IN-DEPTH: The Apple Watch Series 5 review for people on the go
As I mentioned in my video review of the Apple Watch Series 5, this isn’t the sort of watch that Time+Tide typically reviews. But since 2017, when the Series 2 was launched, the Apple Watch has made headline after headline as it sold millions of units and increasingly worried Swiss watch executives. This shifted the Apple Watch away from being just another piece of consumer electronics to a well-designed object that deserves the same level of scrutiny as a mechanical watch, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Apple Watch isn’t going anywhere, and while there are certainly positive impacts that it is having on the watch industry, it would be naive to think Apple isn’t playing hard to increase its share of wrist real estate at the expense of similarly priced mechanical watches. As Brendan noted in his analysis of Swiss watch export figures from 2019, the sales of Swiss watches under CHF 3000 are dropping sharply, while those more expensive than CHF 3000 are growing. This isn’t only caused by the Apple Watch, but there are some estimates the Apple Watch saw more than 30 per cent growth in sales in 2019 with no signs of slowing down…
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At times like this, when everything you looked forward to has been cancelled, when Uber Eats, Netflix and self-isolation are likely to become the new normal, and when there’s an accelerating sense of backsliding into a pandemic abyss, all I can really suggest we do is hold on to what we love. And we love watches. This week, a new TAG Heuer Connected – Generation Three – was released. We’d had it for a couple of weeks ahead of the drop so as to test it out. If your dream is to see Nick in Active Wear, your dreams have been answered. You are so welcome. My favourite scene is his version of Ron Burgundy’s office workout with the dumbbells. Nick gets a deeeeep burn going in this video. The Google Wear OS powered Connected sits alongside another pretty high-tech marvel to break the surface this week, a Grand Seiko diver that Nick Kenyon believes to be their best yet. Lastly, a piece by James. I asked him to make us all feel better about missing the Grand Prix today and this weekend. How? By picking out his favourite watches spotted in Drive to Survive Season 1. If you haven’t seen…
Another day, another sporting event falls victim to the rampant spread of COVID-19, aka Coronavirus. This time it’s one of Australia’s premier sporting events – the 2020 Rolex Australian Grand Prix. Its cancellation is a huge shock, but with one of McLaren F1’s team members being confirmed to have fallen ill with the potentially deadly virus, and a further 14 team members under quarantine, the British outfit had no choice but to immediately pull the pin, and less than 12 hours later, the whole event is kaput. If you’re a fan of motorsport and cars, chances are you’re also a watch enthusiast, so the Aussie F1’s cancellation will come as a massive blow to a fair few of you out there … it certainly has for us. To help fill the void left by this massive disappointment, we’re locking ourselves indoors, drawing the shades, pouring ourselves a pint of whiskey and rewatching the first season of Netflix’s excellent Drive to Survive to a) get our F1 fix and b) check out the myriad cool timepieces being worn by some of the sport’s biggest names. If you haven’t seen the series already, stop what you’re doing, fire up the telly, turn…
Picture the scene: it’s a dark night and you’re leaving work when suddenly a man in a balaclava accosts you, waving a 12-inch knife in your face. Give me your Rolex or I’ll “f***ing stab” you, he yells. This was the nerve-jangling scene that confronted Mark Ewart last week as he left his business, Apple Flooring Ltd, in Basildon, Essex. On his wrist was his beloved Rolex Deepsea Sea-Dweller – he really didn’t want to give it up. CCTV footage showed what happened next. On a whim, Ewart snatched his watch off his wrist and hurled it onto the roof of a nearby Subway outlet. Bewildered, the masked robber grabbed Ewart’s laptop instead and pedalled off into the night on his bike. “I’m shaken up, I’m angry, I feel violated — all of the above and more,” Ewart told London’s Metro newspaper. “What I did was either brave or stupid, I just don’t know.” The 57-year-old admitted he was usually “an advocate for the bravest man walks away and fights another day” but acted impulsively to save his watch. “As soon as I did it, I just thought, ‘Shit, why did I do that?’ “I lived to tell the…
We may only be three months into 2020, but Seiko is dropping new novelties like the world could end tomorrow … which, given the current state of affairs, does feel ever so slightly plausible. Anyway, I know what you’re thinking: “enough of the doom and gloom, what about the watches?” Well, the Japanese watchmaker has released myriad new timepieces so far, some limited and some not, across their various collections. So we thought we’d round them up, present them to you and then, in a manner not dissimilar from the tasks my former educators had to undertake, give them a report card rating. Let’s hope Seiko has performed better than my scholastic efforts. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition Report card score: A Seiko really came out swinging with their first unveiling of 2020, paying homage to their long-term partnership with current World No. 1 tennis ace and 2020 Australian Open winner, Novak Djokovic. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition picked up where the 2019 edition left off; however, while last year’s Djokovic Astron rocked a black-on-black aesthetic with some serious stealth vibes, the 2020 incarnation was all about celebrating both the colours of the…
