Hands On With The Tudor Black Bay Chronograph ‘Carbon 25’

Although the Tudor Black Bay models started out as a sort of refresh of well known and much beloved Tudor Submariner design details (especially the snowflake hands, first used on the Tudor Submariner references 7016 and 7021, in 1968) over the years subsequent to the launch of the Black Bay in 2012, the number of different models and materials have proliferated to the point that vintage design cues are really more of a point of departure than a set of rules in Tudor design. The Black Bay now encompasses eight separate sub-categories, complications including chronographs and GMT watches (in two separate families) and case materials including steel, bronze, silver, ceramic, and gold. With the launch of the Black Bay Chrono Carbon 25, Tudor adds carbon fiber to the growing list of materials at its disposal for Black Bay watches.

While Tudor’s used carbon composite before, for the Pelagos FXD and FXD Chrono Team Alinghi Red Bull Racing watches, and for the FXD Tudor Cycling Edition, this is the first time Tudor’s introduced a watch made in carbon fiber. Although they’re similar materials they’re different in structure and in appearance; Tudor’s carbon composite is a carbon fiber reinforced polymer, with no visible patterning, while the carbon fiber cases are made of fused carbon fiber sheets, displaying the subtle gradations that are the signature of carbon fiber materials.

The Carbon 25 is the latest in a series of watches themed around Tudor’s partnership with Red Bull Racing, which began in 2022 with Alinghi Red Bull Racing and which expanded to include VCARB F1 (the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls  Formula 1 Team, which was formed as team Torro Rosso in 2006 originally. The VCARB team’s racing livery is blue and white (with red accents) and those colors were chosen, naturally enough, for the VCARB partnership timepiece which was announced at the Miami Grand Prix in early May.

It’s an intriguing watch. The first impression I usually get from Tudor watches is of uniform very high quality in construction and finish, but in this case the first thing you notice is that in contrast to the solid heft of most Black Bay watches, the VCARB is quite light, much more so than you’d expect from its visuals or from a Black Bay watch in general. The carbon fiber case’s texture is carried over to the chronograph subdials, which are finished in carbon fiber as well.

The crown, pushers, and caseback are in titanium, with a black PVD coating, so they add very little to the overall weight of the watch, most of which comes from the movement – the COSC certified MT 5813, which is a chronometer, although not one of the increasing number of Master Chronometer certified Tudor watches. However, performance over a week still met Master Chronometer standards in terms of precision, with the watch consistently gaining on its rate for a total of 5 seconds over seven days. The MT 5813 is produced as part of a movement-sharing partnership with Breitling and is essentially Tudor’s version of the column wheel, vertical clutch Breitling B01 chronograph, with a silicon balance spring and freesprung balance brought to time with four symmetrically positioned timing screws on the balance. The MT 5813 is different from the B01 in one other respect – it has a 45 minute, rather than a 30 minute chronograph register.

The always reliable SJX has characterized this movement as one of the best values in modern selfwinding chronograph movements, and although it’s not Master Chronometer certified, its silicon balance spring gives it more than enough resistance to short or long term rate disturbances from the influence of magnetic fields, for all practical purposes.

The watch overall has a bracing atmosphere of functionality which extends to the caseback engraving – a no-nonsense statement of the alliance with VCARB but which does not overstate things. In operation, everything’s as precise as you would expect from Tudor – the screw down chronograph pushers and crown thread into their tubes easily and exactly, with no fiddling, and chrono operations are the same, with a sharp detent for start, stop, and reset to zero.

One of the biggest pleasures of Black Bay watches, if you’re a fan of things that glow in the dark, is the lume on the dial and hands.

There is quite a generous application of Super-LumiNova on the VCARB Carbon 25 and it seems to charge in daylight with astonishing rapidity. Going from outdoors to indoors is always a little startling because the lume glows like a torch and while the glow fades over time (as is the case with any light-charged lume) it remains an aid to legibility for dark adapted eyes for several hours.

One occasional reservation I have heard expressed about Black Bay Chronos, is that the width of the hands (especially the hour hand) obscures the chronograph 45 minute counter. In practice I have, having worn BB Chronos for extended periods on several occasions, found this to be essentially a non-problem, as the hour hand only covers about half of the 45 minute register and then only between two and four o’clock (AM or PM, and I’m usually not timing anything between those hours in the AM anyway).

I think this is a great example of Tudor’s philosophy when it comes to themed watches – there are enough design cues to support the collaboration, but not to the degree that they start to seem heavy handed and the partnership specific design cues are chosen so as to express the basic character of the design. If you’re a Red Bull Racing/VCARB supporter, this one’s obviously been designed with you in mind, but even if you’re not, it’s a hell of a value in a feature-rich, modern sports chronograph.

The Tudor Black Bay Carbon 25 Chronograph, ref. M79377KN-0001: case, carbon fiber, with black DLC-coated titanium pushers, crown and caseback, 42mm x 14.3mm; water resistance, 200 meters. Movement, Tudor caliber MT5813, running at 28,800 vph in 41 jewels. Column wheel, vertical clutch chronograph, with center seconds and 45 minute counter. Price, $7,575. The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized Tudor retailer; see the Black Bay Carbon 25 Chronograph here.