Description
Formex has taken the Field, its accessible titanium three-hander, and reworked it into a pilot's watch. The AirField 40 Automatic keeps the hardened Grade 2 titanium case — treated to approximately 900 HV — at 40mm diameter, 10.5mm thick and 48mm lug-to-lug, water resistant to 150m, and runs the Sellita SW200-2 Power+ at 28,800 vph with a 65-hour power reserve.
Pricing is CHF 830 / EUR 950 on a nylon strap and CHF 970 / EUR 1,075 on leather with a deployant clasp. Pre-orders opened on 24 September 2026, with deliveries from the end of October.
Design
The shift from field watch to pilot's watch is done through the dial rather than the case. The AirField adopts the flieger conventions — a high-contrast dial, an outer minute track sized for reading at a glance, and generously proportioned luminous numerals — while keeping the Field's compact 40mm footprint and short 48mm lug-to-lug, which is the dimension that actually decides whether a watch of this type sits well on an average wrist.
The hardened titanium is the specification Formex leans on hardest, and reasonably. Untreated titanium marks easily, which is the standard complaint against it; taking the surface to around 900 HV addresses that directly rather than asking the buyer to accept scratches as patina. At 10.5mm thick the watch stays genuinely slim for something rated to 150m.
Specifications
- Case: Hardened Grade 2 titanium (approx. 900 HV), 40mm diameter, 10.5mm thick, 48mm lug-to-lug
- Water resistance: 150m
- Movement: Sellita SW200-2 Power+, automatic
- Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz)
- Power reserve: 65 hours
- Price: CHF 830 / EUR 950 (nylon strap); CHF 970 / EUR 1,075 (leather with deployant clasp)
- Availability: Pre-orders from 24 September 2026; deliveries from end of October 2026
What's Exciting
The value argument here is specific rather than vague, and it rests on the barrel. The standard Sellita SW200-1 gives 38 hours; the Power+ variant reworks the mainspring and barrel to reach 65, which is the difference between a watch you must wind every time you pick it up and one that survives a weekend in a drawer. Getting that movement inside hardened titanium, under CHF 1,000, is a harder combination to find than the spec sheet suggests — most sub-1,000 titanium watches use the base calibre, and most 65-hour watches cost considerably more.
Formex is also unusually direct about what this is not. The SW200-2 is a Sellita, the brand says so plainly, and there is no attempt to dress a supplier movement as something else. For a watch at this price that honesty is worth noting, because the category is full of the opposite.
The limits are real. A 4 Hz Sellita is a workhorse, not a precision instrument, and the AirField's flieger styling is well-trodden ground — this is not an original design so much as a well-executed and correctly priced one. Judge it on the specification-to-cost ratio, which is where it is genuinely strong.
History
Formex was founded in Switzerland in 1999 and spent its early years known chiefly for a patented case-suspension system that mounted the case on sprung elements to absorb shock. The brand went quiet, then relaunched in 2017 under new ownership with a direct-to-consumer model, which is what allows the current pricing — the case suspension survives on the Essence and Reef lines, though not on the simpler Field family.
The Field arrived as the brand's most accessible entry, trading the suspension system for a straightforward titanium case and a lower price. The AirField extends that line rather than replacing it, adding the pilot's dial vocabulary to an otherwise proven platform, and it sits in the same tradition as the mid-century flieger watches supplied to European air forces — instruments defined by legibility rather than ornament.
