If you recall, we first brought the Kisai Optical Illusion to your attention back in January. In the intervening time, TokyoFlash was kind enough to send us a sample for review, so today we’ll take a look at what this watch offers.
By looking at any picture of the Optical Illusion watch, you can immediately tell that this is different watch. The always-on display, at first, is not readable – so how do you tell the time? Basically, you retrain your eyes to unfocus slightly, and then you can pick out the patterns and read the time being displayed.
Of course, if you’re in a rush, you can simply touch the lower-right corner of the display, and the graphic dissolves, displaying the current time. And therein lies the other interesting twist to this watch – everything is controlled by touch. These are the four main areas:
- Upper left: review the alarm time (and if it’s on/off); hold to set the time
- Upper right: display the current date; hold to set the date and time
- Lower right: display the current time
- Lower left: activate the backlight
The lack of physical buttons allows for a smooth case, which is nice, because it’s bigger (32mm x 52mm; 5.1 oz) than you’d expect for a rectangular watch. Once you’re into the settings of the watch, simply swiping your finger from left to right (or vice versa) will allow you to adjust, say, the time, rather simply. At first, the touch functionality seemed fidgety, but once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly natural.
Tomorrow, we’ll go over how the watch performs in actual use, and wrap things up.
