Much earlier this year, John brought you a hands-on review of the Ochs und Junior Tinta. Today, I want to take another look at that particular family, and highlight a different model.
The specific model is the Due Ora Tinta which features, as you might guess, as dual-time zone readout. How it does this, however, is very interesting. There are no additional complications, hands, or subdials. So, how do they do it? Take a closer look at the dial, and you’ll have your answer.
In the pictures on this post, you might be tempted to think that the indices are way out of “normal” alignment, perhaps in some sort of tilted alignment. What it is, however, is the second timezone readout. By utilizing the crown (I believe), you can rotate those indices around to match the time zone you’re wishing to track.
Say, for instance, you’re travelling around, and home is six hours behind you. Rotate the indices around so the 6 is at the 12 o’clock position, and now you can fairly easily tell what time it is back at home. I think there might be a slight learning curve, but it wouldn’t be too steep. Frankly, I think this is an excellent way of handling the tracking of a second time zone – and I’m enamored of the fact it’s done without any additional mechanical complexity.
For the mechanics itself, those are handled by the ever-present (and reliable) ETA 2824, housed in a lightweight 42mm titanium case. So that brings us to the other rather interesting twist with this watch – the color scheme. You can basically make this watch look however you might want, in terms of colors. For the dial, it can be any color in the Pantone catalog. Add on to that your choice of one of ten colors for the lume to be applied to the hands and indices, and you’ve got your own personal color scheme.
For me, the custom colors (on the clean design) or the dual-time tracking would be enough on their own to make me take notice. With the two of these combined, however, it makes for one of the most interesting high-end watches I’ve seen in some time. And high-end it is – with current conversion rates, it comes in at just a hair over $5900 (ordering info here).
If you’re aware of any other watches that feature this sort of time zone arrangement, let me know in the comments.
