Welcome back to our weekly installment, where we have a quick look at some interesting watches and articles that have popped up over the last week, as well as taking a second look at what some of our more popular articles this week were. Today, we’ve got a look at some different reviews, including a new series it looks like Hodinkee is starting up. After those, we’ll highlight (as usual) some of our more popular posts from the last week. Read on to see what we’ve got in store for you.
First up, the crew over at Worn & Wound has a review of the Laco Atacama. Laco is one of those brands that, while I’ve never personally reviewed them, I’m sort of peripherally aware of, generally not focusing on them until something like this review pops up. On the surface of things, Laco has a rich and storied history as one of the original manufactures of flieger watches, so it makes sense that they’d dive into that heritage. More of a surprise, however, are the non-aviator watches, which this Atacama seems to be (W&W classifies it as a tactical watch). Powered by an ETA 2824, it seems like a reasonably priced German watch ($750 at the moment, but supposedly going up to $1000 soon). This is a beefy watch, and features some features that I’ve never quite seen before, such as the tall, knurled bezel. It has plenty of other design tricks up it sleeve – you really should check out the review to see the rest.
Next, the gents at Hodinkee look to be cooking up a new series they’re calling “Three on Three”, where they’ll select a category, and then pick three watches that they feel are the best representatives in the category, and then review them, head-to-head. This inaugural article tackles a very specific segment: manually-wound dress watches with in-house movements, for under $20,000 (yeah, that’s a lofty upper limit, but it does open up the field a bit). Each of the watches is worn (and then reviewed) by a different member of the Hodinkee team, and then at the end of the article, they start putting things head to head, complete with a comparison chart. While they stop short of declaring a “winner”, this does give you a quick overview of what type of watch they’re talking about. Check out the full article (and a video) right here.
Now, we’ll turn our attention to our own pages. For some reason, it seems there’s a certain sort of article that we don’t have all that often, but when it appears, it generates a lot of interest, even well after it was originally published. In this case, our coverage of a bad customer service story involving Invicta, from 2008 (!) always hovers in and around the top spots, week after week. It climbed high again this week, so I thought I’d finally give it its due. Check out why, for at least one person, Invicta Sucks.
Last, but certainly not least, we’ll have a peak at an article that showcases what someone with some serious talent is able to pull together in their workshop. While it’s not strictly a watch, it is a device that makes use of a watch movement. If you couldn’t tell from the image above, Kwanghun Hyun created a pinhole camera that utilizes a Unitas 6497 to handle timing duties. And, if you think that’s cool, wait till you see the second version of the camera, right over here.
And with that, we’ll wrap things up for this week. As always, if you feel there’s something we need to put some of our attention on, feel free to drop me a line.
