I’ll admit I was a little skeptical when the Morpheus Culinary watch first slipped out of its little leather pouch and onto my table. It looked as garish as an overweight, open shirted tourist wearing cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. But then, to continue the metaphor, the watch seemed to get give me a plate of hot wings and a beer and said dig in, slowly getting me drunk as it told me stories about fishing expeditions involving copious amounts of alcohol and scantily clad island women. In short, this is one fun watch.
The overall design cue comes from high end cookware. The watch has a small handle that acts as a crown guard and the buttons and crown are supposed to look like stove handles. The hands are huge and brightly lumed and it is running an ISA 8173 quartz movement with alarm, small seconds, day of week, and second time zone. The register at 2 o’clock shows the seconds while the one at 10 o’clock shows the alarm status and the “battery power.” The 6 o’clock register shows day of week while the arrow hand shows the alarm time and the ball-tip “seconds” hand is actually a 2nd time zone.
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The watch is aimed at cooks so it’s big and bold and, most importantly, inexpensive. At $375 it’s inexpensive enough to be a nice gift for the cook in your life and it’s durable enough to survive a few bake cycles.
Yes, the gold is quite gaudy but you’re not wearing this watch to the opera. It also comes in stainless steel, which will reduce the anguish considerably. Gold bracelet is comfortable if slightly on the light side. In all the design is quite nice.
It is waterproof to 5 ATM.
Now for a few problems. First, the 2nd time zone hand looks too much like a traditional second hand. This could confuse the novice. Second, there is no chronograph. I use my Seamaster Chrono as a cooking timer with abundant regularity. Sure you can set an alarm to warn you when your quiche is done but the stopwatch – with it’s one step start and stop – is a much better solution. This watch seems to suggest that cooks are also culinary globetrotters, which is a fine sentiment.
Bottom Line
This is the company’s first watch and they’re obviously limited by the feature set of the quartz movement they chose. I’ve always said that watchmakers should target chefs. Their hands are always on camera and their wrists are quite prominent when they are deboning chickens and the like. Looks like Morpheus has taken this idea to it’s obvious conclusion and created a whimsical and quite cool watch for the chef in all of us.
