Upon learning about this new watch with big date display from replica Mido, which the company says is timed to coincide with its 100th anniversary, it occurred to me that I had no clue Mido was approaching such a major anniversary year at all. I think this is because the U.S. market hasn’t historically been a primary focus for this line of affordable watches owned by the Swatch Group, much in the same way that Certina and Union Glashütte, current Swatch-owned properties that focus outside the United States, are today.
That’s all changed of late, though. The Swiss brand, whose name means I measure in Spanish and which rose to early success with a cork-gasket crown closure for water resistance, is now making a concerted effort to sell its mechanical watches to American buyers. The last time we covered a release from Mido was last month, when Jack went hands on with an architecturally inspired limited edition based on New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Today we have a new big date version of the Commander to introduce.
As you can see in the photos here, the Mido Commander Big Date fake watches comes with its namesake date complication situated at the six o’clock position. This complication comes via a modified version of the Mido automatic Caliber 80, which is itself based in the ETA CO7.651, an 11.5 ligne caliber with a frequency of 21,600 vph and a more than ample power reserve of up to 80 hours. It’s adjusted in three positions for accuracy before being cased up by Mido.
The stainless steel cases, which come in four different executions, each measure 42mm in diameter. We haven’t had a chance to see these in the metal, but based on the proportions of the dial relative to the thin bezel we’ve noticed in the supplied photos from Mido, these watches are likely to feel slightly larger than the 42mm figure alone would lead you to expect. But with an overall thickness of just 11.97 mm, they’ll wear thin enough to slide under a shirtsleeve. And as we’ve noted many times here on the ‘Dink, while so many of you guys love the sub-40mm form factor, commercially speaking, 42mm continues to be the sweet spot for watch manufacturers today. Each watch is water resistant to a pressure of 5 bar.
The four executions offered at launch provide a bit of variety, but to me there are two standout winners. These are the two plain stainless steel versions Mido copy watches, each of which comes on a stainless steel bracelet. These are clean, sober modern dress watch designs that younger watch buyers interested in owning something new may want to have a closer look at. The first of these has a silvery dial and the second has an sunray anthracite colored dial. All four versions have a legible dial design and luminous applied hour markers and luminous hands for the hours and minutes. The height of the hour markers, when paired with sloping of the flange from dial to the bezel and the framed date windows, all add up to a display with quite a bit of dimensionality, as you can see in the photo below.