Henry Cavill’s New Longines Might Be One of the Best-Value Luxury Watches of 2026

There are easier ways to sell a watch than explaining what a “monopusher chronograph” is. Fortunately for Longines, it has Henry Cavill to help.

The actor is among the faces of Longines’ new Master Collection campaign, accompanying a fairly substantial overhaul of the Swiss brand’s long-running dress-watch family.

There are new three-hand watches and a redesigned chronograph with moonphase. But the one that really stands out is something Longines hasn’t offered in its regular collection for six years: a mechanical monopusher chronograph.

The name is more complicated than the idea. A conventional chronograph generally has two pushers —one to start and stop the stopwatch and another to reset it. A monopusher does all three jobs using a single button. On the new Longines, that button is incorporated neatly into the crown.

Longines was producing single-button chronographs during the early years of the wristwatch, and the company has periodically returned to the format since. This time, though, it has put one into the mainstream Master Collection rather than treating it as an exotic historical exercise.

And that is where people should start to pay attention.

Longines occupies a slightly curious position in modern watchmaking. It is one of Switzerland’s biggest watch brands, with a history stretching back to 1832, yet among enthusiasts it can sometimes seem considerably less talked about than smaller, noisier rivals. What has become increasingly difficult to overlook, however, is the amount of watch you get for the money.

Across collections such as the Spirit, Conquest and Heritage lines, Longines has steadily built a reputation for offering serious movements, strong specifications and high levels of finishing without pushing prices into the territory occupied by many of its Swiss competitors.

The new monopusher is about as convincing an argument for that as it gets.

Inside is the new hand-wound Longines L799.5 movement, produced by ETA exclusively for the brand. It uses a column wheel – the traditional and generally more desirable way of controlling a mechanical chronograph – together with a silicon balance spring and a 68-hour power reserve.

Those are serious specifications for this end of the luxury-watch market. One reviewer who has
already handled the watch described it as a “value proposition”, pointing out that even some monopusher chronographs using more straightforward off-the-shelf movements cost similar money.

It certainly doesn't look like a watch built to hit a price, either. The 41mm polished steel case is 12.6mm thick, while the dial comes in either frosted blue or silver opaline. Both have a barleycorn texture, applied numerals and a pulsometer scale around their edge. The silver version uses rose-gold-colored hands and numerals; the blue gets rhodium-plated details. There's no date window, which helps keep an otherwise fairly traditional chronograph pleasingly clean—a detail watch nerds tend to love.

The other major arrival is a redesigned Master Collection Chrono Moonphase. Also measuring 41mm, it combines a chronograph with day, date, month, moonphase and 24-hour indications. Longines has tidied up the rather busy dial of its predecessor, adding applied numerals and reorganizing the date and minute tracks. Its automatic L687.5 movement offers 66 hours of power reserve

But it's the monopusher that's our standout from the new collection. Luxury-watch prices have hardly been moving in a helpful direction lately, which makes genuinely interesting mechanical watches at this sort of price increasingly noticeable.

At £3,350, the new Longines offers the sort of ingredients that increasingly belong to considerably more expensive watches: a hand-wound movement, column-wheel chronograph and 68-hour power reserve. More evidence, perhaps, that Longines has been hiding in plain sight.

Better still, it hasn't simply revived an unusual complication from its history for collectors to admire. It's put it into a watch intended to be worn.

Having Superman sell it probably doesn't hurt.

The Longines Master Collection Chrono Monopusher is available now in two dial variations, priced at £3,350; longines.com

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com/uk.

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