Rolex's 2024 Watches Mark a Major Aesthetic Shift From Last Year

The world's top luxury watchmakers are descending on Geneva this week for the annual Watches and Wonders trade show. Here, brands like Rolex and Patek Philippe debut and showcase their new models for the upcoming year. And so far, it appears some of Rolex's offerings are getting a slight facelift. 

Some watch experts lamented that Rolex released some outlandish or colorful watches last year, including an "emoji" watch complete with a multicolored watch face. This year, however, it looks like Rolex is scaling back on the unique designs and returning to some classic aesthetics. 

Among those new offerings is the updated Deepsea watch designed to go more than 12,000 feet below sea level. It will feature gold lettering on the dial and bezel that ups the already-luxurious feel of the watch. There's also the new Cosmograph Daytona, which comes in two new versions with contrasting mother-of-pearl dials and subdials and diamond-encrusted bezels. Just be ready to cough up some serious change if you want to add any of these to your collection—between $50,000 and $70,000, to be more specific. 

The apparent back-to-basics approach to this year's watch refreshes should be a welcome surprise, according to watch expert and retailer Eric Wind. "I would say the collector community is very underwhelmed overall with the Rolex releases, but that’s OK — the last few years were almost too crazy in terms of super-desirable watches," Wind told Yahoo! Finance.

Watch expert Allen Farmelo echoed a similar sentiment in The Robb Report. "If anyone was complaining last year that Rolex had strayed too far into the circus of color... then this year proves that Rolex was always going to return to its quiet place at the center of the horological galaxy," he said.

Start saving now if you want to get any of these exciting new devices on your wrist.