Tudor Pelagos 39 Review

Six months into owning the Tudor Pelagos 39, and I'm impressed.

I have a thing for watches, especially military and utilitarian ones. Along those lines, I've been a fan of the Pelagos line since the original launched back in 2012. I owned one of those early models and thought it was fantastic. Eventually I sold it because it was simply too large for my taste, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I've always been drawn to the Submariner, both Rolex and Tudor. The vintage Tudor and Rolex Submariners from the 1960s are some of my favorite watches ever made. Then Tudor introduced the Snowflake Submariners in the 1970s and that design completely won me over. That's one of the reasons I loved the original Pelagos when it came out. It was a modern version of the Snowflake.

Fast forward to 2013, and I was finally in a position to buy a Rolex Submariner. I bought one, after working hard on a specific project. But I made a small mistake. At the time, Rolex had just released the newest generation with the ceramic bezel and broader, squarer lugs. Naturally, I wanted the latest version. What I didn't realize was that this was the point where the Submariner began moving away from its roots as a tool watch and toward becoming a luxury object.

The ceramic bezel is shiny. The case sides are heavily polished. The whole watch has a much flashier presence than the older references. The wider lugs also make it wear noticeably larger than its 40mm case size would suggest. Looking back, I should have bought the previous generation, the last of the aluminum bezel models. I even had the opportunity to pick up a lightly used one, but I convinced myself that new was better.

As I've gotten older, my taste has shifted toward smaller watches. My sweet spot is usually 39 to 40mm, occasionally 38mm. That's ultimately why I sold my original Pelagos. At 42mm, it was just larger than I wanted. I can wear a 42mm watch without any issue, but given the choice, I'll usually go smaller. However, I've never stopped loving the Pelagos. Matte black and white, Snowflake hands, titanium throughout, virtually no shine, excellent anti-reflective coating, and ridiculous lume. It felt like a watch designed to do a job rather than make a statement. A pure tool watch.

Then Tudor released the Pelagos 39. On paper it sounded perfect, with a size that was exactly what I wanted. But Tudor decided to make it shiny.

A shiny Pelagos? Why? The semi-polished bezel and sun-burst dial reflective details completely changed the character of the watch for me. So I passed.

Then the black Pelagos FXD arrived and immediately got my attention. I passed on the original blue FXD since blue watches are not my thing, but the black one was just too awesome to pass. At 42mm it's still a large watch, however the thin, flat case helps it wear smaller than the numbers suggest. I bought the FXD and was (and am) genuinely impressed by it.

Still, there was something about the idea of a 39mm Pelagos, a modern Tudor Submariner Snowflake, that kept lingering in the back of my mind. I couldn't quite let it go.

So, despite myself, I bought a Pelagos 39.

This time I bought used. I found a lightly worn 2025 Pelagos 39 with the full set of papers and plenty of warranty left. Six months later, it's still on my wrist almost every day. In fact, the Rolex Submariner has been pushed into special-occasion duty.

Huh....

The size is excellent. The weight, or lack of it, makes it disappear on the wrist. It's simply easy to wear.

Over the last six months it has been in the mountains of Canada during winter, on Caribbean beaches, through cities across the United States, in oceans and lakes, ice climbing in Colorado, and under the cuff of a button-down shirt at dinner. It has gone pretty much everywhere I've gone.

If I were forced to keep only one watch, would I pick the Pelagos 39 over the Rolex Submariner?

Maybe... That surprises me more than anyone.

Now, there are a few things that bother me. None of them are deal breakers, but they're annoying enough that I still find myself grumbling about them.

The first is the shine. Yes, I'm complaining about it again. The polished bezel markers and the subtle sunburst effect on the dial catch the light far more than I would like. Outside in the sun or under bright indoor lighting, it flashes back at you. A Pelagos is supposed to be matte. That's part of its identity. Had Tudor made a fully matte Pelagos 39, it might have been the perfect watch.

The second annoyance is the lug width. 21 millimeters. Really, Tudor? The 40mm Submariner uses 20mm lugs. The 42mm MKII Paradive uses 20mm lugs. The 41mm CWC Diver uses 20mm lugs. 20 millimeters is everywhere. I like wearing NATO straps during the summer, and I already own plenty of 20mm options. Finding good 21mm straps is harder than it should be. On a 39mm watch, the choice feels weird and annoying. The 42mm Pelagos FXD uses 22mm lugs, which makes sense. 21mm on the Pelagos 39 feels like a decision made purely to be different. It's not a major problem. It's just annoying.

The final complaint is the lume. Don't get me wrong, it's still very good. The dial and bezel glow exactly the way a Pelagos should. Bright, clean, and visible for hours. The hands are another story. For whatever reason, they appear to have less lume than the dial markers. Even when fully charged, they never seem quite as bright. They'll last through the night, but they don't have the same intensity as the rest of the watch. It's not unique to my watch, either. It's a well-known characteristic of the Pelagos 39.

Still, for all the things that annoy me, the watch spends about ninety percent of its time on my wrist.

That probably tells you everything you need to know.

Yeah, I'm happy with it overall.