I rarely like to put my own little fetishistic watch reviews up here unless the watch is something amazingly unique or unless I think you, dear reader, will get a kick out of the quality or styling of a particular piece. That’s why I chose to write up this Benarus Megalodon Diving Watch, a huge monster of a timepiece that is water resistant to 2,500 meters or about 8,000 feet. Considering the deepest SCUBA dive was 330 meters while the deepest ADS dive was 610 meters, I doubt you’ll make it down to 2.5 kilometers in one piece.
Barring improbable diving capabilities, why is the Megalodon so cool? Well first it has a self-winding automatic ETA 2824-2 movement with date window and sweep seconds hand as well as a case the size of a small apple. The case and band are made entirely of titanium and so are surprisingly light and wearable although there were some fit and finish issues with the clasp and bezel. → Read More
For the third time in a row Tag Heuer has once again released the worlds most precise mechanical chronograph watch. The oddly named Mikrogirder 2000 watch measures time with 5/10,000th of a second precision (and flair).
The best German luxury brand A. Lange & Sohne releases a watch that sincere watch connoisseurs will go ga-ga over. It is the new Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar timepiece.
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The famous and very iconic Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch get’s “Watch What-Iffed” using Photoshop to explore what variations on the core design would look like.
A new analog & digital combination watch for pilots was just announced by Hamilton called the Khaki Flight Timer. It has loads of features in a conservative Swiss package. → Read More
Casio Japan is planning [JP] to roll out the G-SHOCK GB-6900 on March 16 next year, a wristwatch that connects to certain smartphones via Bluetooth LE (LE=low-energy, a standard that’s baked into Bluetooth 4.0). The device will be compatible with the Medias LTE N-04D Android phone from NEC (to be released next year) and NEC’s Medias PP N-01D.
Casio says that the G-SHOCK not only synchronizes the time with the phones but also shows incoming calls, emails, or SMS on its display. Users can also switch their handsets to vibration mode by pushing a button on the watch or set alarms. → Read More
Zurich-based Maurice de Mauriac timepieces are now available with an optional upgraded movement purchased by high-end watch movement maker Concepto. The cool new chronograph movements are mostly black with compelling decor.
Girard-Perregaux’s very respectable Sea Hawk II diving watch model gets reviewed. The famous durable diver has some of the best luminant on the market in a very detailed package with an in-house made automatic movement.
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Planning a trip around the world in 80 days? Spending some time with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? You’re going to need this $149 Tokyoflash, touchscreen pocket watch that, is as far as I can tell, unreadable by mere mortals.
The watch comes in four colors and features a touch display to scroll through the dual-time, date, and alarm features. It’s cased in a nice steel case with mineral crystal cover and, with a bit of patience, you can learn what the heck this thing actually says. It has a back-lit LCD screen that drops into a “natural” color when unlit. → Read More
In the strange, small world of watchmaking, there’s lots of money to be made on items that we would call, at best, totemic. To make those items, you still need small mechanical parts. That’s where Nivarox comes in.
Nivarox makes balance springs. The name stands for “ni variable, ni oxydable,” which translates to “neither variable nor oxidable.” These tiny springs swing the balance wheel in almost every mechanical watch and the goal of invariability coupled quality metals made Nivarox one of the most important companies in the world during the 20th century. Now they’re owned by the Swatch Group, a company that has a virtual monopoly on the high-end watch market. And, interestingly, most competitors are just fine with that.
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For the 2011 holiday season aBlogtoRead.com is giving away a total of ten watches. Winners will be chosen randomly and selected to win one of the available timepieces. Up for grabs are some desirable mechanical watches and cool gadget pieces.
While we tend to prefer “new” versus “old,” there is a certain charm in some vintage watches. A great brand to look at is Swiss Omega, and here is a very definitive guide to collecting the best timepieces from their past. → Read More
If you’re planning a marathon next year or just full of delicious stuffing and turkey, you may want to look into getting a sports watch. These wrist computers offer GPS, heart-rate, and pace measurements for runners, bikers, and, most recently, swimmers and they can help motivate you to get off your duff and, what’s more, help you shave some seconds off your time.
