostalgia.
Good Sports
Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph x Festival of Speed
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an annual event established by British nobleman Lord Charles March that attracts historic racing machines and their drivers and riders from all over the world. The Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph x Festival of Speed is a chronograph that’s worthy of its posh namesake.
Clean Machine
Omega Railmaster
We are surrounded by electronic devices, and all of these gadgets—phones, computers, tablets, speakers and even kitchen appliances—throw off magnetic fields, which can affect your watch’s accuracy. To address this modern problem, Omega has revived its revered tool watch, the Railmaster. This new version is built to withstand magnetism of up to 15,000 gauss (a very big measurement of magnetic density).
Not So Humble
Vacheron Constantin Overseas Grand Complication Openface
A sports watch needs to be water-resistant, shock resistant and easy to read. Beyond that, it can be anything it wants to be. And this one is a true horological overachiever. In addition to its durability, it boasts fancy features including a minute repeater, a perpetual calendar and a tourbillon.
With files from Stephanie Davoli
This article first appeared in FASHION’s October 2025 issue. Find out more here.
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Rhonda Riche is a National Magazine Award-nominated writer with particular interests in art, watches and design. Riche is the author of the book "The Wonderful World of Women's Watches" (teNeues, 2025) and co-author of the book "Covet Garden Home". She has written about watches for FASHION, the Globe and Mail, DuJour, and Departures. Off the page, she co-created the short films Felt, Angst and Perspective 5: Time Traveler and was a contributor to CBC Radio’s "Definitely Not the Opera". She is currently the Editor At Large for Watchonista.
Riche spends most of her free time scouring thrift shops and flea markets for horological treasure and exploring the many diverse culinary options of her hometown, Toronto.
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