A Review of the Elliot Brown Beachmaster ‘Ghost’
Disclaimer: Elliot Brown supplied this watch to me for this review. I did not pay for this watch nor was I paid to do this review. Elliot Brown graciously allowed me to keep the sample. This is my first time handling any of Elliot Brown’s products. The price of the watch as reviewed is $819 USD.
If you’re in a hurry and don’t want to read the full review, here's my quick take: Elliot Brown makes fantastic, reasonably priced, tool watches for hard working dudes that want a reliable watch that looks great. The Beachmaster is a unique and well made timepiece.
History/General Info: Elliot Brown opened their doors in 2013 after long time friends Ian Elliot and Alex Brown decided they wanted to start a watch brand that focused on making the most wearable, affordable and toughest watches on the planet. Elliot Brown’s watch designs are inspired by military service, the outdoors, extreme sports and the local natural environment of the United Kingdom.
Over the past 11 years, Elliot Brown has built a strong following for themselves amongst military and law enforcement personnel. They have a tidy catalog of models with a variation of colorways per model and a mix of automatic and quartz options. Additionally, Elliot Brown offers a myriad of strap and bracelet options all at great prices that enhance their watches well and allow customers to customize their Elliot Brown to their unique needs. Elliot Brown also offers a unique Military and Police “Special Project” service where units can create their own customized watches.
What’s in a name?: I’ll leave it to Elliot Brown themselves to explain the inspiration for the Beachmaster model, below is an excerpt taken from the Elliot Brown Site:
“Initially imagined in response to a request at a Royal Marines event then refined into the most capable watch we have ever put our name to.
As a nod to its inception via the Royal Marines, we christened it Beachmaster: the Beachmaster is the military officer in charge of the disembarkation phase during an amphibious assault.”
Unboxing/ Packaging: Upon receiving the Beachmaster Ghost, I was greeted by a medium sized standard brown cardboard fold over box with the Elliot Brown logo located in the dead center of the top. Once I opened it up, I had a handwritten note from the Elliot Brown team located inside (thanks guys!) and seated in a cardboard throne inside was a very nice square Elliot Brown zip case. Upon removing the zip case and opening that, I could see the Beachmaster in all it’s glory. Inside the zip case was the watch safely packed into the foam of the case. Well protected and nearly organized amongst the accompanying strap tools and all of the papers that accompany the watch. The packaging was no nonsense, and felt like you were receiving a piece of kit that was meant to be used. Nothing superfluous or luxurious.
Initial impressions: I was very pleasantly surprised. I am not new to watches but I am fairly new to coming around to quartz tool watches. I know, I know…I’m such a snob. But I am working on myself okay. Broadening my horizons. The Beachmaster Ghost had a tough look to it, a well integrated rubber strap, fantastic weight, killer bezel and twin crowns that just felt right. At an initial glance, the watch appeared complicated and somewhat confusing to me, it was a style of complication that I was certainly not familiar with and one that is unique to Elliot Brown. But upon further inspection and discussions with fellow watch nerds, it turns out that it is extremely intuitive to use. More on that later.
Case: First things first, lets get some basic specs out of the way courtesy of the Elliot Brown website:
Diameter - 40mm case excluding crowns (41mm including the overhang of the bezel)
Lug to Lug -50mm
Thickness - 14mm
Lug width - 22mm
Water resistance - 300M/30BAR
PVD - Dark Grey Sandblasted
The first thing that came to mind when I began to handle the beachmaster was the quality of the case, bezel and crowns. The case is slab sided with down turned lugs with thick ends that make the watch wear in a comfortable yet sharp way. From the top down the case has a traditional look akin to a Tudor Pelagos with slender lugs that taper as they reach their ends. From the side the lugs appear to be almost barrel shaped. I imagine this unique shape to the lugs is to make room for the screw in bars that the Beachmaster uses to fasten your strap to the case.
Lug bars have been a feature that had seen a resurgence in the last few years in watches due to the ever rising popularity of fabric straps and as heritage based opportunity for tool watch brands to harken back to the MIL SUB days of MOD watches. Whether it’s CWC, Tudor, Omega or Elliot Brown, lug bars are firmly rooted in military watch making. Anyways, back to the rest of the watch.
