Omega's new dress watch is a world first – achieving certification thanks to advanced new technology

While watch lovers will place value on all sorts of different facets of a design, accurate timekeeping remains one of the most crucial. Even if you accept that mechanical watches are unlikely to keep time even as well as your phone, you want it to be in the right ballpark.

Some, of course, go far beyond that. Now, Omega has unveiled a new collection of watches which mark the first instance of a two-hand watch being given a Master Chronometer status.

That collection is known as the Omega Constellation Observatory Collection, and makes use of some new technology from the Laboratoire de Précision to gain its credentials. Those technologies include the use of acoustic testing and optical hand-tracking, which allow for the certification of Chronometer-grade watches without a seconds hand.

Speaking about the development, President and CEO of Omega, Raynald Aeschlimann, said, "Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand. The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete."

The new testing method also compiles much more data than traditional ones. Previously, the position of the seconds hand was photographed once per day. With the new system, data is captured continuously from the very first second, and can isolate frequency irregularities, temperature and pressure sensitivities, positional variation, and amplitude fluctuations.

The collection comprises of nine model variations, including examples in each of the brand's different gold colours, and four references which come in steel. Those include a black model with a ceramic pie-pan dial, which has been in development for some time.

Priced from £9,100 / €10,600 / US$10,900 / AU$17,225 on the low end up to £49,500 / €57,200 / US$59,100 / AU$93,125 for the Moonshine gold on Moonshine gold version, there's some real range in this collection. Personally, I think that the lower end models represent especially strong value in the context of the current market.

If you're currently on the hunt for a dress watch, you could do a lot worse than these.