Introducing – Farer Automatic Watches – British Design, Swiss Made, Vintage Look, Reasonable Price

Wouldn’t it be pleasant if all the youngsters around would involve progressively in real watchmaking, meaning mechanical watches, if most of them grew as collectors, instead of looking at massive and not-so-distinguished fashion brands watches? Well, we don’t live at “candy land” and things won’t change that fast. However, every collector must have a starting point and when a cool, slightly fashion-oriented brand introduces automatic watches after a first successful collection of Quartz timepieces, it can only bring new, younger people to show interest in mechanical. Here are the Farer Automatic Watches, a combination of British Design, Swiss Made and Vintage Look – a for a reasonable price.

8 years ago

Introducing – Dietrich O.Time now in colored forged carbon (and even a luminescent carbon one…)

In watchmaking, who thinks innovative materials usually says high price. That’s somehow a rule. Look at recent watches with sapphire crystal cases. Most of them are over half a million CHF – even the cheapest one isn’t cheap… Same goes for complex ceramics, or watches associating different kind of solid, ultra-light or ultra-resistant materials. Carbon fibre isn’t always ultra-high-end, however few are the watches with such material priced under 10k. Well, Dietrich watches, with their usual value for money rule, will bring you forged carbon cases, some with colored incrustations and even luminous cases (yes, for real) together with a mechanical movement for a price you don’t expect. Here are the Dietrich O.Time now in colored forged carbon.

8 years ago

Value Proposition – Alpina adds a GMT Business Timer and an Automatic to its Alpiner 4 Collection

While Frederique Constant has a clear classical, elegant and refined vocation, the other branch of the group, Alpina, is much more oriented on heritage and sports watches. Once again, the motto is the same: accessibility, value for money, very decent quality and functionality – but in another style category. The main collection of Alpina, the Alpiner, was mainly focussing on Chronographs and vintage-oriented pieces until now. This year, the brands adds two references in the catalogue, two robust sports watches, the Alpina Alpiner 4 Automatic and the Alpina Alpiner 4 Automatic GMT Business Timer.

8 years ago

Value Proposition – The E.C.Andersson North Sea, a robust sports watch with Seiko mechanical movement

Launching a watch brand is not that simple, mainly because you have to face an established industry, with its brands, its suppliers and its habits (and some are secular ones…) The watchmaking industry was extremely difficult with newcomers, until our 2.0 era brought to small independent people, however full of ideas, a process called crowdfunding. E.C.Andersson is among them, with the idea of a sporty pillow-shaped watch with a smaller size than the most famous of all the pillow watches (a certain Officine…), with mechanical movement, for a low price and with nice design. Here is the E.C.Andersson North Sea.

8 years ago

Hands-on with the TAG Heuer Aquaracer 300m Black Titanium

Built for the extreme, dive watches were born from an utilitarian purpose: diving is all about time and depth. Yet, their most important promise might very well be that strapping a rugged dive watch around your wrist, gets you ready for the next adventure or adrenaline fix. The perfect option if you want to test your ability “not to crack under pressure”. Celebrating the brand’s tagline, Aquaracer collection is complemented by new attractive colored models. Monochrome goes hands-on with the TAG Heuer Aquaracer 300m Black Titanium Sand’ and Blue.

8 years ago

Introducing – Swatch Sistem51 Irony, the automatic Swatch now in Steel (specs & price)

Remember in 2013, Swatch (the brand, not the Group) introduced a new watch that came like a blast, a watch in the vein of the affordable and fun idea of the brand, with an immense respect to the 1983 concept, but with a stupendous amount of innovation, as carrying in its plastic case the first automatic movement produced in-house by Swatch… and in a very specific industrial way. This was the Swatch Sistem51 (that we extensively reviewed and explained here). For those who are resistant to plastic cases, here is the new Swatch Sistem51 Irony, the automatic Swatch now in Steel.

8 years ago

Value Proposition: Jubileon Superellipse – designed in Singapore with Swiss Mechanical Movement for a very interesting Price

We have been doing quite a few sweepstakes this year, and every time we ask you two or three questions. Why? We’d love to hear more from you and learn what you like a lot on Monochrome, what you would love to see more and actually how we can serve you with your daily dose of horological content. One of the things we learned is that many of our readers love to see some value propositions. Something we did maybe five or six times during the entire year of 2015, so this year we’re certainly improving on that! Our contributor Peter just wrote a story about a new watch brand from Singapore and they’re kickstarting their brand through Kickstarter. Here’e the Jubileon Superellipse…

8 years ago