There are many good statements about pure aesthetics, legibility, and quality of design, but having the date easily accessible on your wrist is a very practical thing, even in the age of the smartphone. The key is executing the complication right, and luckily there are some brands doing just that. Here are several replica watches with date windows of various kinds that you should give a different look and impression.
Yes, I know that the vintage fake Audemars Piguet is not so cheap in price, and I know that I only choose expensive watches for these round-ups, and yes I know it is pretentious and annoying. BUT I firmly believe AP makes a good replica watch with a good date window. While most enthusiasts hate on the date window, I relish in them. Why wouldn’t I? Sometimes I need to know the date and I would love to read it on my wrist. The key to their success in creating a good date display is discretion. 
The amazing replica Bell & Ross does an excellent job with their date windows, which manage the difficult balance of providing legibility. The same compliment could be paid to many of Bell & Ross’s watches. The basic idea here is to make the date small, to have its typography and coloration match the other elements of the dial as much as possible, and to provide information without detracting from the design. The largely ETA-based output of the replica Bell & Ross may not offer much in terms of world-changing horology, but I really think that this brand, particularly with its round watches, does offer some of the finest watch design at its price point in modern watchmaking.
There are many different ways to do the date window, but they all seem to fall into one of three basic approaches. First, you can simply treat it as another piece of information the fake watch is intended to deliver, in which case you make it big enough to be legible, put it at 3:00 as custom dictates, and think no more about it. The second is to treat it as a necessary evil – in a new version of a much loved vintage model that had no date, your marketing department tells you the watch will sell better with a date, so you put it in but try to make it as unobtrusive as possible.
The third approach is to treat it as an essential part of the overall design of the watch, and to integrate it properly into the overall design. While the new Saxonia Outsize Date doesn’t have the sheer dynamism of the Lange 1, it is, like the Lange 1, an object lesson in how well a date window can be incorporated into the overall dial composition, so that it successfully becomes part of a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
As far as I am concerned, this replica watch strikes the perfect balance with its date window. The date neither interrupts the overall layout of the dial nor does it look like the designer tried to hide it somewhere to appeal to everyone at once.

Replica watches are posing a growing threat to the Swiss luxury watch industry, especially as “super-fakes” become increasingly difficult to spot – even by trained experts. Rolex is a prime target of counterfeit watch makers, though some other brands ranging from Panerai and Omega, to Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet are becoming the popular targets as well.
These “superwatches” are exquisitely crafted and nearly perfect in every detail, demonstrating the need for new technology to help eliminate the threat of fake watches before they start to have a real detrimental effect on brands’ profits. In fact, Swiss researchers now believe that by detecting trace metals in their ingredients, they can tell the difference between genuine and fake watches and help determine where they came from.
Using a sample of 35 replica rolex watches, scientists from the University of Lausanne, the Cantonal Laboratory of Vaud, and the anti-counterfeiting department of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry analyzed the watch cases using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, in order to get a readout of the elemental composition of the metal.
According to Securing Industry, which reports on supply chain and brand security, “the team found they were able to group some of the fakes according to their compositions.” They then cross-referenced the findings with previously-gathered intelligence about the provenance of confiscated fake watches and where they were seized. “Some of the chemical profiling data corroborated existing knowledge,” the site notes, “while others revealed new connections between different seizures and specimens.”
The findings, published in forensic science international, suggest that the complex and expensive machines needed to make truly high-quality counterfeits have been found only in “a limited number of production sites”, narrowing the field a bit.”Cases from the same production batch are made from the same materials and should have the same chemical composition,” the researchers explained.
So if researchers can create a chemical signature for certain fake watches from a particular location, they should be able to identify future fakes from that location. While the Swiss replica watch industry produces about 30m genuine watches a year, 9 per cent of all customs seizures are now counterfeit. Unless the Swiss scientists figure this out, we expect that number to only increase.

There have been a plenty of interesting replica watches released recently. Generally, this interest was centered complication — and rightly so, it’s really the exact watch industry’s traditional bailiwick. But as far as I am concerned, one of the most interesting collections overall was the fake Panerai.
Accomplished at the higher end of the spectrum, Panerai tends not to play the complication game, which is completely in keeping with the brand’s rough and tumble history. On the contrary, they went down a different route. Panerai’s SIHH 2019 releases were particularly Submersible models, several of which tie into the replica Panerai’s existing brand partnerships — including a series of extremely limited pieces that come with a rather incredible money-can’t-buy experience bundled in, a pivot to a more experiential offering that’s a smart play. After all, what better way to immerse yourself in the world of Panerai than free diving in French Polynesia, or training with Italian commandos?
The fake watch we’re looking at today is part of this equation – it’s the Mike Horn Edition, made in accordance with legendary explorer and long-time Panerai ambassador Mike Horn. It is a tough, reliable dive watch on the surface, but look a little deeper and the real message of this watch comes through. Mike Horn is, apart from being exceptionally well-travelled, a passionate advocate for the protection and preservation of our earth. And to that end, much effort has been made to make this Submersible as sustainable as possible.
The 47mm case is made of EcoTitanium, which is coming from recycled already-processed titanium, mostly from the aerospace industry. The supple strap is also rather green. It’s made from recycled PET, and is quite comfortable on the wrist. Otherwise, all is as you’d expect from the fake Panerai. A generous 300 metres of water resistance, three days of power reserve thanks to the P.9010 movement, and a highly legible dial, surrounded by a fully EcoTitanium bezel. The text printed on the crystal is a nice touch.
The popular model isn’t just a fresh take on the Submersible, and it’s a fresh take on corporate social responsibility. What’s more, if this is a concept you can really get behind, there’s always its more limited cousin, the amazing replica model, which consists of an arctic expedition with Mike himself in the sticker price.