Tudor Black Bay GMT vs Monta Skyquest: Swiss Giant Against Microbrand

The Tudor Black Bay GMT vs Monta Skyquest debate usually starts with assumptions. One is a Swiss heavyweight with heritage baked in. The other is a modern microbrand that gets talked about in forums with the kind of reverence usually reserved for watches twice the price. We’ve spent real wrist time with both, long enough for the initial phase to wear off and the small annoyances (and joys) to surface. When you live with these watches day after day, the question shifts from brand reputation to how each one fits into your routine.

And we’re coming at this comparison as collectors who’ve been reviewing watches hands-on for over a decade, not chasing hype cycles or spec-sheet bragging rights. This piece exists because readers kept asking the same question we asked ourselves after wearing both GMTs: how does a well-regarded microbrand hold up against a Swiss giant in daily use? Not in theory, not in marketing terms, but on the wrist, through travel, desk time, and everything in between. That’s the question we’re answering here.

Overview & Identity

The Black Bay GMT leans hard into Tudor’s established Black Bay identity: vintage-inspired, tool-focused, and comfortable carrying a bit of visual and physical weight. When we spent time with it, the watch felt like a Black Bay first, GMT second. The travel functionality feels deliberately integrated rather than decorative, and the overall presence reflects Tudor’s confidence as a Swiss brand that knows its audience. It’s substantial on the wrist, and very much a product of the design language that made the Black Bay line such a hit when the GMT variant landed and promptly became hard to get.

The Monta Skyquest GMT, on the other hand, tells a quieter story that clicks once you handle it. On paper, the updates raised eyebrows: the larger numerals on the bezel, the move to an aluminum insert, and subtle changes to the GMT hand didn’t immediately scream “upgrade.” In hand, though, those choices make more sense. What we experienced was a watch that finally stepped out from under the shadow of Monta’s dive-watch roots and settled into its own role as a dedicated traveler’s piece. The Skyquest feels modern and tightly executed, with finishing that punches well above what most people expect from a microbrand. It’s less about heritage and more about refinement, balance, and wearability once it’s on your wrist.

• The Tudor Black Bay GMT is a heritage-driven travel watch that prioritizes presence, tradition, and a classic tool-watch feel.
• The Monta Skyquest GMT is a modern, microbrand-built traveler that focuses on thoughtful design, comfort, and understated execution.

Design & Wearability: Old-School Tool Watch Muscle vs Modern Wrist Comfort

The Tudor Black Bay GMT belongs to the school of watches that want to remind you they’re there. The matte black dial stays restrained, but the polished hour markers and trio of snowflake hands catch light constantly as your wrist moves. That mix keeps the watch legible without ever feeling sterile. The red GMT hand stretching just past the minute track sounds minor, but in use, it makes reading the second time zone faster and more intuitive than expected. The hour markers are simple dots with longer rectangular markers at 9 and 6 o’clock, while noon sports a larger triangle marker. The burgundy-and-blue aluminum bezel reinforces that same practical mindset: daylight and nighttime are easy to distinguish at a glance, even when you’re tired or moving quickly.

Where the Black Bay GMT really asserts itself is on the bracelet. It has that familiar Tudor heft and solidity, which feels reassuring rather than cumbersome. Once sized, it settles in and stays put, even without half-links. There’s a reason people rave about Tudor bracelets: they feel engineered for long-term wear, not showroom appeal alone. Swapping it onto a NATO shifts the watch’s personality. It sits a bit taller, sure, but it also feels more honest somehow, leaning fully into its tool-watch DNA instead of trying to straddle refinement.

The Monta Skyquest GMT takes a much cleaner and more intentional approach. Removing the internal 24-hour chapter ring from the first-generation model was the right call, and it’s obvious the moment you see the dial in person. The layout feels calmer, less busy, and easier to read during actual use. Enlarged applied markers and broad rhodium-plated sword hands give the watch a strong visual anchor, and while the newer GMT hand lacks the quirky charm of the stepped 24-hour hand version, it’s bolder and easier to track quickly. That matters more when you’re using the function. The bezel on the Skyquest is large, but paired with the oversized GMT hand, it reinforces the watch’s identity as a dedicated traveler rather than a dive watch with extra features bolted on.

