Titanium watches are strong, light and enduring: here are some of the best

Bremont's Martin-Baker range of pilot’s watches has been upgraded with a titanium case and completely new bracelet to match (which can be swapped for rubber or textile). The watch is more slender and subtle than the MB of old, but remains perfectly tough. A new stencil design for the numerals and a restrained monochrome colour theme continue the more sophisticated feel.

Setting a world record – Bulgari’s tenth – in the realm of ultra-thin watchmaking, this time for the thinnest tourbillon watch ever made, the Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon could hardly be made from anything as prosaic as steel or as massive as gold. The slinky bracelet has to be felt to be believed, while the titanium case perfectly complements the muted tone of the skeletonised movement.

Chopard isn’t the first brand you’d link with titanium or high-tech horological engineering, but with its high-frequency 8HF calibre, it does have a long-running line of precise, sporty designs. The latest comes with a ceramised titanium case, meaning the exterior has been treated for increased durability – titanium being somewhat vulnerable to superficial scratches despite its tensile strength.

Simply the best everyday watch the British brand has ever made. It’s thin, detailed, impressively finished for a sub-£2,000 watch and feels as robust as some much pricier designs. The spec is competitive as well: chronometer certification for daily accuracy and 300m of water resistance. The three-dimensional luminous hour markers are either charismatic or a bit over-the-top, depending on your view.

There’s something compelling about Gerald Charles’ persistent use of such an unusual case shape in a true sports watch, ie, one that it genuinely puts on the wrists of professional sportsmen and women. The GC Sport Tennis is a 200-piece limited edition whose lurid dial and strap rather outshine the sandblasted and coated titanium case – but when you put it on, the lightness is palpable.

Sometimes watch brands will make a big deal of how hard it is to polish titanium to a brilliant shine. Grand Seiko just gets on and does it, creating titanium watches that look every millimetre as dazzling as more obliging metals. The SLGB003 will be better known as ‘the UFA’, which stands for Ultra Fine Accuracy. Running on Grand Seiko’s innovative Spring Drive technology, it is accurate to +/- 20 seconds a year. Some watches will struggle to keep that kind of time in a day.

Few people expected Ressence, which has spent the last couple of years reducing its already minimalist watch style down even further with the Type 8 and Type 9, to release a bigger, more complicated watch. But in the Type 7, the independent watch brand has an option for anyone hitherto unsure about the form factor but in love with the oil-filled dome of rotating dials. Into that primary-coloured mix is added a GMT function.

Tudor has always favoured titanium for its Pelagos line of performance-led contemporary dive watches, so it makes sense that in launching a top-of-the range model it would stick with the metal. The Pelagos Ultra is rated to 1,000m, and comes with a strap extension system designed specially for divers, to the extent that it includes a luminous indicator to show when it is fully extended. It’s also METAS-rated, the independent certification that guarantees world-class levels of magnetic resistance.