Introducing the Stowa Verus GMT Chronograph

It’s pretty rare these days to come across a new watch that feels like it’s genuinely different and unusual. Most new releases, for better or worse, play it pretty safe. That’s not an altogether bad thing; while we all certainly appreciate interesting new designs, there’s something to be said for a very well executed watch made in a classic style. Those styles are classics for a reason, after all. Stowa certainly makes a lot of watches in that second category, and we’ve talked about them here many times. But every so often, even a relatively conservative brand like Stowa is capable of doing something genuinely and unabashedly weird, and we’re here for it. Let’s take a look at the Verus GMT Chronograph. 

And what is the Verus GMT Chronograph? Sitting within Stowa’s Flieger product line, the Verus GMT Chronograph combines two of our favorite complications, but in a non-traditional way. As this is a pilot’s watch, Stowa’s intent was to make the dial as clutter free as possible. To do that, they’ve eliminated the running seconds register as well as the hour totalizer from the chrono, leaving a single sub-register at 12:00 providing a readout of elapsed minutes, up to 30. The GMT scale has been moved to the watch’s bezel, where a 24 hour scale has been engraved into the dial in negative relief. A date window sits at 6:00, balancing the minutes register above it, and blends into the dial nicely with a color matched (black, of course) background. The GMT hand is black with a bright orange arrow tip, which helps draw the eye naturally to the bright white flieger hands providing the local time. 

So, the Verus GMT Chronograph is providing a great deal of information in a clean, legible way. Stowa recently won a Red Dot Design Award for this watch, which we think is well deserved considering the ingenuity of the dial layout and presentation. But it’s also just delightfully strange. The combination of a single chronograph register at 12:00 with the engraved bezel is almost jarring at first, but once you fully grasp what you’re looking at there’s an elegance to how Stowa has stripped the dial of unnecessary information, and highlighted the most pertinent elements. 

Unsurprisingly, given the complications present here, the Verus GMT Chronograph has some heft to it. It measures 41mm in diameter and comes in at 13.7mm thick, which is not outrageous for a watch like this, but it’s sure to have some real wrist presence. The movement inside is a Valjoux 7754, and it’s visible through a display caseback on the watch’s backside. The Verus GMT Chronograph is limited to just 100 pieces, with delivery beginning this summer. The retail price is set at  € 2,400. Stowa