After some uncharacteristically cryptic teasers, Tudor has revealed the new Pelagos 39 this morning. Their latest diver is a watch none of us had readily anticipated but somehow feels an obvious choice for the brand at first glance. It’s a satin-brushed titanium Pelagos that measures 39mm in diameter and 11.8mm in thickness. There is no date. There is a single red line of text. It is, ostensibly, an amalgam of our collective wishlist for the Pelagos. Tudor calls this a watch at the “crossroads between the world of technical diving and urban sophistication”. That last bit signals a slight departure from the Pelagos as we know it.
The Tudor Pelagos 39, as its name suggests, has a 39mm casing that is 11.8mm thick and made of grade 2 titanium with a satin brushed finish. Additionally, the new Pelagos 39 delivers a 200-meter depth reading and does not have a HEV at all, in contrast to the old 42mm model, which had a HEV and provided an astounding 500 meters of water resistance. Realistically, only a very tiny number of commercial saturation divers actually need a helium escape valve on their watch. While some collectors admire this feature for its technical and historical significance, helium escape valves are largely unnecessary on the watches they own.
The Tudor Pelagos 39’s overall case design is identical to that of its full-size siblings, with the exception of the size reduction and the absence of the helium gas escape valve. The new model shares many design cues with the rest of the watches in the current Pelagos collection, including a solid caseback, a titanium winding crown at 3 o’clock, a flat sapphire crystal protecting its dial, and a pair of small but useful crown guards. Additionally, the new model has a unidirectional rotating timing bezel attached to the top of its case, which is finished by a luminous ceramic insert.
It only makes sense for the new model to cost less than its full-size sibling because the Tudor Pelagos 39 is objectively less capable than the 42mm version. Tudor appears to concur with this idea. The Pelagos 39’s stated retail price of $4,400 USD places it exactly in the midst of Tudor’s flagship 42mm model and the price of the minimalist Pelagos FXD. In light of this, the Tudor Pelagos 39 doesn’t actually miss anything as compared to its larger siblings, other than a lesser depth rating and the absence of the date complication and helium escape valve.
