Technically, any analog watch can be used as a compass if you know what you’re doing.
Assuming you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, all you need to do is hold the watch parallel to the ground and point your hour hand toward the sun. South will be approximately halfway between your hour hand and the 12:00 marker. In the Southern Hemisphere, this same technique will give you the northern direction.
While not difficult to do, it’s not the most user-intuitive technique either, and accurately reading your direction using a watch dial can be tough to do. So it’s always a bonus when watches incorporate a compass bezel to make these readings easier, and Bell & Ross has gone the extra mile by making the compass feature a central attraction of its new GMT.
Lead the way
The new Bell & Ross BR-03 GMT Compass works a little differently than the method I described above, with the brand laying out the most accurate way to use your watch as a compass while also making it as clear to read as possible.
The 42mm stainless steel watch features a bizarre collection of hands that, at first, look pretty confusing. So I’ll quickly go over what each one does. The hour and minute hands are easiest. The hour hand is the small, white triangular hand, and the minute hand is the short white stick. Next is the seconds hand, which spans the whole length of the dial. The black half can be ignored; it’s the blue half that tracks your running seconds.