Gather around you watch tool nuts! We’re about to embark on the fascinating exploration of a new addition to the vast and mesmerizing family of utilitarian watches. As it seems like it has been a long time since a brand came up with a new concept for this genre of timekeeping device, one which actually can fulfill a purpose and do it well, and which is also accompanied by a registered patent. At the risk of sounding like someone who only has limited knowledge of horology and who, like many other self-proclaimed journalists, falls back to the same analogies and comparisons time and time again, it indeed feels as if many moons have gone by since we were presented with a new concept for a tool watch. Something truly new, both a design and mechanics which work harmoniously together to do something very specific and very well. A sort of (here it comes) Rolex Submariner or Omega Speedmaster or Seiko Alpinist of the second quarter of the 21st century. And it feels nice. 

The brand which met this milestone is none other than Elliot Brown, a military and harcore tool-watch oriented British brand we first looked at through the Arne 606-004 back in July of this year. The Arne is, by all meanings of these words, a badass field watch built to the highest standards so that actual members of the military and extreme adventurists and explorers can confidently do whatever it is that they do without having to worry for one iota of a second whether or not their watch will handle it. So of course I was more than excited to take a close look at today’s subject: the Beachmaster NIVO: 0H0-623, a model which is part of a collection of automatic and quartz-powered watches named after the Royal Marine officer in charge of the disembarkation phase during an amphibious assault. There already you get a sense of what kind of watch this is, a real mission timer device whose design of the case, dial, and unique timing apparatus ended up becoming a patent. A rare phenomenon indeed. 

Specifications

At the time of writing this article, the Beachmaster collection is composed of no less than eight versions, three automatics and five quartz ones, showcasing different dial colors and case finishes. I opted to review the NIVO variant so that I could more or less compare it apples-to-apples with the Arne as I reviewed the version that also came with the NIVO colorway. The latter by the way stands for “Night Invisible Varnish Orfordness” and has a distinct dark-grey-green overall finish that was applied to British night bombers in the inter-war period of 1918-1939, and was created to match the colour and reflectivity of the open water on a moonlit night. (Lazily quoting from my own article.) And the Beachmaster shares a few technical characteristics with the Arne: they both are powered with quartz calibers protected from shocks by special and proprietary movement holders; they both share the same screwed-in spring-bar design; they both come with more water resistance than necessary: 300m for the Beachmaster. 

So today’s protagonist is a dive watch and many other things as we’re about to see. The quartz versions like this one are powered by a Ronda 515.24H caliber which has a stated accuracy of -10/+20 seconds per month, 3.75 years of battery life, and an independently adjustable GMT hand of the “caller” variety. (My favorite one, by the way.) The crystal is a domed piece of sapphire with multiple layers of inner anti-reflective coating, giving us a clear view of the dial day and night, and in the latter case readability is ridiculously good as almost every single printed shape or numeral you see on the dial is made of X1 C3 or BGW9 SuperLuminova applied in generous quantities. The Beachmaster also comes with a two-crown setup, a screw-down one at the four to adjust the time and GMT hand, and another at the two o’clock through which one can operate the internal bi-directional bezel from one position only. Both crowns are endowed with a hobnail knurling pattern which is discreet but oh so darn effective to operate them. 

The case’s design is also reminiscent of the Arne and now I understand it is a trademark aesthetic of Elliot Brown. A case which is even more so muscular on the Beachmaster than it was on the Arne given its larger proportions and PVD coated treatment, as indeed this beast measures 40mm in diameter without the bezel and 41mm with it, 50mm lug-to-lug, 14mm thick, and comes with a 22mm lug width. The stealthy nature of the case finishing reduces its visual wrist print, but it nevertheless remains a watch you won’t forget you are wearing and I believe this is kind of the point of it. To come back to the internal rotating bezel for a moment: it is operated via a click-lock ceramic ball bearing mechanism, as the brand calls it, which comes with a distinct feel, one of precision and solidity, as I both feel and hear the distinct clicks when operating the crown. I also find it fascinating that, for once, someone made a two o’clock crown we can operate whilst wearing the watch—the crown only measures 5.7mm in diameter but is perfectly located on the case.

