Rolex GMT-Master II Review: The Definitive Travel Watch

The modern GMT-Master II is a 40 mm automatic in Rolex's proprietary Oystersteel, rated to 100 metres and built around a single idea: tracking more than one time zone at once. A fourth, independent 24-hour hand reads against a bidirectional ceramic bezel marked in twenty-four hours. That combination lets the watch show a home time, a local time, and — if you spin the bezel — a third reference zone. It is the most travel-focused tool Rolex puts in a steel case, and it is the most charismatic steel-sport watch the brand makes after the Submariner.

Rolex sells the steel 126710 in three bezel colorways, each with a collector nickname the brand itself never uses: the red-and-blue Pepsi(ref. 126710BLRO), the blue-and-black Batman (ref. 126710BLNR), and the newer grey-and-black Bruce Wayne(ref. 126710GRNR). A left-handed "Sprite" (ref. 126720VTNR) puts the crown and date at nine o'clock in green and black. They are mechanically identical — the choice is purely aesthetic, and, as we'll see, purely financial.

This is what separates the GMT-Master II from its stablemates, so it is worth understanding plainly. The watch has four hands: hour, minute, second, and a long arrow-tipped 24-hour hand. In normal wear the 24-hour hand simply circles the dial once a day and points at the bezel to tell you your home time on a 24-hour scale, while the regular hour hand shows local time.

The clever part is the "II" in the name. On the current calibre the local hour hand jumps independently in one-hour steps via the crown, without stopping the watch or disturbing the minutes. Land in a new city, pull the crown to the middle position, and click the hour hand forward or back to local time — the 24-hour hand stays locked to home. Need a third zone? Rotate the bezel to offset it. Few mechanical watches deliver this much genuinely usable information with this little fuss.

The case is classic Rolex sport: 40 mm of brushed-and-polished Oystersteel with crown guards, a screw-down Twinlock crown, and the kind of edge definition that survives years of wrist time. The headline component is the Cerachrom bezel insert. Producing a single ceramic ring in two colors — the red-and-blue Pepsi especially — is a genuine manufacturing feat, and the payoff is permanence: where the aluminium inserts of vintage GMTs faded and chipped, the ceramic is effectively impervious to scratching and UV. Your bezel will look the same in twenty years.

The colorways carry real differences in feel and in price. The Pepsi is the most storied and the most coveted; the Batman is the easiest to wear daily and the most subtle; the Bruce Wayne, with its smoky grey-on-black, is the stealth option for buyers who find the others too loud. Buyers can pair any of them with either the sportier Oyster bracelet or the dressier five-link Jubilee — the latter softens the watch considerably and is, to our eye, the more characterful choice on the Pepsi.

Inside is Rolex's calibre 3285, the movement that brought the modern GMT-Master II up to the brand's current standard. It carries the patented Chronergy escapement — efficient and resistant to magnetic fields — and a roughly 70-hour power reserve, enough to set the watch down on Friday and find it still running Monday. Every current model is certified as a Superlative Chronometer to −2/+2 seconds per day, a tolerance tighter than the industry's COSC standard and, crucially, verified after the movement is cased rather than before.

The independent local-hour adjustment is the part that matters in daily use. It is the difference between a travel watch you can reset in five seconds on the tarmac and one that forces you to stop and re-set the whole movement. On a complication built for crossing time zones, that detail is the entire point.

At 40 mm with crown guards and a roughly 48 mm lug-to-lug, the GMT-Master II wears true to the Submariner family — comfortably from about 6.5 inches of wrist up. Rolex slimmed the lugs and updated the bracelet on the current generation, and the watch sits flatter and more elegantly than its predecessors. The trade-off for all that information is a busier dial: four hands and a 24-hour bezel are more to read than a clean three-hander, and at 100 metres of water resistance it is a travel watch first and a swimmer second. For most buyers that is the right set of priorities, but it does make the Submariner the more obvious single-watch choice if depth and dial calm matter to you. Compare it against the dressier Datejust or the Daytona if your real question is which steel Rolex to buy first.

Retail sits around $10,550 on the Oyster bracelet and roughly $10,750 on the Jubilee — but retail is largely theoretical. Authorised dealers maintain long waitlists, and the steel colorways routinely trade well above list on the secondary market. As of mid-2026 the Pepsi has been changing hands around $22,000, with the Bruce Wayne in the low-to-mid $20,000s and the Batman the most accessible of the three, often in the high teens. These are approximate figures that move with demand and discontinuation rumors — verify current prices before you commit.

That premium is the single biggest argument against the watch, and it is worth being honest about: on a steel Pepsi you may pay double retail, and you are buying scarcity as much as watchmaking. The flip side is liquidity. No travel watch holds value as reliably or sells as quickly — if you ever need to exit the position, the GMT-Master II is among the most liquid assets in the category. For a sense of where this sits in the broader Rolex pricing landscape, see our guides on how much a Rolex costs and the best watches under $10,000 if the secondary premium pushes this one out of reach.

Check current GMT-Master II prices on Chrono24

The GMT-Master II is the most genuinely useful complication Rolex puts in a steel sports watch, wrapped in the most charismatic case the brand makes outside the Submariner. The dual- time function is real, the ceramic bezel is permanent, the movement spec is class-leading, and the colorways give the watch a personality the Submariner deliberately avoids. If you travel — even occasionally — it is the steel Rolex that justifies itself in daily use rather than in stories.

The arguments against it are about money and access, not the object. Buying a steel colorway means a waitlist or a steep secondary-market premium, and the busy dial and 100-metre rating make it a slightly less universal one-watch choice than its dive-watch sibling. If you can acquire one near retail, or you simply want the most useful Rolex tool watch and the resale floor that comes with the crown, it is very hard to regret. Browse the wider Rolex brand guide before you decide which model gets the first slot in your box.