Hands On: Vero Airtanker Watch US Forest Service Edition

It goes without saying that the material and aesthetic quality of a product has a huge bearing on how much you enjoy strapping it on every morning, but an aspect of that enjoyment seldom considered at the point of sale, is just how much more you might enjoy wearing your watch if you knew that no matter what you did to it, the brand behind its creation would fix it free of charge for the first ten years after purchase.

Warranties aren’t sexy. They don’t turn heads. It’s likely, unless you hang out with a bunch of insurance salesmen, that a good warranty will make your friends green with envy. And yet, in an era where brands are desperately seeking some kind of market separation and endeavouring to add tangible value to a product without blowing their budgets, offering an absolutely killer guarantee very much hits the spot, these days..

A two-year international warranty is the industry standard. Three- and five-year warranties are becoming more common but sometimes require the customer to register with an online database or hand over more personal info to activate. Vero watch company, based in a tree-sentried suburb of Portland, Oregon, North America’s Beaver State, offers a ten-year, no questions asked, fully comprehensive guarantee on all of its products.

Maybe once in my career have I started a watch review by talking about the warranty. If memory serves, there was once a high-concept Panerai that boasted fifty-year coverage. However, the purchase price of that piece was marginally higher than the three figures one can expect to shell out for most of Vero’s wares. As such, while the product offering is stellar (I’ll get to that in a mo), the value add of having worry-free wear for a goddamn decade is a next-level proposition and, thanks to the rugged, GADA tools Vero produces, couldn’t be more on-brand. 

I first became aware of Vero when the brand released the model you see featured on these pages. It caught my eye with its colourful dial, power reserve indicator button (that big yellow pusher on the side of the case), and its cool, almost toy-like, grey case coating. It looks like nothing else and isn’t even an outlier within the Forest Service collection. It’s range mates boast yellow, bright green, and olive drag case coatings and are just as much fun as the Airtanker model I picked up while wending my way through Vero’s home state on a near border-to-border drive from Seattle to San Diego.

Tangent: If you’ve never been to Oregon and you’re an outdoorsy person, go. It’s a relatively low-profile state but easy enough to reach from abroad thanks to Seattle Tacoma International sitting just a couple of hours north of the state line. The abundance of unspoiled nature really hammers home the vastness of the USA and has, through summer especially, an incredible climate that, from a Northern European perspective, couldn’t be better balanced. It’s the perfect place to take your daily beater out on the trails for a hike or bike, diving into lakes for an impromptu swim, or scaling many of the manageable peaks the area has to its name.

I mention the state’s nature so directly because it is wordlessly expressed in every Vero product. These are watches built to be used and, thanks to the warranty, abused (if you feel like it). 

Firstly, Vero watches have a very solid construction and are no more likely to require a service than any other quality watch, but even if you totally trash it in a super cool, YouTube-worthy accident (think motorbike crash, bailing out of a fireball mid-air, or parachuting into the tarmac without a parachute), Vero will return your ticket to tip-top condition. Regrettably, if you kill yourself as well as your watch, only your next of kin will see the benefit of Vero’s service. Still, it’s nice to leave a little something behind.

This 39 mm watch wears even smaller than its diameter suggests thanks to its barely visible lugs and its stout 45.25 lug-to-lug measurement. It sits up on the wrist like a hockey puck and looks more like an altimeter or depth gauge than a timepiece, which instantly makes you look like Action Man or Natalie Poole (an oft forgotten female ally of Action Man), if you prefer.

Because of The Vero's, almost anti-watch appearance, light weight and comfort (thanks to a pliable fabric strap with a Velcro closure), I took to wearing it on my right wrist, opposite my Fortis Novonaut on my left (for anyone who knows the Novonaut, knows that’s not a watch to wear on anything but your dominant watch-wearing wrist). The combo was awesome. I felt like I could hop into the cockpit of any small plane or rescue helicopter and fly the thing with my eyes closed (possibly making use of that warranty in the process).

The orange/red double-level dial pops against the smoke grey case and the yellow button ties in with the seconds hand/on-demand power reserve indicator for an extremely technical look. Twin crowns that look a bit like ears protrude from the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. One sets the time and date (at 3 o’clock), while the other can be used to adjust the internal rotating bezel. Powered by a Seiko PX28A kinetic quartz movement (a rare but welcome treat), this watch, when fully charged, offers a power reserve of 4–6 months! It is water resistant to 120m and has rubberised bull horns to protect it from glancing blows.

As the official watch of the US Forest Service, I’d imagine most of its wearers would wear it on the standard strap while on duty, but the standard 18 mm lug width means that this piece can easily be worn on alternative bands. For me, a black two-piece sailcloth would be a nice choice as by removing the layer of fabric that runs between the case back and wrist, you reduce the active wearing height and make the cool US Forest Surface logo that adorns the stainless steel back visible. The watch has two strap lengths: the standard size fits 6.5" to 7.5" wrists and the long size fits 7" to 9" wrists. 

In summary, less than four hundred British pounds does not seem a lot of money for a watch that is fun, vibrant, horologically interesting (there are way too few kinetic movements on the market these days), and unbreakable (for ten years, at least). I’m glad to own a Vero and it might not be my last.