Sometimes, a Time+Tide Watches reader will share a small piece of watchmaking history that makes us turn to each other and wonder how we hadn’t know about it before. This is exactly what happened when Colin strolled into the T+T HQ to look at a couple of DOXA watches, with a familiar looking watch on his wrist, with an unfamiliar name on its dial. He was wearing a Sinn 903 Chronograph, which looked a lot like a Breitling Navitimer from across the room but, as he explained, it was one of the unusual effects of the quartz era. In 1979 Breitling saw parts of its company go into liquidation due to bankruptcy, and Helmut Sinn, the founder of Sinn watches, bought the rights to use the layouts of Breitling’s 806 and 809 Navitimer watch dials. This is the story of Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph. During the quartz crisis, Sinn bought the rights from Breitling to manufacture the Navitimer, but they couldn’t call it a Navitimer … so it’s identical; it is smaller, slightly smaller in diameter, but it’s exactly the same. There are a few people who just assume that Sinn ripped off the Navitimer, sort of like Steinhart take…
When we see something repeatedly, over time, our brains quickly form habits that enable us to infer what we are seeing, bypassing the need to analyse every bit of information. That’s why we can make perfect sense of a paragraph made up of words that are missing their vowels, and why we can read the time on an analogue watch display that has no hour or minute markers. It’s also what makes Franck Muller’s Crazy Hours watch one of the most delightful pieces in contemporary watchmaking. In the first instant the dial appears perfectly normal, with a series of numerals arranged around its circumference. Half a second later, we realise that it’s anything but normal: the usual position of the numerals is completely jumbled. It’s a visual teaser – sense and nonsense – and a brain teaser, playing with how we habitually read time in a natural, clockwise sequence. Since Franck Muller invented the Crazy Hours complication in 2003 it has (unsurprisingly) become an emblem of the brand that bears his name – just as emblematic as the Cintrée Curvex case that houses these colourful limited-edition models. There can be few objects of any kind that combine grown-up glamour and…
Next Thursday, March 19, at Oscar Hunt Tailors in the Melbourne CBD, we will hold an event called Dive Watch Fundamentals. This is at the request of Oscar Hunt, who, like many, noticed that dive watches are featuring more than ever on men’s wrists in the most formal of places. For example, the Oscars. So, the idea was hatched: “Could your team come and talk to us about dive watches?” Rather than an unrestricted lecture, we thought what might be interesting would be a quick history breakdown of the main brands in the game. Which watch brands are part of the dive watch story? Dive Watch Fundamentals is all about learning the basics on offer from each brand. As well as the design tropes and functions that typify dive watches. Crown guards. Bi-directional bezels. Helium release valves. Water resistance. Legibility. Lume. By the end of this event with a difference, you will know it all. We’ll be doing a brand-by-brand breakdown, including all the icons — the Rolex Submariner, the Omega Seamaster, the DOXA SUB 300, Panerai’s distinctive designs — explaining the role they have played in the development of arguably the most popular style of men’s wristwatches on the planet. …
Blancpain, Rolex, Omega, DOXA … these are the watchmakers we normally associate with being the doyens of creating dive watches. However, as Seiko is keen to point out in their latest trilogy release, the Japanese firm has been deeply submerged in the art form of birthing amphibious timepieces for quite some time too – 55 years to be precise. The three new limited editions in question, called the 1965, 1968 and 1975, aim to celebrate not only Seiko’s first-ever dive watch but also their first decade of creating water-resistant timepieces. But, while the three watches have been very closely styled to pay homage to the original pieces on which they are based, the watchmaker is keen to point out that aside from the retro-styling, both the outer exteriors, as well as the innards of the timepieces, are entirely modern. And chief among these contemporary characteristics is an innovative type of steel Seiko has called “Ever-Brilliant Steel”. According to the watchmaker, this new material, which has never been used in the construction of a wristwatch before, is so-called for its brilliant white hue and peerless level of corrosion resistance. The Ever-Brilliant Steel will be used in the case construction of both…