Design

Let’s get right into what made it possible for Elliot Brown to actually patent the Beachmaster as being an original design and the first of its kind: the mission timer element which is composed of the double-arrowed fourth hand, the inner 24-hour GMT scale, and the click-lock split scale internal bezel*. The fourth hand therefore fulfills two missions: first to either indicate the time in a different time zone or to mark whether it is day or night by way of the first red arrow which hovers almost perfectly above the GMT scale, and second, to set and track the mission timer functionality of the Beachmaster. The split scale internal bezel is divided into two 12-hour sections joined together by the “H” time which indicates when the mission is starting. So one can use the second red arrow on the fourth hand to indicate how many hours “now” is from “H” or “mission start” and wait for the GMT hand to travel to “H”. Once it has done so, letting the hand continue its journey will indicate how much time has passed after the mission starts to mark when something  else has to happen.  

*That’s how the brand describes it and I couldn’t have found a better way to do so. 

To best illustrate how this works I borrowed Elliot Brown’s graphics which you can see above as they are very well executed. So is the watch to be honest with you. The mission timer functionality took me a little while to get used to it but once my brain has computed how it works, I found myself being in awe of its deceptive simplicity. Because you can use it to mark many events before the mission starts (and the mission could be an actual mission or when you need your family to hurry into the car to go on vacation) and do the same after it has started, giving you many ways in which you can use this feature. So I love the double-arrowed fourth hand and how it interacts with the 24-hour/GMT scale in the center of the dial and with the click-lock split scale internal bezel, making the Beachmaster look extremely utilitarian and purpose-driven, delightfully so. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed that the aforementioned two elements are printed in white (BGW9) to tell them apart from the time-telling functionality elements which have a yellow tint (X1 C3.)  

A nice illustration of Elliot Brown’s obsession with details. 

And so the time-telling functionality is indicated by a set of polished sword hands, a fully polished ultra-narrow seconds hand complemented by a tiny lumed arrow, thickly printed hour markers with four large and wide numerals marking the cardinal points, and legible minute markers in-between them. The first portion of the mission-timer functionality in the center of the dial is enhanced by a the stamped and polished wave-like ‘amphibious assault’ NATO pattern, the brand’s logo printed in a polished-metal-like color at the twelve, and the model named printed in red below the pinion. Way down below the six o’clock marker we find a very discreet indication of “Patent GB2590109” referring, of course, to Elliot Brown’s singular and patented design. The case, as indicated above, is muscular and imposing, and presents the same peak-like slab-sided flanks, claw-like lugs which anchor down towards the wrist, tapering chamfers as we found on the Arne, and two small crowns which are nonetheless extremely grippy and satisfying to operate. 

The Heart of the Matter

There was so much that needed to be said about the Beachmaster’s patented design that I couldn’t get around to talk about the bezel and its count-down scale, lumed markings, discreet but aggressive knurling, and satisfying 120-click operation. And this brings us to today’s first heart of the matter: the fact that Elliot Brown not only created a novel type of tool watch, which only happens every other blue moon, but that it thought out every single design and technical detail with ruthless attention and precision. I feel that any other brand would have rested on its laurels by simply coming up with a new concept, and wouldn’t have put too much thought into how to execute it to the highest standards. But Elliot Brown did and that is what makes the Beachmaster such a compelling tool watch to write about. And the second heart of the matter is this: either you can get the relatively affordable quartz version for €724,95/$837 USD or the less affordable but no less extraordinary automatic version for €2.393,95/$2,763 USD. 

Conclusion 

If my memory serves me well, through the review of the Elliot Brown Beachmaster NIVO: 0H0-623 it is the first time that I wrote about a new type of tool watch, and this is very exciting indeed. As someone who is a self-proclaimed utilitarian watch nut, it sometimes feel as if we are stuck with the same designs over and over again without ever seeing something truly new. Not a new dial color or a new hand design, but something radically fresh, off the overly beaten path. But that is what Elliot Brown did with this collection and it did so in the best way the brand knows how to: by over-engineering the Beachmaster and by endowing it with a singular personality equal to the uniqueness of its functionality. It is a full package. So if this is the type of watch you are into, check out the full collection here. 

Thanks for reading.