We have taken a look at various ways to store your watches (generally in the form of…
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.
Even though I personally have not handled a lot of watch winders, I find them fascinating. Basically, they are a purpose-built machine that serves only to keep another very purpose-built machine (your watch) in running and ready-to-wear condition. As with all things watch-related, there are a range of prices you can find for these, with very inexpensive ones that are probably noisier than they are worth, all the way up to some massive ones that are basically a piece of furniture or a safe. Then, we have a sort of comfortable middle ground, where pricing is in the range of a good mechanical watch, with materials and motors that are worth the price. That is where, it seems, we will see the new Benson Watch Winders Black Series residing.
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.
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.
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.