In Review: Shinola White Hurricane

A few months back (see that here), we first told you about the Shinola White Hurricane. As we noted then, this watch was a new version of the Shinola Black Blizzard (which we reviewed here). Just as the Black Blizzard wasn’t actually in reference to a snow blizzard, the Shinola White Hurricane doesn’t refer to a hurricane, at least not in how we normally think of them.

No, it’s instead calling back to the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 – a blizzard that had hurricane-force winds mixed on it with it as well. I’ve been in some windy snow storms, but nothing like that, thankfully. Fittingly, then, the Shinola White Hurricane has a crisp white dial, calling to mind that fluffy (and deadly) white stuff. By going this route, it allowed Shinola to do something I’d not seen from them before – a fully lumed dial.

I’ve experienced fully lumed dials before, so I was rather looking forward to seeing how the Shinola White Hurricane implemented it. The dial itself glows in a cool aqua, while the bezel has green lume. The subdials themselves don’t glow, which I’m of two minds about. On one hand, you’re not likely to be trying to time something in the dark that you’d rely on the lume for. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to have even more of a light show. What I’m definitely not on the fence about is the lume on the hands. I was really quite surprised to see that it had the same hue as the dial. Sure, the hands are outlined, so you can see them, but they’d be much easier to pick out if they had another color (perhaps the green of the bezel) or were instead not lumed, so they’d stand out in stark relief against the glowing dial.

Past the larger case size (48mm instead of 42mm) and the luminous dial, the Shinola White Hurricane is very much the same as the Black Blizzard we reviewed a few years back. I still don’t get tired of titanium cases and bracelets, for how deceivingly light they make a watch. I had the Shinola White Hurricane on when I was back in the Detroit area for Thanksgiving, and family members were quite surprised at how light the large watch was. In terms of timing capabilities, we’ve still got the Ronda-based Argonite 5050 quartz chronograph as the engine. Want to time something? It’ll do it just fine; we used it to time how long we were on the road.

In terms of the classic Shinola design elements, those are surely there on the Shinola White Hurricane. You’ve got the wire lug look, thunderbolt-signed crown, and of course the caseback “coin”. This is my favorite element that appears across their designs (well, except for the Detrola). This really gives things more of an industrial feel, like a piece of machinery that rolled out of a factory with the badge proudly proclaiming who made it.

The Shinola White Hurricane comes in at $1,500, just the same as the Black Blizzard before it. This puts it up in the upper end of the watches that the brand offers, and may give some pause when it comes to a quartz chronograph, I’ll admit. Fortunately for me, I’m not much of a chrono person, so it’s not a tough decision for me. While the luminous dial is fun, I’d still more likely opt for a Duck or Monster model, if I were doing some shopping. But hey, that’s just me, and part of the fun with the Shinola catalog is the wide range of models, and even color options within models, that there are to be had. shinola.com

Details from Shinola

• CASE: Titanium, with double-domed sapphire crystal.
• DIAL: White with Super-LumiNova hands, Arabic numerals, and hour markers.
• FUNCTIONS: Hours, minutes, small seconds, date indicator, stopwatch function with three subdials
• MOVEMENT: Argonite 5050 quartz movement with Swiss and other imported parts.
• WATCH STRAP: Titanium bracelet and Black rubber strap.

Tech Specs