On the wrist, the real standout is the bracelet. Monta’s updated bracelet and tool-less quick-adjust system make small comfort tweaks effortless throughout the day. The taper keeps it balanced, the clasp feels solid without excess bulk, and the whole setup encourages long, uninterrupted wear, as we experienced during our hands-on testing. It’s the kind of comfort you stop noticing, which is exactly the point.

• The Tudor Black Bay GMT delivers weight, presence, and traditional tool-watch confidence that feels rooted in heritage.
• The Monta Skyquest GMT prioritizes dial clarity, balance, and bracelet comfort, resulting in a travel watch that’s easier to live with hour after hour.

Build Quality & Technical Approach

Both the Tudor Black Bay GMT and the Monta Skyquest GMT are well-built travel watches, but they get there with different priorities. That contrast shows up almost immediately once you start wearing them.

Movements:

The Tudor Black Bay GMT takes a very Tudor-like approach to its movement: robust, purpose-built, and focused on real travel use rather than clever tricks. Inside is the in-house Caliber MT5652, running with a healthy 70-hour power reserve. As a true “flyer GMT,” the local hour hand jumps independently in one-hour increments, taking the date with it. The second crown position sets the hours, minutes, and GMT together. When you’re actually traveling, that functionality feels intuitive and low-friction. In our time wearing it, the movement hovered around +4 seconds per day, which is well within COSC and, more importantly, never noticeable in real use.

The Monta Skyquest GMT comes at the complication from a more pragmatic, user-friendly angle. Its Caliber M-23 is based on the Sellita SW330-2 and operates as a “caller GMT.” On paper, that’s a step down from the Tudor’s traveler setup, but in practice, it didn’t feel limiting. Alignment was solid, timekeeping gave us no reason to complain, and the movement felt predictable to live with. Honestly, we found ourselves using the bezel more than the crown to track additional time zones, which made the caller setup feel like less of a compromise. The 55-hour power reserve was also a welcome bonus, though the watch saw so much wrist time during testing that it rarely had a chance to run down.

Case Construction & Finishing:

The Tudor Black Bay GMT wears like you’d expect a modern Black Bay to wear: substantial. At 41mm wide with a long 50mm lug-to-lug and nearly 15mm of thickness, it’s not a small watch. On wrists larger than 7”, though, the proportions come together better than the numbers suggest. The sharply downward-angled lugs pull the case down around the wrist, preventing it from sitting flat and top-heavy. That’s why the watch feels more wearable than many similarly sized GMTs. Finishing is classic Tudor: brushed surfaces across the top keep things utilitarian, while polished slab sides add enough contrast to keep the case from looking dull. There’s also a subtle bevel running along the side of the case that you feel as your wrist moves. It gives the watch a bit of breathing room during long wear. Flip it over, and you get the familiar plain steel caseback—no exhibition window, no theatrics.

The Monta Skyquest GMT feels like a response to that kind of bulk. With a 40.7mm case diameter, shorter 47.4mm lug-to-lug, and a much slimmer 11.8mm thickness, it lands right in a sweet spot that’s immediately noticeable on the wrist. Compared to the Black Bay GMT, it wears flatter, lighter, and more balanced, especially for longer stretches. The case finishing is where Monta really flexes: tight transitions, clean brushing, and polished accents that feel deliberate rather than decorative. The bezel action on the Skyquest also stood out during testing. It’s positive and easy to grip, with edges that work well in actual use, not just in photos. Even with some polished bevels along the lugs and case sides, the overall impression is more rugged than dressy, especially compared to earlier versions.

Crystals:

The Tudor Black Bay GMT sticks to its vintage-leaning playbook when it comes to the crystal. The domed, boxed sapphire does a lot of visual heavy lifting, reinforcing that retro tool-watch vibe Tudor has dialed in so well. On the wrist, that raised profile gives the dial a softer glow and a bit of warmth you don’t get from flatter crystals. The trade-off is thickness: a noticeable portion of the watch’s height comes from that crystal alone. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s something you feel, especially when the watch catches the edge of a cuff or jacket sleeve.

The Monta Skyquest GMT takes a more modern, usability-first approach. Its sapphire crystal is treated with seven layers of anti-reflective coating on the dial side, and it shows immediately. As noted by our review team, reading the time felt effortless, even in harsh lighting, and photographing the watch was easy, thanks to the little glare it reflected. The crystal visually disappears more than the Black Bay’s, which fits the Skyquest’s cleaner, contemporary design language.

