BERLIN black gold / Heritage 20 dark brown

Dark brown leather takes the formality down a step and lets a black-and-gold watch work on a Tuesday. That is the argument this BERLIN makes.

Sternglas named the line for the 1846 rail connection between Hamburg and Berlin, and engraved the Berliner Bahnhof, Hamburg's terminus for that route until 1903, on the caseback. The Hamburg brand has been designing to Bauhaus principles since 2016: clarity, geometry, sans-serif type, nothing else.

Behind the dial is the Miyota GM02, a quartz caliber that adds a day-of-week indicator to the date and can display the day in English or German, with a battery life of roughly three years. The dial is black, the hands and indices gold, and the case gold-tone 316L stainless steel at 38 mm across with 20 mm lugs. Sapphire crystal, double-domed and double anti-reflective; 5 bar of water resistance. The Heritage strap is dark brown alligator-embossed cowhide, 4 mm thick.

Read the day at a glance, forget the battery for three years, change the strap in ten seconds.

Perfect for: day and date quartz watches, brown strap watches for everyday, understated gold watches.