Fratello Favorites: Summer Watch Picks 2025 — Lex’s Choices From Laventure, Certina, And Swatch

You can’t put a price on fun, but the best fun is often had during a vacation, and you can put a price on one of those. You can go camping in a two-person tent on the cheap or spend your downtime in a private villa with butler service on a tropical island for a lot more. My summer watch picks for this year share a colorful and fun vacay spirit but differ in price. Therefore, I assigned them three levels — Bronze, Silver, and Gold. If you’re missing a Platinum Level summer watch, continue reading to the very end and be surprised by how affordable this ultimate level is.

There is no moral judgment here. Camping is neither objectively superior nor inferior to doing nothing in a hammock between two palm trees on a tropical private beach. Similarly, there’s no implicit judgment in my Summer Watch Picks 2025 list. They are ranked by price instead of fun because you can’t do the latter anyway. Also, the most affordable watch looks cool in a White Lotus-like resort, and the most expensive one will be able to withstand a three-week, shoestring-budget trek through the great outdoors while maybe providing a bit of feel-good moral support in challenging times.

Summer Watch Picks 2025 — Bronze Level: Swatch ScubAqua

You might have expected something from the Bioceramic Scuba Fifty Fathoms collection, but I opted for a watch from the new ScubAqua line. A Swatch after my heart, the comeback version of the Scuba is bright, bold, robust, and affordable. You can pick up one of these jellyfish for €155. This 100m-water-resistant watch is vacation-proof in every sense. The semitransparent watches take inspiration from fluorescent jellyfish swaying in the current. Options include Egg Yolk yellow, Blue Fire, Lion’s Mane red, stealthy Black Sea, and a neutral transparent version, Aurelia Aurita, that looks “very Swatch” if you know what I mean.

The question is: which one did I pick? Sure, you could go for all five, but that would cost you €775, and that’s Silver Level money. So I picked just one, and after a hefty internal debate, it was the Aurelia Aurita. This iteration shows a case made in matte white bioceramic and shiny transparent biosourced material, as well as a shiny transparent bezel with gray and white luminescent print. The crown at 10 o’clock is a nice, quirky touch of this funky dive-like watch.

The Aurelia Aurita has hands in primary colors and comes on a matte white and transparent strap with a matte white loop. It closes with a shiny, transparent biosourced pin buckle.

The Swatch ScubAqua models each feature a 44mm case with a 15.4mm thickness and a 51.5mm lug-to-lug length. Don’t let those dimensions scare you. At just 37 grams, the ScubAqua is light. And because the lugs curve down quite a lot, the silicone strap hugs the wrist like a jellyfish’s tentacles — without the painfully itchy side effect, of course.

Summer Watch Picks 2025 — Silver Level: Certina DS-X GMT

The watch I picked as a Silver Level summer watch is, like the Swatch ScubAqua, part of a larger collection. There are a few Certina DS-X GMT timepieces to choose from, and the one I picked is the reference C047.452.17.011.00. It’s a white, blue, and orange diver with a GMT function on a blue rubber strap. This iteration captured the essence of a summer enjoyed in and around the water.

Like the other, less outspoken models in the lineup, this watch’s 200m-water-resistant case with a screw-down crown is made from 316L stainless steel. It has a 41mm diameter, a 48.2mm lug-to-lug length, and a 12.15mm thickness. Just €570 also gets you a sapphire crystal with antireflective coating and a bidirectional aluminum blue and orange 24-hour bezel. But there’s an interesting twist because, on the outer edge, there’s a friction-fit bidirectional compass bezel as well. The outer compass bezel can be turned independently from the 24-hour one. To operate the GMT bezel, you push the outer bezel down. When you do that, it frees the inner bezel’s knurling for easy operation. That’s a very neat feature and something to play with when you’re busy doing nothing.

The colors are bold, but Certina also shows a subtle touch. For instance, the angled blue 60-minute rehaut steps down to the white dial with applied indexes showing polished frames and Super-LumiNova. The sword-type hour and minute hands are also filled with lume for perfect visibility on a beach after sundown, as are the central seconds hand’s lollipop and the GMT hand’s arrow point.

The ETA F06.865 quartz caliber inside the case makes this Silver Level summer watch relatively affordable. This movement also makes it a perfect long-distance, time-zone-crossing travel companion because it’s a flyer GMT.

Summer Watch Picks 2025 — Gold Level: Laventure Marine Type 3

For the very first time, I feel love for a Laventure creation. Clément Gaud, the man behind the brand, gives us the Marine Type 3, available with either a black or full-lume white dial. The watch boasts a Grade 23 titanium case, and the design is inspired by 1980s marine chronometers by Omega and Patek Philippe. The Marine Type 3 isn’t just accurate, though. It’s also a rugged-looking, robust watch with a 300m depth rating and an antimagnetic soft-iron cage inside.

The 38mm case is made of stone-washed Grade 23 titanium and looks powerful and purposeful. Despite the modest diameter, 8.9mm profile, and 46.2mm length, the watch has a lot of presence. It’s the combination of the rough-looking titanium, the angular lines, and the proportionally enormous bezel.

The Laventure Marine Type 3’s stone-washed finish results in a rugged dark gray look. There’s a lot of Grade 23 titanium to enjoy, and the gray metal makes the full-lume dial pop, no matter how small. Another eye-catching element is the Swiss-made domed Plexiglas crystal. Its 2.3mm thickness allows it to proudly protrude above the fixed bezel. That very prominent bezel features engraving with the 60 markers for the seconds and the model’s name, and the black lacquer inside the markers improves readability.

A full-lume dial for the win

My favorite version of the two is the one with the full-lume dial with black printing and non-luminous sandblasted black hands. It has a recessed center, with numerals for the hours and minutes, markers, and the logo pad-printed on the two levels. Underneath it lies a non-visible soft-iron plate, which protects the movement from magnetic fields. Hidden between that layer and an all-metal case back beats a gold-plated, highly customized, and COSC-certified Sellita SW300-1 automatic movement.

The Laventure Marine Type 3 costs CHF 4,200 before taxes, and each version is limited to 100 pieces. You can pick two straps of your liking when you order the watch. The price, the looks, and the limited production make it a Gold Level vacation watch. It’s also a watch with an outspoken design that will likely spark discussion when you come across fellow watch enthusiasts. So this is a watch you take on a solo hike through no man’s land or a lazy retreat on a private island. I mean, vacations are way too short to deal with polarizing polemics.

No Platinum Level watches?

You might expect a Platinum Level watch to round out this small list of summer watch picks. Surprise, surprise: every watch I selected is potentially a Platinum Level watch. When you decide not to put on the Swatch, Certina, or Laventure that’s lying on your nightstand after waking up in your vacation paradise, it becomes a Platinum Level watch. Freedom from time is the ultimate luxury when you’re vacationing. Do you agree?