Finally a Clear Design Choice

OK, maybe not finally, and I am sure that Project O1, a new watch that popped up on Indiegogo, is not the first watch in existence with a clear case (cue the Swatch fans), but it is still fairly unique.  And kind of cool.  It takes the concept of skeletonization of an automatic watch to the next level.

I don’t follow Indiegogo like I follow Kickstarter, so this came to my attention via an email from the creators.  And with Indiegogo, there are looser rules on the stage of development prior to launching a project, so I am not sure if the images here are renderings or photos.  I do see that they have a pretty ambitious funding goal.  As for any crowd funded project (and I have backed several), please do a bit of research and understand the risks before you pledge.

But if you do pledge to this project, and they are successful, then you are going to get an interesting and unique watch in return, something I usually don’t see with crowd funded projects.  There is no crystal per se, the whole watch is encased in Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), or for you non-chemical engineers out there, plastic.

The case, bezel and crystal are all one piece of PMMA, which is joined to a caseback of PMMA, sandwiching the Miyota 8N24-E21 skeleton automatic movement and a PMMA chapter ring, in either green, black or, you guessed it, clear.  The hour and minute hand are blued, but in the images, they look a little purple to me, lending to the idea that this is a rendering.

The watch has a screw-down crown for 30 meters of water resistance, and the lug-less puck shaped case is mounted on black crocodile grained strap with a deployment clasp.  Overall, the watch is 44mm in diameter and just over 14mm tall.  Since the movement is 26mm in diameter, the bezel would be 4mm thick, 4mm of clear plastic thick.  If this interests you, check out the project.  project-o1-concept-watch

Watch Overview