HANDS-ON: The Tudor Heritage Ranger
The Tudor Heritage Ranger is one of the most practical, simple and infrangible watches around. Back in the 1950’s, as Rolex’s Explorer started to transform into the legendary 1016, Tudor created their own variation of the Explorer: the Ranger. Throughout the years ensuing the launch of the Ranger, trends in watches changed, causing Tudor to basically ditch the original Ranger design for something a tad more modern. Finally, after a considerable amount of time, Tudor has revived the Ranger and, this time, the Ranger is no one hit wonder.
This afternoon, I finally came face to face with this watch after a long, tireless wait since Baselworld. There’s no doubt that this watch appears to be one chunky piece of steel, mechanics, and adventurous spirit, but in person, while it still encompasses the mechanics and “adventurous spirit,” it is not all that chunky—its quite comfortable, honestly. The Ranger is so tremendously simple that even a caveman can set it and read the time or, more realistically, a climber scaling Everest in temperatures of fifty below.
Firstly, I must direct your attention towards the hands, indexes, and hour markers. Strangely enough, I find these, usually not very important, instrumentations on the dial to be one of the coolest features of this watch. Why? It’s because these indicators are not positioned and set into the dial, as is the case with most watches. Instead, they are one hundred percent hand painted on every single watch Tudor produces (not just on the Ranger). Additionally, the crown has Tudor’s big rose, that we all know very well, engraved in the center. Akin to the watch it’s housed in, the manufacture caliber 2824 movement is simple, strong, and gets the job done.
There’s nothing about this watch I don’t like and, if you held this beauty for five minutes (or maybe even less), I think you’d say the same.
Luke Rottman (Executive Editor: thewatchadviser.com)