Yes Watch appeals to me on several levels. The complexity of all the things it does goes straight to the inner nerd. The utility of the things it does is a siren call to pragmatist. The simplicity of the design draws the aesthete. And for their 10th anniversary, they re-released their original concept. This is a sweet timepiece.
The Yes Watches men’s watches all work off the same distinctive movement; an LCD display with a single hand. The hand makes a single revolution in 24 hours. The display behind it shows the daylight, hours of darkness, moon phase, and times the moon will be visible, all relative to the 24hr hand. You’ll have to set the solar and lunar data by the nearest big city or program in latitude/longitude to get the right display, but this is not a complex process. And if you need greater precision than the hand allows, you can display a digital hours:minutes:seconds. And this is in addition to the customary digital watch functions like stopwatch, alarms, etc. All are water resistant to 100m, and many models have a rotating bezel that can be used to show a different time zone. Yes, this is a one way trip to Nerd-vana. Personally, I like the 43mm versions, but there are also 48mm ones in the collection.
As an amateur photographer (and formerly in a profession that routinely used outdoor photography), the solar/lunar data is a great thing to have handy. I’m sure fishermen, pilots, some runners, and others could get a fair bit of use out of this too. If I want to catch that sunrise shot from Waimanalo Beach, or the full moon shot from the cliffs at Pali, this a great tool (or at least this is a great rationalization to give your wife when you are shopping for one of these).
And the watches themselves are handsome even without the gizmotology. The WorldWatch II is a little busy due to the inner bezel numbers, but with the digital time display turned off, it has a colorful and fairly clean appearance.
At $745, it is a bit of an investment, but not an outrageous one. Yeah, I’m liking this one.
