I see quite a few watches that come out of China, anyone who looks at a lot of watches under the $1,000 mark is bound to see them, but I have not yet had the chance to check out a watch that is being sold by a Chinese brand. My chance came when Sea-Gull Watch Store reached out to us and asked if we would review their first in-house watch. The GT & FQ (the brand owners’ initials) M0001 Rider Automatic is quite an accomplished first effort for this brand, which is already expanding the line.
Most crowd funded watches I see are start-ups that are trying to get going, and they are portraying their watches as a value versus what is on the market. Sometimes, you see an established brand going the crowd funding route for something really different, like when Bathys wanted to make an atomic wristwatch. With the Pellikaan Timing Diving Dutchman, I am seeing something else, an existing higher end brand looking for a minimal commitment to get tooling going on an expensive watch.
With the holidays right around the corner, we are going to be highlighting sales from time to time, and I wanted to bring this one to your attention. Touch of Modern is a membership site that runs short duration sales, usually for about a week. If you are not yet a member, you can join through this link, it is free. Through November 11 at noon Pacific, the site is having a sale on Hexa Osprey Dive watches.
As you are no doubt aware, watches on Kickstarter have become quite a thing as of late. We, through Matt’s efforts, have covered a lot of them. Lately, though, we have restricted ourselves to the more interesting products, because there are a lot of “me too” thin quartz watches cropping up. While what I am going to be talking about today is indeed a quartz three-hander, the design merits a mention. With that, let’s take a look at what the Joogii J1 has to offer.
Is it my fault? Am I not being clear enough when I review the Cobra de Calibre watches and say, “hey you should check this guy’s work out.” There have been a few great success stories with crowd funding where one project turned into two or three and then into a full blown brand (looking at you Lew & Huey). I can’t understand how John Lee has not yet developed a cult following that funds all his projects. Well, it isn’t too late to jump on board with his latest, the Cobra de Calibre Crossfire seeking funding on Kickstarter.
I left the family at home and waded into deep, German-watch waters recently. I almost drowned. I attended the WatchBuys.com road show in Atlanta and learned three uses of technology that are worth remembering the next time you buy a dive watch, all demonstrated by the Sinn UX EZM 2 B Hydro.
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.