The case has twin hobnail knurled crowns located at 2 and 4 o'clock. The two o’clock crown controls the internal click lock ceramic ball bearing operated rotating bezel that indicates the time to mission or elapsed mission time (pertaining to hours). This bezel is bidirectional and immediately drums up a sensation similar to turning a Sinn U series or Tudor Pelagos bezel. The ceramic click is precise and definite as you turn but feels smooth and softer in comparison to a traditional click spring. The bottom crown controls the time setting for the watch. The crown unscrews and screws in precisely and smoothly. The click to the various stages of time changing on the watch are firm. There is no winding on this watch due to it being a quartz.
The ceramic external mission timer bezel is 120 clicks, tight and precise. The coin edge of the bezel once again reminds me of the bezel on the original 42mm Pelagos. Fine, grippy with a 0.5mm overhang from the case so that it can always be gripped and turned even when wet and with gloves on. This is by far my favorite style of bezel. The numbers on the bezel are laser cut and filled in with lume. In the case of the Ghost variant of the Beachmaster, it is filled with a gray lume.
The caseback of the watch is very nicely done. It is bolted down instead of screwed onto the case. This ensures proper compression of the gaskets of the watch and the veracity of the 300 meter depth rating. A note on the depth rating, Elliot Brown individually tests each watch to its intended depth in order to ensure its quality and performance.
Thanks to the caseback being bolted on, this also allows Elliot Brown to perfectly orient the caseback logos and markings vertically on the watch. This is a nice touch that just shows that above and beyond attention to detail that the brand is known for. The back of the Beachmaster displays a combination of blasted and polished surfaces and a unique insignia for the model consisting of an octagon with the Elliot Brown logo, Beachmaster name and a wave inside of it and a horizontal bar underneath it. The bar is technically used by Elliot Brown to identify special editions and special projects but in the instance of their standard production models, it is a place that customers can customize their watch with a name, rank, service number or whatever they want (this service is not currently offered by Elliot Brown as far as I know, but it’s nice to have the dedicated space to it.
Here is another snippet of information from the Elliot Brown site explaining the context surrounding the caseback logo of the Beachmaster:
“ In the center zone, the Beachmaster wordmark is deeply stamped and polished with the NATO amphibious assault symbol above. An octagonal frame represents the ‘spatial placement symbol’ from the NATO APP-6(C) Joint Military Symbology manual, used to control the proportions of all NATO battle space signage.”
The crystal of the Beachmaster Ghost is exactly what I like to see in a watch. Domed sapphire with an internal AR. Dome or not, I have said it in my previous articles and will continue to get on my soapbox and preach that all sapphire crystals should be internal AR coated only. It's dumb to make something that is meant to be blemish and scratch resistant…and then coat it with a substance that is easily blemished and scratched. Rant over. I am pleased to see Elliot Brown doing things right.
Strap: The strap that my Beachmaster came on was a flat dark earth, fitted EPDM rubber. The strap integrates well into the side of the case and matches the design of the watch perfectly. The strap has a darker tone than the dial so it adds another dimension of color to the whole package without sacrificing the good looks or charm of the piece. The strap has an aggressive downward turn that begins essentially as soon as it passes the end of the lugs. This allows the strap to wrap nicely around the wrist without adding any unnecessary bulk or dimension to the lug to lug. The strap is signed vertically along the short side of the strap. Additionally, there are two keepers on the strap. A nice feature pertaining to the keepers is the integrated keeper stops that are molded into the strap itself. This is a great feature that holds your keepers in place and keeps them optimally spaced. The buckle of the strap is well made, signed by Elliot Brown with a unique buckle that is screwed onto the strap. Elliot Brown went above and beyond when it came to designing this strap, as they do with all other models in the catalog. This excerpt from their site explains some of the important features of the EPDM rubber:
“Made from EPDM rubber, it’s silicone-free, and is unaffected by ozone, seawater, or UV. It’s also hypoallergenic, non-sticky (so it won’t pick up fluff from your garments) and is beautifully neutral to wear.”
