First Hands-On With The Phosphor Reveal Crystal Watch


The Phosphor Reveal is one of the coolest timepieces I’ve seen in a long time. This is an extremely simple digital watch with a surprising trick: it shows the time by “flipping” little jewels from dark to light. The face is actually covered in little crystal nubs but some of the nubs can retract into the body of the watch and, in essence, disappear.

The watch contains a few hundred Swarovski crystals and uses a micro-magnetic mechanical movement to move them up and down. This model, made and sold by E-ink watchmakers Phosphor will be available on March 7 for an unannounced price.

This model has two read-outs, a time display and a seconds display. You change the time by holding down the button and advancing the hours and minutes. It’s quite simple, but this is the first watch that my wife actually loved out of the box. It’s a really cool idea and a very handsome timepiece.

Here is a quick video of the watch in action. I love how the read-out makes a little tapping noise when the digits change.

UPDATE – The watch is now available for $210 here.
http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=ZvdHhhMjocb6nXtu1FJbikRBJohhqNgV&version=2

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