The Zinom, a small quartz dress piece, is as dotty, charming, and unique as your Great Uncle.
Designed around the principle of the sundial, this otherwise standard piece is a mixture of clever and status quo that wins on many, albeit not all, levels.
This thin Ronda quartz piece, designed by E. Resende and clad in 24K gold, is your basic watch. Only the hands and dial have been modified to offer an interesting if uneven timepiece. The hands are gold and black holed spades. The tip of the long hour hand is clad in dark black enamel and points to heavy sans-serif Arabic numerals. The short red second hand and black minute hand point to a miniaturized chapter wheel registering the minutes with numerals at the 20s.
If anything, it is a conversation. Unfortunately, that conversation will probably sound a bit like this: ???Say, friend, do you have the time???? ???Of course?? ummm?? I can???t read my watch.??? A bit of practice eventually draws the eye away from the short minutes hand and towards the large hour hand. Luckily, the design generally draws the eye to the hour markers.
The build quality is quite nice. There is a one-jewel Ronda movement behind a stamped steel back and gold-plated case. The face is a clean white and the Zinom logo and sundial motif are both very elegant. Unfortunately, the designer insisted on placing the (R) symbol next to the logo, adding unnecessary clutter.
The numerals are also a bit brusque. Printed in bold sans-serif, they appear to be an afterthought. A thinner, spidery serif font would have truly matched the elegance of the rest of the piece.
The band is clean, pebbled leather and, on the whole, the Zinom is a more than acceptable dress curiosity.
Quality: 3/5
Style: 3/5
Overall: 3/5
The Zinom is available for $250 at Zinom.com.
