I spent a week walking around with a piece of D-Day on my wrist, and that can’t be stressed enough for the coolness factor. What we like about the Praesidus A-11 Marston Mat The P024 is hi-beat, a step up from the Seiko NH35 on the Vince Speranza, although the winding action was very gritty, and the automatic winding rotor is incredibly loud. In terms of timekeeping, the Festina Soprod P024 movement performed adequately well and averaged about +7 seconds per day. The Praesidus A-11 Marston Mat field watch (with glare!) (Matt Sampson) In fact, the dial is borderline illegible unless viewed from head-on in any lighting condition, due to the fact that the numbers are printed on, have no depth, and don’t have sufficient contrast against any sort of light reflection, which gets worse as your viewing angle gets lower. The lack of lume and the extremely glare-reflecting laminated Marston Mat dial means that this watch is basically unreadable except in the shade, due to the fact that sunlight washes it out and the lume struggles in low light.

The Marston Mat also carries over the tradition of having a super comfortable strap, albeit this one’s brown strap is much more wearable with casual outfits than the Vince Speranza’s black machine gun barrel-shaped strap. Overall, the watch performed very similarly in terms of fitment to the Vince Speranza, since it uses the same case and crystal. That included moving from bright to dark areas, measuring timekeeping, and evaluating long-term comfort. I wore it in various lighting conditions and in different outfits.

I wore this watch everywhere I went for a week. The Praesidus A-11 Marston Mat field watch. The dial is the standard A-11 pattern, and Praesidus claims that the numerals and hands are painted in Super Luminova, but the lume is almost nonexistent on the model that I received, making this a very low-visibility watch. The Marston Mat dial is speckled and looks very pleasant, however, at any viewing angle other than directly head-on, the numerals completely disappear, making this a difficult-to-read watch. The sapphire crystal is high-domed and is extremely good-looking, evoking the original plastic crystals but with none of the durability concerns. The caseback is plain, featuring text that explains the brand, model, and where the movement is made. The version I was sent included the brown leather strap, which is made of a nubuck-style matte leather, and which is extremely soft, so that’s a huge standout feature. Praesidus says they’ll ship the watch with a quick-detach brown leather strap and a green canvas strap. It’s constructed from standard 316L stainless steel and features a box domed sapphire crystal to resemble the acrylic crystals of the original A-11 watches. The Praesidus A-11 Marston Mat is 38mm in diameter, 12mm thick, and features 20mm lugs. This article is not sponsored by Praesidus in any way, and they did not have any editorial input.

This watch is limited to 200 pieces, owing in no small part to the fact that the dial has to be made of very rare material.Īs a point of disclosure, Praesidus loaned us a single working prototype for the purposes of testing and photography. Praesidus has leaned heavily into the WWII-themed watch angle, and by making the dial of the watch a piece of Marston Mat, they’ve crafted something that is a legitimate piece of history. These sheets were deployed all over every battlefield of WWII to make field-expedient roads, landing strips, and - in the case of this watch - ramps for vehicles to get onto the shores of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. They call it the “ Marston Mat,” so named because it featured an actual piece of metal sheets by the same name. We’ve previously covered the machinegunner-themed Vince Speranza watch, and while our opinions were mixed on how it performed as a watch, the themed nature of it was undeniably cool.Īfter publishing that article, representatives from Praesidus followed up to say that they had a new project: an A-11 watch that actually carries a piece of D-Day. service members, a crucial part of combat timekeeping during the largest global conflict in history. The core design is based on the ubiquitous WWII wristwatch worn by many U.S. With their line of A-11 homage watches, Praesidus Watches wants to become a watch microbrand for World War II history buffs.

Ww2 tank battles on youtube