My one gripe with the strap was that the long side of the strap has a bulbous ramped end. This makes it easy to put the strap on, but I found it much more challenging than it needed to be to take the strap off. This was due to the sharp high end of the “ramp” getting caught on the keepers whenever it came time to take the watch off. This got so obnoxious at times (especially if my wrist was wet or sweaty) that I was worried I was going to rip or break a keeper in the process of getting the strap off. I have spoken to other Elliot Brown owners who did not share this experience. So maybe it is just me, but that was my experience.
Dial/Hands/Lume: Everything I have said up to this point has pretty much been applicable across the whole Beachmaster line up. This section is where I will get into what makes the Beachmaster ‘Ghost’ unique amongst the line up. First things first, Elliot Brown describes the ‘Ghost’ as being a “cool light stone dial”. I would agree with that description but for the sake of simplicity, I would call the color “greige”. Not white grey. Not quite beige. Almost an ivory. The initial impression I got when looking at the dial color of the “Ghost” was that it looked like bleached bone. Followed up by images of the Squale Corso Italian Albino dial coming to mind. Regardless of what comes to mind for you when looking at the watch, it looks fantastic. Particularly in contrast with the dark PVD case and the dark lume. The dial is nicely laid out in a traditional ‘explorer dial’ format with a combination of numerals at the cardinal points of the dial and painted on batons for the rest of the hour markers. Toward the center of the dial is where things get interesting. There we find the Elliot Brown logo and ‘Beachmaster” script encircled in a 24 hours gmt dial . This is where the secondary time zone can be tracked. All the numbers and text on the dial is applied in a lovely charcoal grey text that contrasts well against the stone dial without overpowering it. At this point, I would like to point out something that I absolutely love about the Beachmaster: the lack of a date function. This made the watch feel so simple to use, particularly when using the GMT. Removing the need to worry about the date made setting the GMT so easy. It also makes the watch appear very symmetrical and well balanced.
The hands of the Beachmaster are nothing short of perfection. The standard minute and hour hands are styled in the ubiquitous “Sword” hand format synonymous with British military watch history. The second hand is a simple arrow tipped hand. The GMT/ mission timing hand is where things get particularly interesting. The GMT hand is double stacked. There is a triangular arrowhead midway through the hand that points to the inner GMT circle of the dial. Then at the tip of the hand is another arrow head that is used to reference the rotating hour mission timing bezel. Effectively this ingenious lay out maximizes functionality and compatibility while minimizing clutter and complexity. Elliot Brown accomplished a very special thing with the Beachmaster.
The lume of the Beachmaster ‘Ghost’ is something we need to talk about. The Beachmaster uses a combination of blue and green glowing lume. When not activated, the green lume appears to be a medium grey. The blue lume appears to be almost black. When activated, the contrast is noticeable and the watch looks stunning. There is so much lume that is precisely applied to so many points, the watch is just fun to look at. The other variants of the Beachmaster have incredible lume that glows strong and long. The ‘Ghost’ variant however has a weaker glowing lume than the other models. It still works well and for a grey/black lume it is some of the best I have seen. I am genuinely impressed by the lume of the Beachmaster. Especially since dark/black lumes almost always disappoint.
Final thoughts: Once again we have arrived at the end of another review together. I wish I had some quippy joke or snarky thought to put in this section, but honestly I got nothing. The Elliot Brown Beachmaster is fantastic. You should buy one. If the Beachmaster isn’t for you, then you should get something from Elliot Brown. The quality and price point is terrific. Their pieces are tough as nails and designed with real passion and intent. You can tell that the people making Elliot Brown watches are end users and not just people trying to take your money. They care about their watches, they care about their customers and they care about how you use them. The Beachmaster is a stunning watch with a unique approach to mission timing that simply has not been executed this way prior. I am glad Elliot Brown sent this watch in for review because I was doing myself a disservice by not being familiar with their products.
Expect to see more of Elliot Brown in the SBWC’s future.