Tokyoflash Japan is a watchmaker that we have covered on WWR many times in the past. If you are unfamiliar, they produce digital watches that have playful (or sometime confounding) time displays. The Tokyoflash Japan Kisai Maze Wood LCD splits the line between readable and confounding with alternate time displays, straight forward when you want, and coded when that tickles your fancy.
The watch makes use of a n LCD screen screen broken into a bunch (15×15) of square pixels that light up in an old school display of time when in number mode. But since this is Tokyoflash Japan, there has to be a trick, and that is the watch’s “maze mode.” From the lower of the two displays shown above, 03:39 is still visible, but the other white pixels obscure the numbers, so that anyone looking at your wrist is going to have a hard time figuring out out the time. I expect that if you wore it often, you would get used to this mode quickly, but at a casual glance, it is a maze of pixels.
It comes it at 40×47 mm, so it should be nice and wearable. There are three options for the watch, dark sandalwood with a green or silver LCD and maple with a red LCD. Included with the watch is a leather strap, and there are date and alarm modes, the latter with custom animation. For a little extra interest, every 15 minutes an animated character (OK, a pixel) will run around the maze, like a very old school video game. For $99, the watch is a fun little accessory for the geek in your life, especially if they wax nostalgic about some of the old style 8-bit maze arcade games. tokyoflash.com
Watch Overview
- Brand & Model: TokyoFlash Japan Kisai Maze Wood
- Price: $99
- Who we think it might be for: Cryptographers.
- Would I buy or recommend it just on the photos?: This one isn’t for me, but I would recommend it to some people.
- If I could make one design suggestion, it would be: I have no suggestions here.
- What spoke to me the most about this watch: I like the pixelated LCD read out.