Water Resistance & Lume:

The Tudor Black Bay GMT doesn’t try to win spec-sheet wars here, and honestly, it doesn’t need to. With 200 meters of water resistance, it’s more than capable of handling swimming, travel mishaps, and whatever “vacation diving” means for most of us. It feels appropriately overbuilt without tipping into parody. In low light, the watch pulls its weight. The hour markers and snowflake hands are loaded with Super-LumiNova, and that lume comes on strong and stays readable through the night. It’s not flashy or color-coded, but it’s consistent and reliable: the kind of lume that quietly does its job while you sleep.

The Monta Skyquest GMT goes a step further on paper with 300 meters of water resistance, backed by a screw-down crown and substantial crown guards. It feels like Monta intentionally over-engineered this part. The crown is secure, though we wish it were a touch larger for an easier grip. Lume performance is excellent across the board. Monta uses BGW9 Swiss Super-LumiNova on the hands and indices, delivering a clean, crisp glow that’s easy to read and well-applied. It’s bright without being distracting, and it holds up nicely once the lights go out.

• Tudor Black Bay GMT: Built with institutional confidence: an in-house flyer GMT, thick case, domed crystal, and conservative specs that prioritize durability and long-term ownership over comfort tweaks. It feels intentionally overbuilt, and you’re always aware you’re wearing a serious, traditional tool watch.
• Monta Skyquest GMT: Engineered with daily wear in mind: slimmer case, excellent finishing, caller GMT movement, aggressive AR coating, and thoughtful bracelet ergonomics. It sacrifices some mechanical boldness but delivers a smoother, lower-friction experience.

Cost Considerations

The Tudor Black Bay GMT lives in an interesting pricing gray area. At retail, hovering around $4,300-$4,500, it’s hard not to notice that similar GMT functionality is now available for a lot less thanks to newer movements from the Swatch Group and Miyota. On paper, that stings a bit. On the wrist, it makes more sense. The finishing, bracelet quality, and overall cohesion remind you where the money went. This is a watch built with a level of care that’s hard to fake. That said, the real value play is buying used. With a little patience, Black Bay GMTs can be found under $3,000, and at that point, the cost-to-quality ratio feels much easier to justify.

The Monta Skyquest GMT comes in swinging from the opposite direction. At $2,435, it’s not an impulse buy. Still, it sits comfortably below the Tudor while delivering a level of finishing that rivals, and sometimes even embarrasses, larger Swiss brands in this bracket. There’s solid competition here from Zodiac, Oris, Mido, Longines, and even Seiko at a fraction of the cost, but the Skyquest manages to carve out its own space. It feels thoughtfully priced rather than aggressively discounted, and honestly, it’s the kind of watch that makes you question whether spending more actually gets you more. Available in multiple colorways and no longer stuck behind a pre-order wall, it’s an easy watch to recommend if the budget ceiling matters.

Final Thoughts: How Does the Well-Regarded Microbrand Really Hold Up Against the Swiss Giant?

After living with both the Tudor Black Bay GMT and the Monta Skyquest GMT, the truth is this. Once they’re in regular rotation, the Monta challenges the idea that you need a Swiss giant to get a genuinely satisfying GMT experience.

The Tudor Black Bay GMT brings weight, authority, and that Tudor confidence that comes from decades of institutional watchmaking. The flyer GMT function is objectively better for frequent travelers, and the in-house movement, case construction, and bracelet quality all reinforce the sense that this is a serious, long-term object. But that seriousness comes with trade-offs. It’s thicker. Heavier. More noticeable. You’re always aware it’s on your wrist, and sometimes that’s what you want. Other times, it’s more watch than the day calls for.

The Skyquest is thinner, easier on the wrist, quicker to size and adjust throughout the day, and fades into the background in the best possible way. The bracelet comfort, dial clarity, and overall balance make it a watch that encourages use rather than reverence. It doesn’t feel precious, and that lack of preciousness is what makes it such a strong daily companion. In real-world travel, desk work, and long days, the Skyquest feels designed to cooperate with you, not remind you of itself.

In other words, the Skyquest is the better recommendation. The Black Bay GMT is the heavier hitter. And unless you genuinely care about that last layer of pedigree and traveler GMT functionality, and will notice it every time you cross a time zone, the microbrand doesn’t just “hold up.” It makes the case that it’s the more rational choice.

Let us know in the comments below where you land. Are you choosing refinement and heritage, or comfort and clarity?