Today we’re going to discuss a type of horology that wasn’t accessible to many of us—most of us really—until just three years ago: “true” or “flyer” style GMTs with an independently adjustable local hour hand which satisfyingly jumps back and forth in one-hour increments and adjust the date back and forth every two full rotations. The type of traveler’s watch which is best known through the Rolex GMT-Master II, the first of its kind dating back to 1983 in the ref. 16760. More or less from 1983 through 2022, so almost four decades, this type of GMT was mostly found in Swiss and Japanese luxury timepieces—to keep things simple of course because there were exceptions—but most importantly, out of the reach of most micro and independent brands I so dearly like to write about. The small revolution which took place was the introduction of the Miyota 9075 caliber in 2022, the first of its kind to be affordable and readily available to the small guys of the industry. 

Since 2022 therefore, and for the first time in the history of micro and independent horology, brands started to make flyer-style GMTs for less than $1,000 USD which is remarkable in its own right. Perhaps so with little margins for profit, which would be unfortunate for them but amazing for us, as we now can acquire this particular type of timekeeping device in all shapes and forms and at affordable prices. But it took a little while for brands to stop swapping a Seiko NH34 or Sellita SW330 for a Miyota 9075, and to think a little outside the box to design GMTs that weren’t, at first, dive watches only. So now we can get sports and elegant watches with a true GMT caliber which is absolutely outstanding, and any type of watch for that matter. All of this takes us then to Nadir, a Polish-based brand created by a watch enthusiast and off-roading and overlanding nut, and the Vespera GMT Silver, a robust tool watch dressed as a sophisticated everyday sports one. 

And it retails for €649/$754 USD which makes it right up my alley. 

Edit (10/13/25): the hour and minute hands are half-polished, half-brushed, not fully polished.

Specifications

I’ll come right off the bat and say that this watch shouldn’t cost so little because it is mostly superbly manufactured and finished, inside and out*. Generally, watches that retail for €649/$754 USD aren’t always finished up to snuff, as it is more customary than you might think to find tiny scratches on the hands, a tad of lume spilling over a marker, and something that is misaligned. This happens, I’m sorry to say, not only on watches designed and sold by micro and independent brands but also by larger houses of horology, sometimes regardless of how much dough they charge you for it. That’s the way it is. So the first hands-on impression handling the Vespera GMT Silver is that of a high quality timepiece which is an observation I could only really make by seeing it up close and in the metal. Nadir’s product photography is excellent by the way and does give the impression that its watches are nice, but it is nicer in real life and I can confirm the pictures didn’t lie. 

*The model I borrowed came with a nick on the crown. Imperfections happen with demo units.

Evidently, you’ll have to take my word for it and base your assessment on the photos included in this article. So while you do that we’re going to talk specs. As you might have guessed, the movement is the Miyota 9075 “true” GMT caliber which ticks at 4Hz and comes with 42 hours of power reserve. It lives inside a 316L stainless steel body measuring 42mm in diameter, 47mm lug-to-lug, 13.1mm thick, and coming with a 22mm lug width. The Vespera GMT is therefore a little chunky but pleasingly so, comfortable to wear on the provided hand-made Italian Pueblo leather strap made by a company called Badalassi Carlo (I missed the smell of a freshly made leather strap,) which comes with quick-release spring-bars, an equally chunky stainless steel buckle, and two keepers (one is nomadic.) On top we find a domed sapphire crystal with four layers of inner anti-reflective coating, and on the back a finely CNC-machined case-back showcasing the brand’s logo. 

The case-back screws down, so does the crown, endowing the Vespera GMT with 200 meters of water resistance which is, as we know, a lot and too much of it. The crown deserves closer inspection as we find two types of knurling on it, a coin edge pattern at the bottom and three rows of sharp teeth on top. This alternation of knurling patterns makes it easy to grab and operate the crown whether it is out in the time and date-setting positions or fully screwed in where it lodges itself within one of the four corners of the case. (More on that later.) Lastly, and thanks to the horological gods, Nadir opted to keep the date complication (which now some brands find it is cool to discard) which is placed at the three o’clock and wrapped by the applied three o’clock marker. All hour markers are applied and lume-filled, so are the hands, with generous quantities of SuperLuminova BGW9. Looking at the specs alone, your €649/$754 USD do go a long way indeed. 