I’ve used all of these except the Garmin and they range from $350 to about $200. When looking at a sports watch, take into consideration your daily regimen as well as your – or your intended recipient’s – favorite sport. Something like the Nike+ GPS watch is best for runners while the Polar RCX5 works for triathloners. Just starting out? Take a look at Garmin and Suunto for simpler sport computers designed to motiviate you to get off your keister. → Read More
We first talked about the Wimm One in August, noting that no wearable device has ever made sense to me, at least in watch format. I believe I may need to eat my words. The Wimm is a clever little module – the watch band is removable – that runs simple applets. It runs a stripped down version of Android and includes a fairly complete SDK for programming little widgets. In this incarnation, it includes a stopwatch, worldtime clock, and a few other treats. The watch drops into transflexive LCD mode when it needs to conserve power.
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A few of the most forward thinking European watch designers have come together to bring the quirky and highly forward-thinking brand called Ochs und Junior. The brand offers watches that combine ease of telling the time with minimalism – and they are available in literally any color combination you can dream of.
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Phosphor has just announced a new world time/dual timezone model, the World Time Sport. The company is well-known for their e-ink watches (we reviewed a few here) and this one uses a unique touch interface to scroll through multiple timezones as well as various screens including a dual-time screen for travelers.
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I got to sit down with Steve Hallock, the North American president of MB&F and driving force behind the Swiss watch brand’s western expansion. The watch he brought for us is the LM1 aka the Legacy Machine #1, a new piece we wrote about earlier last month and that is just now shipping to oligarchs and captains of industry around the world. → Read More
In the pantheon of mechanical wristwatches, the Speedmaster holds a high place. Originally built in 1957 as a reaction to the first wrist-worn chronographs coming out of competing houses, the iconic design – white on black with bold, eminently readable chapter rings and pips – the Speedmaster cemented its place in history when Buzz Aldrin wore his on the moon in 1969. Omega has been flogging that relationship ever since, much to the brand’s benefit and Speedmaster fans rabidly hunt for new and old models like madmen intent on owning stars.
Decades later the Speedmaster has maintained this original styling and functionality and, barring a few odd turns taken in the 1970s and 80s, hasn’t strayed far from the white on black design. This new model, the Moonwatch Co-Axial, pays homage first to the watch’s importance in the space race and, second, to the contributions of one of the greatest modern watchmakers, George Daniels. → Read More
If there’s one thing missing from modern watches it’s color. The 70s and 80s brought us things like Doxa’s orange and Breitling’s baby blue but no one, lately, has strayed from the old leathers and grey chromes of modern fashion watcher. Thankfully, the ZIIRO Celeste adds a bit of the old mix-a-lot to some staid steel quartzes. → Read More
As a watch fan, setting your pieces back and forth a few times a year is trivial. But what if you’re dealing with a collection of 8,000 watches? This video shows how the folks at Tourneau Time Machine, New York’s largest watch shop, deal with all of the winding, setting, and checking of their entire stock.
The entire process takes three days, from Friday until Sunday. → Read More
The “Virgin” king Sir Richard Branson teams up with Bulova for a special limited edition watch. 46mm wide and done in titanium, the watch features a GMT hand and world time function.
May the high-end watch world’s fascination with digital mechanical watches never end. The newest drool-worthy mechanical creation is a watch with the simple name of 2LMX. It features a highly complex mechanical movement with a vertical tourbillon, and the time told in 24 hour format on a series of revolving drums. → Read More
It is hard to pull of a good futuristic dive watch design as more traditional looks tend to be more timeless. Clerc however has done well with their Hydroscaph collection. Check out a review of the Clerc Hydroscaph Limited Edition Chronograph watch here.
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Another day, another Tokyoflash watch. The Kisai 7 is a clever, fairly cool watch that looks like something Jeff Bridges picked out of his magisterial beard in the last Tron movie. Priced at $99 for the next 30 hours, you, too, can look like a Program just looking to get out of the CPU.
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The reclusive horologist George Daniels, famous for his work on Breguet and his important co-axial escapement, died last Friday at his home in the Isle of Man. Daniels was 85.
The horologist was one of the first to catalog some of the best known watches in the world, traveling through Europe to examine rare and odd pieces from his favorite manufacturer, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and great watches from manufacturers like Patek Philippe. He was also an avid motorist and noted trickster, pretending to misuse some rare watches while he was photographing, nearly driving their curator to apoplexy.
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