Hello and welcome to our weekly Saturday feature, Watching the Web. Here, we take a moment to look at some watch reviews and watch related news we find outside our own site, and then we highlight a few of our most popular recent posts. This week, we have an Indian watch, and new watches from HYT and Harry Winston. From our site, the readers found the articles on the Defacto Kinetic, Icon Automatic, and Matt’s editorial on crowd-funded watches to be rather interesting. On with the show!
While watch shoppers are certainly spoiled for choice these days, there are also quite a few “me too” brands out there starting up that rehash the same tired and uninspired three-hander design. So, when we have a company that we’ve never heard of before contact us about their watch, we are understandably a bit cautious on what it is we going to be taking a look at. Fortunately, we do have some gems popping up when we have these sorts of contacts, and that leads us to running into pieces like the Corniche Heritage 40.
Inspiration for watches can come from a lot of places, and industrial design is a frequent launching spot. The Swiss Railway watch is a perfect example. Now, with the Normalzeit Wrist Watch, a new historical standardizing clock is being ported to your wrist, distinctive case at all. This project, available at select locations, honors the Vienna Cube Clock, a fixture of city life there for over 100 years.
Over the last year-plus, we have spent time with just about every watch that has come from the team down in Sidney, IL. Some of these have been with watches that were already in production and hitting normal retail channels, and others – like we have today – we actually got to wear around while a Kickstarter campaign was underway. This latest campaign – which is more than fully-funded at this point – is for the brand’s first field watch, the Smith & Bradley Springfield.
If you travel, a world timer watch is a very handy complication. Switch cities, and you can easily switch time zones on your watch. But what if you want it done for you? That is where GPS watches come into play. Not GPS as in tracking watches, but GPS watches that update their clocks based on where they are in the world. Since they only update every other day (or on command), the receiver part uses little energy, so these are not power hogging watches like a GPS tracker would be. Now on Kickstarter is a new brand hoping to get into this technology with the first four Artstate GPS Solar Watch models (OK, only 2 are solar, but they are all GPS). This new brand is significantly less expensive than the other mainstream brands that are available.
If you are a fan of watches that light up the night, you have plenty of options. There are the heavily-lumed watches to go for (such as the Seiko Monster), or you can go in a different direction, with watches that rely on tritium tubes for their illumination. One of the brands we have featured in the past with these tubes is British company Nite Watches. Until now, all of their watches have featured quartz movements. That changes with the launch of the Nite Icon Automatic.
Dear Hopeful Crowd Funded Watchmaker; Allow me to start by saying that I think you are doing something really cool, and that I am a huge fan. This is the first time in history where the power to build, market and sell a watch is not vested in the few, but open to anyone with an idea and a bit of money. I think that a lot of the projects that you come up with are attractive, interesting and offer a great value. Heck, I have backed a couple of projects myself. And to keep from singling anyone out, the crowdfunded projects I show here are the projects that I feel are doing it the right way.
Hello and welcome to our weekly Saturday feature, Watching the Web. Here, we take a moment to look at some watch reviews and watch related news we find outside our own site, and then we highlight a few of our most popular recent posts. This week, I wanted to point you to a meeting of watch lovers in New York City, a review of a budget minimalist chrono, and a watch with two second-hand complications. From our site, the readers found the reviews of the Defacto Kinetic, and Chronologia Dive Watches, along with a soldier’s EDC interesting enough to make them our top recent posts. As a bonus, an old post from May of the Carnot Riviera also popped up to the top of the charts.
I am not sure why I was recently on a kick of reviewing chronographs, but I ended up with a couple of review chronos all in roughly the same time period. The AVI-8 Hawker Hunter was one that I was looking forward to reviewing, since I wear one of their watches quite a bit. I have an issue with the watch, but overall it is a comfortable, reliable military/aviation themed watch, and a good deal here in the US.
I get a few watch emails a day and it’s a lot like “exploring posts” on Instagram: one watch after another screaming for attention. The one email that caught my eye recently was a startup that puts a Japanese mechanical movement in a polished, classic cushion case, protected with a sapphire crystal.