Design

I first heard of Nadir sometime in 2024 through the non-GMT version of the Vespera which caught my attention because of its case shape and semi elegant, semi-utilitarian dial layout. The case reminds me of the one we saw on the Maen Manhattan 37 Ultra-Thin Tuscan in that the corners of the case are sculpted inward, curved and elongated towards the lugs. and geometrically clash with the roundness of the fixed bezel. The case on the outside therefore curves in then out towards the sides, and circles back around with straight cuts between the lugs. So we find ourselves with a muscular case, both from dimensions and design perspectives, an effect which is reinforced when studying its side profile: the right and left flanks protrude out, fashioned on top by a wide polished chamfer and rounded off at the bottom in a fully brushed treatment. The rest of the case is mostly brushed with an alternation of horizontal, vertical, and radial techniques, which marvelously put emphasis on each aspect of its design.

I love how the brand recessed the grippy crown within one of the corners of the case at four o’clock, as it appears more natural to do it this way rather than with a circular case. So the metal body of the Vespera GMT is quite something, it is angular, masculine, and superbly manufactured and finished, and hides some design details which can only be discovered through careful observation. For example I love looking at the case from the back (or front) to see how quite tall the fixed bezel is and how it plunges down towards the mid-case, either above the angular lugs or the rounded flanks and their beautifully polished chamfers. The engraved case-back constitutes a part of the watch’s outer appearance which I didn’t think I would feel compelled to write about, but damn the machining of the pattern is crisp and deep, as I can feel the edges of the pattern running my fingers over it. In a small corner we find the brand and model name as well as “36/50” as it is limited to 50 units in each color. 

Indeed, the Vespera GMT comes in two other colorways, Yellow and Green, where the colorful accents can be found on the rehaut and a band which visually connects the pinon to the date aperture. The Silver version doesn’t have this but instead offers a more unified layout centered around the intensely radially brushed silver dial to which are attached applied and polished markers, with large Arabic numerals at the cardinal points and batons everywhere else. All markers sit tall on the dial which adds a pronounced impression of depth, which is reinforced by the black printed minute track and beyond it, small rectangular cut-outs marking the minutes. And further beyond that we find a steeply inclined rehaut on which is printed a legible 24-hour GMT scale (with numerals for the even hours and dashes for the odd ones.) The aforementioned date aperture is indeed nestled within the three o’clock marker—something most brands wouldn’t have bothered designing in—and framed. 

Lastly, the handset. The hour and minute hands are half-polished, half-brushed to a satin finish, the hour one shaped either like a broad sword or an obelisk—we can each see something different in it—and the minute hand like a narrow pencil. These two are also beveled in their middle so that they are easier to see at many angles, even though they are fully polished, which constitutes another nice design touch and one that will be followed by another one: the running seconds and GMT hand received a delicate sandblasted treatment to set them apart from the hour and minute ones, where the seconds hand is half covered with BGW9 and the GMT one showcases a black painted rectangular element at its tip complete with a healthy dose of lume. So Nadir created a subtle hierarchy between the various design elements found on the dial, which globally look cohesive together and singular when looking at each one individually. 

The Heart of the Matter

In the “About Us” section on website and through a couple of chats I’ve had with Nadir’s founder Bartlomiej Maniecki, he mentioned and made mention of more than once that he’s an off-road and overlanding guy and that is something he seems to be spending a lot of time doing—which I’m envious of, naturally. So he wanted to create a watch that mechanically could handle harsh environments, shocks, wobbles, heavy downpours, muds, splashes of dust and varying temperatures in the extremes, and so that is what he did with the Vespera as it is indeed solid. Then he wanted to make it possible for globe-trotting overlanders to sport a good watch on their adventures so he added a GMT complication which he neatly integrated within the muscular body and bold dial layout. In other words, the Vespera GMT is a tough motherfucker dressed as an elegant sports watch which means that it would look equally at home paired with cargo pants and a hoodie as it would with a suit, should overlanding with a suit be a thing of course. 

Conclusion

The world of micro and independent horology hasn’t ceased to surprise me and that is why I continue to write about it. What big brands release mostly has a soporific effect on yours truly whilst what the smaller guys do jolt me into a state of excitement and wowness, as did the Nadir Vespera GMT Silver. As I like to say, this model is unlike anything else I’ve seen (personally) on the market before which is a nice occurence we need to celebrate, and it is packed with incredible specifications and singular design elements which make the asking price tag of €649/$754 USD indeed seem reasonable. (Bonus: the brand includes a useful and quite refined watch roll in the box.) So if you like to support independent businesses and strive to wear a unique watch, then give the Vespera GMT a closer look here. 

Thanks for reading.