The Five Best Tissot Watches In 2022
Tissot is one of those brands that you can’t help but respect. With a rich history dating back to 1853, Tissot has built a reputation for offering excellent-quality watchmaking and affordable prices. It’s a brand for the people. You won’t find high-end haute horology here, but that’s OK. The industry desperately needs brands like Tissot. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the five best Tissot watches as of 2022.
Tissot’s collection comprises something for everyone. There are dive watches, dress watches, and sporty chronographs. There are quartz watches, automatic watches, and classical hand-crankers. Tissot prides itself on helping both new and long-time watch enthusiasts enjoy this hobby regardless of their tastes or budget. Here are my top five favorite watches from the brand’s extensive collection.
Tissot PRX Powermatic 80
First on the list is perhaps the brand’s biggest success story in recent years. The Tissot PRX line recaptured the hearts of collectors worldwide when the Swiss brand reintroduced it back in 2021. Harking back to 1978, the PRX represents a particular Zeitgeist of watchmaking that is so popular now. Initially only available with a quartz movement, when Tissot introduced the Powermatic-80-powered version later than year, the PRX was back. In my opinion, the romanticism of the automatic caliber will always outweigh the practicality of a simple quartz movement.
The Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 sees the addition of the Swatch group’s Powermatic 80 caliber. As the name suggests, you get to bask in 80 glorious hours of power reserve! Wear it all week and take it off on Friday night, safe in the knowledge it’ll still be running come Monday morning. The Tissot PRX Powermatic 80 remains one of Tissot’s bestsellers, and it’s not hard to see why.
Check out the Tissot PRX Powermatic 80.
Tissot Seastar 2000 Professional Powermatic 80
Above, I mentioned taking off the PRX Powermatic 80 on a Friday night. Why would you do that? To slip on a bit of fun for the weekend rough and tumble, of course! Tissot serves us top tool-watch specs with its Seastar 2000 Professional Powermatic 80. The Seastar 2000 is Tissot’s professional diving watch, and it is 46mm of pure Swiss engineering. Designed to handle whatever the most adventurous of divers might throw at it, this Seastar 2000 looks good while doing it too.
Like the PRX above, this watch also features the Powermatic 80 movement beating away inside. Based on the ETA 2824-2, the Powermatic caliber has been hugely successful for Tissot. A few years ago, an 80-hour power reserve was limited to expensive, high-end watches. Now, it is available to everyone thanks to the affordable Powermatic 80 movement.
Dive deeper into the Tissot Seastar 2000 Professional Powermatic 80.
Tissot Gentleman Powermatic 80 Silicium
Back in November of last year, Lex described the Tissot Gentleman Powermatic 80 Silicium as a discrete watch. This is certainly not a watch that makes a look-at-me statement. It is a true accessory watch in that it adds style to your outfit rather than dominating it and demanding attention for itself. The demure design allows the Tissot Gentleman Powermatic 80 Silicium to dress up or down to suit any social setting and outfit in turn. It is equally at home with a sharp suit for boardroom meetings as it is with jeans and a T-shirt for beers on the weekend.
Yet again, we see the Powermatic 80 running the show. There’s one slight difference here, though, as the Tissot Gentleman Powermatic 80 Silicium has an upgraded version of the movement. It uses a silicon hairspring to lengthen its lifespan, enhance its accuracy, and resist magnetic interference more easily than a conventional balance spring.
Discover more about the Tissot Gentleman Powermatic 80 Silicium.
Tissot Supersport Chrono
There’s a lot to be said for a racing-inspired chronograph as an everyday type of watch. My driving instructor swears by his. The humble racing chronograph is the perfect alternative to a dive watch for those who don’t want/need/care about crazy water resistance. The Tissot Supersport Chrono is an excellent example of this type of watch done well and affordably. With a 30-minute counter and a 1/10th-second sub-dial, the Tissot Supersport Chrono arguably offers more functionality than a dive watch to those who live firmly on land.
The stainless steel watch is no less rugged and even has 100m of water resistance. Tissot offers the Supersport Chrono in 13 different color combinations, but the black/yellow Tour de France edition is my favorite. I think the yellow highlights are a visual feast, though there is certainly a model for everyone. Given the price, the Tissot Supersport Chrono is an excellent value proposition, and its wide availability (OK, not the Tour de France edition — that one is sadly sold out) means it’s seriously worth considering!
Race on over to the Tissot site to read more about the Tissot Supersport Chrono.
Tissot Chemin des Tourelles Squelette Mechanical
While all the watches on this list have been fairly typical designs, Tissot is not afraid to flex its creative muscle. The Tissot Chemin des Tourelles Squelette Mechanical is the perfect example of this. As the name suggests, this is a skeletonized watch, but it hasn’t been chopped and dissected so much as to lose its character. Some brands adopt a “barely there” approach to skeletonized movements, cutting away so much that you see nothing but wrist skin through the crystal. But with the Chemin des Tourelles Squelette Mechanical, Tissot has maintained the movement’s original form in a more restrained fashion.
The semi-skeletonized movement is nicely decorated with a mixture of perlage and a grained finish on the dial side. The open dial allows for an unobstructed view of the keyless works and the small seconds gears turning at 9 o’clock. While the Tissot Chemin des Tourelles Squelette Mechanical is officially sold out, a few are available on Chrono24. It seems that this was rather popular with the community, and who knows? Maybe we might see a return in the coming years!
Find out more about the Tissot Chemin des Tourelles Squelette Mechanical.
We welcome your thoughts
So that’s a few of the best Tissot watches as of 2022, in my opinion. Sure, not every single watch is readily available, but that doesn’t make them any less remarkable, does it? Which one of these was your top pick, and what is your favorite Tissot watch of the past or present? Do you have any in your collection? Let me know in the comments!
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