2011年1月9日 星期日

Black Belt Spirit Watch Now On Sale For Black Belt Wannabes

Hey, lazy: want a Black Belt watch but don’t have a black belt? Well put down that Chicago-style hot dog and listen up. The same company that brought you the $3,000 watch for black belts only (you had to submit an application) is offering the Black Belt Spirit for those who want “A choice of life at your wrist.” See? The watchmakers know you’re such a slob that you won’t even care if their motto is grammatically correct and/or totally nonsensical!

This watch is about $500 and has a piece of garbage quartz movement, just right for the clods who can’t do the Iron Horse kata without burping up the remainder of a 99 cent Wendy’s value meal. Real black belts can still get the original watch and then beat up the folks who bought the Black Belt Spirit watch. HIIIII-YA!

2011年1月7日 星期五

Seiko E-Ink Watch Now Available For Pre-Order In Japan

If you’ve been looking to slap a little E-Ink on your wrist and didn’t want to go the Phosphor route, Seiko has the watch for you. The Seiko E-Ink watch is essentially a high-tech LCD watch using E-Ink as the display medium, thereby reducing battery drain.

The watch looks pretty complex but really it’s just your standard world-time quartz. The real value is in the screen simply because, like the Kindle, you can fit a hi-res image on a postage stamp piece of E-Ink which is more than you can say for a lot of LCD devices.

The bad news? The watch is ¥84,000 on Amazon.jp (a little over $1,000) which is a little pricey for my blood. I also think it looks like my Uncle’s Casio LCD watch from 1995, so there’s that.

2011年1月5日 星期三

Seiko Ananta Automatic Chronograph Titanium Watch

This is the mechanical Seiko sport watch to own in 2010. Representing the purely mechanical - versus Spring Drive - movement based Ananta watches in the US, this new for 2010 Automatic Chronograph ref. SRQ009 in titanium. When I first saw this watch I was pretty sure that it was going to be a limited edition, but it isn't. The titanium Ananta automatic will be part of the regular collection - offering a super sporty version of Seiko's high-end world market automatic. I was able to get my hands on it and check it out, you can see an image of it here where it is looking pretty sexy. I can say that it is pretty nice - and a carbon fiber dial watch that I like!

Speaking of carbon fiber, many of you know that I am not so fond of the material for dials a lot of the time. Often because the look of carbon fiber can make a dial hard to read. Here however, the tighter woven look of it is topped with proper dials, and those famous Ananta diamond polished hands. Lume is placed on the hands and hour markers, making for a very easy to read, symmetrical, and attractive dial. I quite like the insertion of the white seconds marker ring as part of the flange that helps break up the black tones. The sapphire crystal also has a lot of AR coating - so seeing the dial is really a breeze.

This is one of two new titanium Seiko Ananta watches for 2010. The other model is an Ananta Spring Drive Chronograph GMT limited edition piece - which is considerably more expensive that this model. The titanium composition of the watch makes for a very light Ananta. At 46mm wide, this is one intensely light watch for its size (still 100 meters water resistant). Titanium makes for a good color tone as well with the darker, monochromatic tones of the dial. Conventional watch wisdom would have a touch of red, or some other color in the dial, but the all black and white tones look good here. The bezel (with a tachymeter scale), side of the case, pushers, and crown are in black.

Inside the watch is the Seiko Caliber 8R28 automatic mechanical movement with a column wheel and a vertical clutch. I wrote more about this movement and other Ananta watches with it here in another article on Seiko Ananta Automatic watches. A good high-end automatic movement hand-assembled in a really nice facility in Japan. I love the "two step" pushers for the chronograph that allow for very precise starting and stopping of the chronograph. While not a limited model, this Ananta Automatic in titanium with the carbon fiber dial will not be easy to find. Price in Europe is 3,900 euros - with the US price being around that (currency converted of course). Yes, the watch is expensive. But given the quality of the movement, the construction of the watch, and the functionality - you'd be better off comparing it to European chronograph watches instead of other Japanese ones.



2011年1月3日 星期一

Bape x G-Shock G-5500 Collaboration Watch

Bape has unveiled a new collaboration G-Shock. This limited edition watch seems to be based on the Tough Solar G-5500. It has the custom ape head in the backlight. And there's some custom white printing on the band. This model is unusual in having a different color set of buttons on each side. The left side has two red buttons, and the right side has to blue ones.

2011年1月1日 星期六

Italian "Art Shock the Street" Casio G-Shocks

Some new custom G-Shocks have been created by artists in Milan, Italy for an exhibition titled "Art Shock the Street". Mr. Wany and Duty Gorn each created their own unique painted G-Shock for display alongside other works of art. It sounds like each of these are one-off pieces that ware not going to be for sale.

    "Characters dreamlike and imaginative design fresh and young, sparkling in the fluorescent colors but also can be ordered as Mars in the cosmos. The dial is a black hole that swallows up everything .. as well as years, months, hours and seconds of our existence, " says Mr. Wany.

G-Shocks can be high art too. There's lots of depth there.