Chrono Critique: Hands On With The Ace Jewelers X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. We’re here with our first review. I liked the watch, hope you do too.

The Ace Jewelers X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam is a solid watch with a few quirks and a great price

Amsterdam is a very misunderstood city. In fact, it might be THE most misunderstood city in the world. Ask a hundred people (OK, ask 10, as it would be kind of difficult to run a 100-person poll right now) what’s the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Amsterdam and nine of the ten will say one of three things - weed, prostitutes or parties. This is exactly what I thought of Amsterdam for years. It was this mythical place where guys much older than me at the time went to party, meet strange women and do drugs. Completely legally. This belief in Amsterdam as the Sodom and Gomorrah of Europe was slightly buckled when I first visited the city with my parents when I was probably 14 or 15. Sure, the smell of weed permeated the air and I saw some of the underbelly, but right there behind the stereotype was a wonderfully pleasant city.

Then, in my twenties, I moved there. And what I discovered was most likely the best city to live in Europe. It was incredibly beautiful, and thanks to it’s relatively small size, it was a peaceful oasis filled with parks, canals and incredible nature, standing in contrast with the hyper-urbanised capitals of other European countries. Sure, you could still party in Amsterdam if you wanted, but if you didn’t, there was incredible food, unforgettable culture and a people that, despite everything that you might have heard before, was incredibly welcoming. There it was, right in front of my eyes, evidence that Amsterdam is likely the most understood city in the world. It was so much more than a party destination.

Ironically, a similar thought of a watch being misunderstood occurred to me as I was wearing the new Ace Jewelers X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam. I was talking with a friend - a friend who knows me mostly for large(ish) sports and dive watches - who asked me what’s up with the dress watch on my wrist. I was just about ready to explain to him that this wasn’t necessarily a dress watch when I realised - sure it is, for him it does look like a dress watch. But it’s so much more than. And it’s interesting that this thought crossed my mind with this watch, comparing it with Amsterdam as both brands have ties to The Netherlands - Ace is a family owned jewelery shop based in Amsterdam (with Alon Ben Joseph, perhaps best known to the broader public as the co-host of the fantastic The Real Time Show watch podcast, as its CEO) and Frederique Constant was founded in the Netherlands before finding it’s way to a multi-national corporation. And, on top of all that, the watch in question is dedicated to Amsterdam. So here we are, full circle on Amsterdam and misunderstandings. Let’s see what this watch is all about.

The Ace Jewelers X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam will not be confused with a dress watch on it’s own, as it comes in a rather large package. It measures 41mm wide, a far cry from what you would expect from a dress watch, but on my pretty hefty 8.1 inch/21 cm wrist, it actually looks small. Well, maybe not small, but it definitely leans more elegant than sporty. This is likely due to the very short 45mm lug-to-lug measurement, along with the fact that the case doesn’t have any protruding lugs and instead cuts off abruptly at the ends to connect to the integrated bracelet or rubber strap. And it’s that case that will likely make or break this watch for you. I happen to like it. A lot. Just like the majority of people I showed it to. A few people who I showed it to said no thanks to it. And that’s fair.

The build quality on this watch is just rock solid. Every single thing about it screams quality. The brushing is precise and clean, the polish is high, while the crown operation is as smooth as you would want from a watch that relies so much on the crown for it’s operation (winding, as well as adjusting the time, date and world time ring). Out back you’ll se a bit of a different construction than you might be used to from other watches. Instead of a screw-down or even press-down caseback, the entire backside of the watch screws down with four screws in each corner and a slightly protruding sapphire crystal in the middle. Surrounding the crystal is a lot of text, including the model number and model name, as well as the serial number, Ace Jewelers text and a xxx/100 number. It also indicates that water resistance is 100 meters, which is great for a watch that just has a push-in crown.

I put the watch on several wrists around me including - duh - my own, and it’s incredibly versatile. Due to the fact that it doesn’t have lugs and just cuts of, and the shortish lug-to-lug, it seems to fit pretty much every wrist, even my wife’s small wrist. Helping with the easy fit is the fact that I had this test version on the pretty sweet rubber strap it comes on. The lack of lugs is the downside when it comes to straps, as it needs to have a proprietary one in order to fill in the indentation in the case, but the good thing are the straps it comes with. You get a 3-link stainless steel bracelet matches the case finishings, but I much more preferred the rubber strap. Smooth on the inside, it has a waffle pattern on the outside and red stitching that matches the flashes of red on the dial. The rubber strap closes with a pin closure that can at times seem a bit flimsy, but this is a tradeoff to keep it simple and sleek. The one thing I will complain about is the length of the strap. Yes, I have a large wrist, but in the morning I wear it on the second to last hole and by the evening have to move it over to the last hole. But this is an issue I run into with a lot of European watches, so I can’t really blame them.

Interestingly, looking at the dial, I get a very strong sense that I’m getting old. Let me explain. I’ve seen dozens of photographs of this watch and it seemed massive and robust. In real life, the dial is actually very tiny. This is far from being a bad thing, it’s just a great reminder to never trust photos. When I call the dial tiny, it doesn’t actually impede the functionality of the watch, you just need to pick and choose how you’re using it. Glance at it from a distance and the simple and contrasting colors allow you to tell the local time very quickly. If you want to tell the time anywhere in the world, bring your wrist closer and shift your focus to the side and it’s all right there and easily viewable. The same goes for the date indicator that sits at 6 o’clock.

But, speaking of the dial, this is where the main inputs from Alon and Ace Jewelers happen. First, and most radically, they ditched one of the signature aspects of the original Highlife Manufacture Worldtimer - the map-style longitude and latitude lines engraved on the central part of the dial. I always loved this engraving as it gave me a sense of dynamism to the dial. It wasn’t until I saw this version that I realised how much better a plain matte-black dial works with the otherwise busy dial. It helps with that short-glance time telling. Along with the removal of the dial decorations, this version gets a black, white, and red colorway, matching the Amsterdam city flag. If you’ve ever seen the flag, you would know that the prominent aspect of it are the three large X symbols. Many will tell you that this denotes the x-rated entertainment Amsterdam is known for, but this is not even close to the truth. While the origin of the three X connection with Amsterdam is not known, it’s likely linked to St. Andrew and the Persijn family, which owned a lot of land in and around Amsterdam ranging back to the 13th century. Anyways, the “XXX” also stands there proudly on the dial. Another nod to Amsterdam is the replacement of “Geneva” on the city reference ring with “Amsterdam” spelled in red.

Speaking of the ring around the periphery, the Highlife Manufacture Worldtimer is a true world timer. By that I mean it doesn’t use a third GMT hand and a rotating ring with city names, as some not-so-worldtimers do. A true world timer uses an outside ring of cities and an internal ring with a 24 hour time scale. This way you set your “home town” at 12 o’clock and you just need to find the city for which you need to know the time to see what the current time there is. This brings us to another criticism that he Highlife Manufacture Worldtimer gets. The dial is wonderful, with an extreme amount of depth and layering, and one of the reasons for this is the fact that the time scale and city ring go under the 6 o’clock date sub-dial. This means you can’t really tell what the local time in Auckland, