Most watch brands like to talk about heritage, prestige, and centuries of tradition. Studio Underd0g does the opposite. It leans into being new, being playful, and being a little bit silly, all while quietly building watches that serious collectors respect. The British microbrand has gone from a single sketch shared on a Facebook group to a name that gets mentioned alongside Swiss giants like H. Moser & Cie, and it did it in just a few years. That jump is unusual enough to be worth understanding for anyone weighing whether one of these watches deserves a spot in a collection.
What Is the Studio Underd0g Watch Brand?
Studio Underd0g is a British independent watch brand known for bright, food- and pop-culture-inspired dial colors paired with genuine mechanical movements. The name is spelled with a zero instead of the letter “o” on purpose, a nod to the brand’s outsider attitude toward an industry that often takes itself very seriously.
Founded by British industrial designer Richard Benc, the brand builds its watches around hand-wound and manually operated chronograph movements rather than relying purely on design gimmicks. That combination — genuinely playful looks backed by real horological substance — is the main reason the brand has grown such a devoted following in a short amount of time.
How Studio Underd0g Got Started
Studio Underd0g started in 2020, when founder Richard Benc posted a single watch design on an enthusiast Facebook page during the early pandemic lockdowns and got an unexpectedly huge response. That reaction became the spark for turning a hobby sketch into an actual brand.
Benc, working from the UK, wanted to make watches that didn’t lean on old family names or manufactured mystique to justify their price. His debut piece, the Watermel0n chronograph, used a pink-to-green gradient dial powered by a genuinely respected hand-wound movement, and it sold out fast. What could have been a one-off novelty instead became the foundation of a growing lineup, and the brand has since released additional collections, collaborated with far more established Swiss names, and built a reputation as one of the more personality-driven success stories in modern British watchmaking.
Studio Underd0g built its entire identity around a simple contrast: no centuries of family history, no manufactured mystique — just a name that openly admits it’s the newcomer, and watches designed to earn attention on their own merit.
The growth since that first Facebook post has been fast by any standard. By 2023, a single pre-order window for the chronograph series drew more than 3,500 orders, the brand picked up a nomination at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (widely considered watchmaking’s most prestigious awards), and its pieces reportedly outsold work from more established independents like Christopher Ward, Fears, and Anordain at auction. For a brand that started as a side project during a lockdown, that’s an unusually fast climb up the independent watchmaking ladder.
What Makes Studio Underd0g Watches Different
What sets the brand apart is the combination of bold color and genuine mechanical quality at a relatively accessible price. Most of the brand’s watches use column-wheel or monopusher chronograph movements, which are mechanisms usually found in far more expensive watches, wrapped in dials that reference things like fruit, dessert, or sushi rather than traditional watch language.
That combination matters because plenty of “fun” or colorful watches on the market are simply quartz pieces with a loud dial slapped on top. Studio Underd0g instead builds its identity around real chronograph mechanisms, then lets the design team have fun with how those mechanisms are dressed up. The brand also assembles and quality-checks its watches in the UK, with every piece regulated in three positions and demagnetized before it ships, and a report card included in the box so buyers can see exactly how their individual watch performed.
The Studio Underd0g Collections
Studio Underd0g organizes its watches into three main series, each built around a different type of movement and a different design idea. The brand has also stepped outside those three series occasionally, including with the Alliance 02, a fully luminescent pocket watch marketed as a world first before it sold out — a reminder that the brand treats its playful reputation as license to experiment, not just a marketing angle.
01Series: The Original Studio Underd0g Watch
The 01Series is the brand’s original bi-compax chronograph, built around a hand-wound movement and known for its tachymeter scale and two-tone dial layout. This is the collection that includes fan favorites like Watermel0n, Mint Ch0c Chip, Desert Sky, and Go0fy Panda.
Early versions of the 01Series used the Seagull ST-1901, a Chinese-made hand-wound column-wheel chronograph movement based on a vintage architecture that’s respected among watch nerds for punching above its price. The newest generation, called Gen 3, moved to a bespoke version of that movement, the ST-1901B, which improved accuracy to a range of about -10 to +15 seconds a day, gave the watch a slimmer case, and added a larger sapphire case back so owners can watch the mechanism work. Gen 3 pieces launched at £550.
02Series: Studio Underd0g’s Field Watch
The 02Series trades the chronograph function for a simpler, time-only field watch inspired by classic military designs like the “Dirty Dozen” watches issued to WWII soldiers. It swaps the loud two-tone chronograph dial for a sandwich-style construction instead.
That layered dial is one of the more clever engineering details in the whole lineup. A dyed disc of Super-LumiNova forms the base layer, and a separate sapphire disc, printed with the numerals and branding, floats above it. By day the watch reads like a clean, modern field watch; once the lights drop, the whole face lights up rather than just the hour markers and hands, an effect helped along by an embossed jellyfish on the case back — a nod to the fact that many jellyfish species are bioluminescent. Colorways in this line, such as Pink Lem0nade and Steffany Blue, have generally sold on the secondary market for somewhere between roughly $1,000 and $1,700 depending on the specific model and condition.
The 02Series has already gone through a generational update, and the changes say a lot about how the brand fine-tunes its watches. The original 2023 model ran on a Sellita SW210-1 with a 42-hour power reserve in a 37mm case, priced at £800. The second generation switched to a Sellita SW200-2 M Power+ instead — technically an automatic caliber with its rotor removed to keep the hand-wound feel the field-watch look calls for — which pushed the power reserve up to roughly 63 hours while the case grew slightly to 37.5mm but got thinner, dropping from 12mm to 11.5mm thick. That upgrade came with a modest price increase to £875, still 100 meters water resistant.
03Series: Studio Underd0g’s Top Watch
The 03Series is the brand’s most technically ambitious collection, built around a Sellita SW510 monopusher chronograph movement instead of the earlier Seagull calibers. A monopusher design controls the start, stop, and reset functions of a chronograph with a single button on the crown, a construction historically associated with high-end names like Patek Philippe.
This series also carries the highest price tag in the standard lineup, generally starting above roughly $2,300 for new pieces. The standalone Salm0n edition, inspired by Japanese cuisine, uses a two-tone dial meant to resemble a cut of salmon, split between a coppery lower section and a smoky grey upper half, and it was priced noticeably higher than the brand’s earlier releases at launch, a clear sign of how far the brand had moved upmarket since Watermel0n.
Best Studio Underd0g Watches to Know
A handful of models come up again and again in reviews and collector conversations, spanning all three series and several of the brand’s collaborations.
| Model | Series | Debuted | Price | What Makes It Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Watermel0n | 01Series | 2020 | £550 (current Gen 3) | The debut watch that launched the brand |
| Mint Ch0c Chip | 01Series | 2020 | £550 (current Gen 3) | A cult-favorite colorway from the original four-piece lineup |
| Pink Lem0nade | 02Series | 2023 | £875 (current Gen 2) | Field watch with a pink-to-yellow luminous sandwich dial |
| 03Series Salm0n | 03Series | 2024 | £1,700 | First standalone monopusher chronograph, sushi-inspired dial |
| Passi0n Fruit | 03Series x H. Moser & Cie | 2024 | $64,900 (set of two) | Limited 100-set collaboration sold alongside a Moser Endeavour Perpetual Calendar |
| Gimlet | Fears x Studio Underd0g | 2023 | Collaboration, no longer available | Made in partnership with Bristol’s historic Fears Watch Company |
| Champagne & Caviar | Massena LAB x 03Series | 2025 | $2,200 | Limited to 200 pieces; sold out in 12 minutes |
The collaborations show how quickly the brand’s reputation grew. The H. Moser & Cie “Passion Project” paired a purple-dialed Moser Endeavour Perpetual Calendar with a matching Studio Underd0g 03Series, sold exclusively as a two-watch set limited to 100 pairs at a combined price of $64,900 — a striking jump for a brand that started as a pre-order-funded project just a few years earlier. Studio Underd0g has also worked with Fears, one of Britain’s oldest family-run watch companies, originally established in 1846 in Bristol, and with Sartory-Billard on the SunFl0wer watch. The most recent collaboration, the Massena LAB 03Series Champagne & Caviar, launched on November 11, 2025, and reportedly sold out within 12 minutes.
How Much Do Studio Underd0g Watches Cost?
Prices vary a lot depending on the series, but most new releases fall somewhere between roughly £550 and $2,300, with special collaborations priced well above that range. The 01Series sits at the entry point, the 02Series lands in the middle, and the 03Series occupies the top of the standard lineup.
Because the brand sells directly to customers through limited pre-order windows rather than keeping a constant retail stock, secondary market prices on sites like Chrono24 can run higher than the original retail price, especially for sold-out colorways. Buyers chasing a specific discontinued design should expect to pay a premium over what the watch originally cost.
Who Should Buy a Studio Underd0g Watch
These watches suit someone who wants a real mechanical watch without the stiff, old-fashioned feel that usually comes with one. The brand sits in an unusual spot: the movements and finishing are serious enough to interest experienced collectors, but the pricing and the sense of humor make it approachable for a first-time buyer of a hand-wound watch.
That makes the 01Series chronographs a sensible starting point for a first mechanical watch, since they’re the most affordable entry and the easiest to find compared to the more limited later series. Someone who already owns a few conventional watches and wants something with more personality, without spending serious money, is a good fit for the 02Series field watches. And collectors chasing something more technically impressive, or willing to pay closer to what an established Swiss brand charges, are the ones the 03Series and the H. Moser or Massena LAB collaborations are really built for. What ties all three together is that none of them are meant to be a “safe” or purely investment-driven purchase — this is a brand for people who want a watch that says something a little different on the wrist, not one chosen purely to hold its resale value.
Where to Buy Studio Underd0g Watches
Studio Underd0g watches are sold directly from the brand’s own website during scheduled pre-order windows, rather than through stores or on-demand ordering. The brand deliberately avoids the waitlist model used by many hyped brands.
Instead, the brand opens short, announced ordering windows a few times a year — sometimes lasting just a few hours — and anyone who places an order during that window is guaranteed a watch, with no purchase history or VIP status required. The main requirement is knowing when a drop is happening, which usually means following the brand’s newsletter or social accounts ahead of time. Once a window closes, that particular batch is done, and the next opportunity is whatever the brand announces next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it spelled “Underd0g” with a zero?
The stylized spelling is a deliberate branding choice meant to reflect the company’s playful, non-traditional identity in an industry that usually favors serious, old-fashioned names.
Who founded Studio Underd0g?
The brand was founded by British industrial designer Richard Benc in 2020, after a watch sketch he posted to an online enthusiast group during the pandemic drew an unexpectedly strong response.
What movements does Studio Underd0g use?
It depends on the series. The 01Series chronographs run on hand-wound Seagull movements, including a bespoke version called the ST-1901B, the 02Series field watches use a Sellita SW200-2 caliber modified for manual winding, and the 03Series monopusher chronographs use the Sellita SW510.
Are Studio Underd0g watches assembled in the UK?
Yes. The brand’s watches are assembled in Great Britain and undergo independent quality control, including demagnetization and multi-position accuracy testing, before they’re shipped to customers.
Where can I buy a Studio Underd0g watch?
Watches are sold directly through the brand’s own website during scheduled pre-order windows rather than through general retail stock, so timing a purchase around an announced drop is the most reliable way to get one at retail price.
Conclusion
Studio Underd0g built its reputation by refusing to treat “serious” and “fun” as opposites, pairing genuinely respected chronograph movements with dials that look like fruit, dessert, or a sushi counter. What started as a single lockdown sketch has turned into a three-series lineup, a UK-based assembly and quality-control process, and collaborations with names like H. Moser & Cie and Fears that most microbrands never get close to. The practical takeaway for anyone shopping the brand is straightforward: the right series comes down to whether the goal is a first mechanical chronograph, a versatile field watch, or something closer to a technical showpiece — and getting one at retail price comes down to catching the brand’s pre-order announcements before a window closes.
