September 22 2026

Timex Brings A Forgotten Chronograph Design Back To Life

Ricardo Amaral NEW RELEASES, TIMEX 2026, Chronograph, Quartz 0

Before the chronograph became primarily associated with motorsport, racing bezels and lap times, it had another, rather more practical role. In the early and mid-20th century, a watch could be a compact navigation instrument, helping pilots and sailors make calculations using nothing more than the movement of a chronograph hand and a carefully constructed dial.

It is this less familiar chapter of watchmaking that Timex revisits with the Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph.

The latest addition to the Marlin family may carry a name strongly associated with the brand’s vintage-inspired watches, but its dial takes us further back than the familiar 1960s. Its inspiration comes from the specialised chronographs of the 1930s through the 1950s, when tachymeter and telemeter scales could turn a wristwatch into a surprisingly versatile measuring instrument.

And that story is written directly onto the dial.

A Dial Designed to Tell More Than the Time

At first glance, the Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph looks like an unusually colourful vintage chronograph. Look closer, however, and the dial begins to reveal its purpose.

At its centre is a spiral tachymeter scale, while the two chronograph sub-dials incorporate their own scales. Around the outside sits a telemeter scale, creating several concentric layers of information.

It is a layout that immediately recalls the navigational chronographs produced by brands such as Brietling, during the golden age of mechanical instrumentation.

The tachymeter is perhaps the more familiar of the two functions. By using the chronograph to measure elapsed time over a known distance, it can be used to calculate speed or rate. What makes the Timex particularly interesting is the decision to place the tachymeter in a spiral at the centre of the dial rather than around the perimeter, giving the watch much of its distinctive visual character.

Then there is the telemeter.

Today, the term is far less familiar than tachymeter, but historically it had a practical purpose. Imagine being at sea or in an aircraft and seeing lightning in the distance. Start the chronograph when the flash is seen and stop it when the sound of thunder arrives. The elapsed time can then be read against the telemeter scale to estimate the distance of the storm.

Suddenly, the seemingly complicated dial starts to make sense.

What looks like a collection of colourful numbers and markings is actually a reflection of a time when the wristwatch could serve as a useful instrument far beyond simply telling the time.

A Marlin From Another Era

Timex has spent the past decade building the modern Marlin into a broad family of vintage-inspired watches. The collection began with a particularly faithful interpretation of the brand’s mid-century mechanical watches and gradually expanded into different complications and designs.

The Neo Classic Chronograph takes a different route.

Instead of looking primarily towards the 1960s, it reaches further back into the history of the chronograph, adopting a dial architecture that feels much more specialised.

The case is new to the Marlin collection as well. Measuring 40 mm, it is made from brushed stainless steel and combines angled lugs with curved chronograph pushers and a fluted crown.

The proportions give the watch a contemporary presence, but the details keep pulling us back towards its historical inspiration.

That feeling is reinforced by the domed acrylic crystal. Rather than using sapphire to create a completely modern execution, Timex has chosen the material associated with many vintage watches, allowing the crystal itself to become part of the aesthetic.

Two Ways to Read the Same Story

Timex offers the Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph in two dial variations, and each tells the story slightly differently.

The first is a cream-coloured dial with red, black and blue markings. Blue and red hands add further definition to the various functions, making it perhaps the most traditional interpretation of the concept.

The second takes a more expressive approach.

Here, the centre of the dial is white, surrounded by a silver hour-track ring and a sky-blue telemeter scale. Orange and yellow sections add additional colour to the outer markings.

Both versions share the same fundamental architecture, but the difference in colour completely changes their personality.

The cream version also provides the greatest choice when it comes to wearing the watch. It can be fitted to a leather pin-buckle strap or to a stainless steel bracelet with flat end links and a butterfly clasp.

The more colourful version is offered on a brown leather strap with a pin buckle.

A Chronograph With an Old-School Heart

There is something particularly interesting about the Neo Classic Chronograph because it doesn’t attempt to recreate the most obvious vintage chronograph.

There are countless modern watches inspired by racing chronographs, panda dials and familiar 1960s designs. Timex instead looked at a more specialised form of watchmaking, where the dial was effectively a small collection of measuring instruments.

That makes the watch’s visual complexity more meaningful.

The different colours aren’t simply there to make the dial more attractive. They help separate the various scales and functions, while the overlapping layout gives the watch the unmistakable appearance of an old navigational instrument.

It is the kind of dial that rewards a second look.

From Instrument to Everyday Watch

Of course, nobody buying the Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph today is likely to depend on its telemeter scale to navigate a storm or calculate a ship’s distance from a lightning strike.

But that isn’t really the point.

Modern mechanical watches frequently preserve functions that have become unnecessary in everyday life. What survives is the connection to the period when those functions mattered.

The Neo Classic Chronograph embraces exactly that idea.

Its 40 mm stainless steel case, domed acrylic crystal and vintage-inspired details make it wearable as a contemporary watch, while the unusual dial preserves a small piece of chronograph history that has largely disappeared from the mainstream.

And perhaps that is what makes this Marlin particularly interesting. It isn’t simply trying to make an old watch look new again. It is taking an old idea—one that was once genuinely useful—and giving it a modern place on the wrist.

Price and Availability

The Timex Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph becomes available from September 22, 2026, priced at € 269 on a leather strap and € 309 on a stainless steel bracelet.

Our Take

We have always found the most interesting vintage-inspired watches to be those that bring back something more than an old aesthetic. The Marlin Neo Classic Chronograph does exactly that.

What caught our attention is the fact that the story of the watch is essentially visible on its dial. The tachymeter and telemeter aren’t merely decorative vintage references; they explain why chronographs once looked like this in the first place.

We also like the decision to use a 40 mm case with an acrylic crystal. It gives the watch enough contemporary presence without losing the visual warmth that makes the Marlin concept work.

Between the two versions, the cream dial is probably the one that speaks most directly to the historical inspiration, while the colourful white and blue version brings a more playful character to an otherwise very traditional concept.

For us, though, the real appeal is the unusualness of the whole package. Timex could have created another familiar vintage chronograph. Instead, it went looking further back and found a design language that has become relatively rare today.

The result is a Marlin that doesn’t just look like a watch from another era—it gives us a glimpse of what watches were expected to do in that era.

Timex Brings A Forgotten Chronograph Design Back To Life