Tissot Seastar: Innovative Solar-Powered Timepiece

Discover Tissot’s Seastar 38mm and PRC 100 Solar featuring striking design, adaptable sizing, and innovative solar technology.

Watch enthusiasts often exhibit a style deficit that they attempt to compensate for with fabulous timepieces. We say ‘fabulous’ here in the sense of a specific watch lending the wearer the luxurious magnificence of a well-groomed mane…or perhaps halo would be more apt.

And yes, luxurious is also a key word for the watch-buying public, but more on this in another story, perhaps. The trouble with this sense of being stylish is that it is often paired with extreme casualisation; the idea here is that you can indulge in the serious comfort of a singlet while exhibiting your net worth in your sneakers and ticker (with perhaps a chain or five in the mix).

Do you have an image in mind from all the descriptive colours? Perhaps something reinforced by a healthy (or not) dose of bias… Well, Tissot invites you to take those thoughts and shove them because it is amongst a select group of Swiss watchmakers that understands that watches should work in combination with a, shall we say, ensemble.

In other words, the Tissot watch is not a token nod towards aestheticism, especially not when you consider the inherent innovation (more on this shortly). Similarly, it is not a piece of jewellery masquerading as a tool.

Perhaps we can venture to suggest that the Tissot watch aims to be a style anchor of sorts. We have this idea in mind not merely because Tissot has a watch called the Stylist but from the brand’s various communication visuals and advertising campaigns. It is also one of the reasons that Tissot led the way in making the watch small again.

Foreshadowing

Considering that Tissot is the brand responsible for the immodestly proportioned Seastar and T Touch models, our proposition might surprise you. When the editor proposed this idea, it was also a bit puzzling.

Then again, Tissot is most recently famous for the PRX (surprise) and that family of watches, which is precisely where the brand showed awesome acumen in, first, going mechanical, and then smaller in gender neutral styles. In both quartz and mechanical versions, Tissot offered a range of sizes, with the smaller models consistently earning praise. Now the brand goes one better and ropes in the sun for good measure!

Of course, Tissot also has something for everyone, so we are playing into the brand’s strength there to tap into a couple of angles. As for gender neutrality, the brand has ambitions to appeal equally to men and women, so a wide range of options and sizes is to be expected.

This brings us to our lead-in watch here, which is the new Seastar 38mm chronograph. Now, as you might well know, Tissot had the Seastar in mind pretty early on, registering the name in 1952 and releasing the first models in the 1950s – precise details on specifications are light, but we do know that it was water-resistant and dust-proof. The 38mm quartz chronograph may be similarly sized as the original time-only mechanical watches, but the new reduced size is only the tip of the iceberg here.

The real meat of this seaside picnic is variety and bold colours. The teal dial version, with matching bezel and silicone strap is a standout, although the PVD rose gold treatment for the case helps make the case. Beyond this admittedly trendy watch, it is significant that there are six versions of this new watch. The straps are also interchangeable so the point is clearly to encourage experimentation but also flexibility to match one’s sartorial needs. To return to the teal chronograph, not everything will work well with this watch so the prospective owner will need a good eye for colour coordination.

Let There Be Light

Everything we noted above for the Seastar is true of the PRX, where there is even a bimetal option, but this is well known, so we will move on immediately to the PRC 100 Solar, which Tissot makes available in 39mm and 34mm versions. There are several versions here – five in 39mm and four in 34mm – but here the apparel is powered by some very clever industrial thinking.

The ‘Solar’ part of the name explains a lot, including all the foreshadowing we have been doing. But, for the record, this is a proper big deal because the solar power on show here is not just rented from the Japanese. Instead, Swatch Group – of which Tissot is a part – has delivered something no manufacturer in Switzerland has.

The Lightmaster technology (as Swatch Group calls it) allows Tissot to offer the PRC 100 Solar with stunning dials that do not exhibit a hint of the photovoltaic cells that mark such watches. You might have seen other examples of this, true, but this is the Swiss Made stuff right here – our peers at Fratello have already seen the ins and outs of the production and came away impressed. We have every expectation that our Autumn cover story might indeed revolve around this new technology because the PRC 100 Solar might be a truly important watch – and not just for Tissot.

With this in mind, we will keep some of our ammunition for that (potential) story in reserve, but we will give Tissot a pat on the back ahead of our innovation stories in Autumn. It all comes down to watch brands needing to keep their dials clear of technical clutter – watches do not have a large amount of real estate, so giving this critical piece over completely to technical needs is a big sacrifice.

Tissot has neatly circumvented this with its in-house (Swatch Group) ingenuity; it is only fitting that Tissot gets first dibs on this, given the history of chronometric experimentation here, ranging from mechanical to quartz and solar power. Watch buyers who have been lamenting the lack of innovation in quartz models or complaining about exorbitant pricing, the PRC 100 Solar is just what you are looking for. Prices start at $620 for the 39mm models, although we have not yet seen where the 34mm models will fit based on what is on the website at press time. Happily, updates will be coming soon!

This story was first seen as part of the WOW #79 Summer 2025 Issue