Intro

When Mido introduces an archive-inspired timepiece, it usually deserves a massive round of applause. By pairing their vintage logo with a 1970s-inspired dial, they made the new Ocean Star Worldtimer a head turner.

However, there’s more to it than meets the eye; the brand effortlessly converted an ordinary three-hand Ocean Star into a complicated model, bringing the timepiece’s rotating bezel to its full potential by simply adding the 24 main time zones and a design to make it work as such.

In a year marked by the 8 Two Crowns’ unveiling, Mido continues to explore its “Heritage” collection.

2025 will stay in Mido’s history as the Multifort 8 Two Crowns‘ launch milestone. As we extensively explained in a dedicated video, the brand ushered into a new era, where sharp lines and edgy surfaces have replaced decades of smooth silhouettes.

Cleverly, Mido didn’t double down on their nostalgia factor, as applied to the Ocean Star collection. Such a strategy reveals, and suggests, that two main macro collections are growing: one more contemporary, the other more conservative, which we can classify as “Heritage.”

It’s a brand’s pillar, since it includes exquisite products like the Decompression Worldtimer carrying the sweet “Mido” logo in italic, which we love.

Mido’s marketers refer to a 1970 model as a source of inspiration in their press release, without disclosing any pictures. No matter what, the outcome is compelling and distinctive, and that’s what matters the most.

The base architecture is the standard Ocean Star case measuring 40.5 mm in diameter and 13.4 mm in thickness, plus a 21.0 mm lug width.

It’s a tried-and-tested design, ensuring a bold presence on the wrist.

As said, a black and red checkerboard dial and a 24-timezone bezel turned a Tribute into a WorldTimer without adding any major mechanical complication.

How to use an Ocean Star Worldtimer

The design concept works, and the cleverly engineered bezel does the job. If you’re familiar with such complications and how time zones are set, you’ll find it easy to set and adjust.

On the bezel, you’ll spot two concentric city rings: move your eyes clockwise to travel eastward, and counter-clockwise (lower ring) to travel the other way around instead.

First, set London as your reference timezone at twelve, and use Greenwich Mean Time.

Then follow the bezel clockwise or counter-clockwise, thus adding or subtracting hours, to get your local time anywhere in the world.

The following approach is slightly more intricate since it requires the wearer to align the bezel to their local time. Again, a double scale helps manage the date change in either direction, by applying the hour and day change rule when travelling from Auckland to Midway (switch to the previous day) or from Midway to Auckland (switch to the following day instead).

Remember that no date adjustment is needed if it is noon in London since the 24 time zones all fall within the same day.

Any time measurement is therefore indirect, since no date adjustment (and no split between home and local time) is mechanically available; follow these simple rules, and you’ll get the correct time and date anywhere in the world.

The bezel makes reading and making calculations relatively easy.

Bund Strap and Calibre 80

The brand introduced a Bund strap on the Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer, surrounding a stock leather strap with a pin buckle. It adds a vague exploration-watch feel to it, but I’d keep going for the ordinary one by simply slipping the outer strap.

Powering the watch is the excellent Calibre 80, improved from time to time with a Nivachron™ hairspring, to further enhance the accuracy on this 80-hour power reserve movement, still a plus in the sub-1,000 euro watch industry.

A worldtimer adds to a capable diving watch, i.e., a timepiece rated up to 200 meters, but you need to purchase a rubber strap from the aftermarket catalogue to go diving.

Final thoughts

You won’t go wrong with a vintage-inspired Ocean Star. The product category it belongs to is so crowded that you hardly find anything so distinctive in the benchmark at under one thousand euros unless you search for a micro brand.

A Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer builds upon the brand’s heritage, whose momentum is strong and brings our memories back to the past. And that logo is a head turner as well, my favourite across the vintage-inspired arena.

All in all, I like the overall design; the bezel is easy to read and operate, and you feel you’re wearing a kind of complicated watch without paying what you’ll additionally pay for a true worldtimer, as seen on its Mido sibling. The Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer retails for €990.

(Photo credit: Horbiter®)

Gaetano C @Horbiter®