GMT, Dual Time and World Timer Watches Explained

Travel watches solve a simple problem: you want to know the time at home while you are somewhere else. There are three common solutions, and they work quite differently.

A GMT watch has a fourth hand that makes one full rotation every 24 hours, usually with a bezel marked with 24 hours. You read home time by pointing that hand at the bezel. Many GMT models let you jump the ordinary hour hand in one-hour steps without stopping the watch, so you can set local time on arrival and keep home time running on the fourth hand. A rotating 24-hour bezel adds a third time zone if you need one.

The true GMT type, where the hour hand jumps, is often called a traveller GMT. The other style, sometimes called an office GMT, lets you set the 24-hour hand independently and leaves the main hour hand alone. Which is more convenient depends on whether you change your local time more often than your reference time.

A dual-time watch shows the second time zone in a small sub-dial, often with its own day and night indicator. It can be easier to read at a glance than a 24-hour hand, at the cost of a busier dial.

A world timer shows many time zones at once. A ring of city names sits around the dial and a 24-hour disc turns beneath it, so you can read the time in dozens of places by looking at the city you care about. It is the most complete answer and the most striking dial, but it is not the quickest way to read a single second time zone.

Complications like these add parts and servicing cost compared with a time-only watch, and a few quartz models offer the feature more cheaply. If you travel often, a jumping local hour hand is the feature that saves the most fiddling. If you mostly want to follow one other city, any of the three will do.

Use the filters on our watches page to narrow by complication, then compare a few side by side to see how each layout reads.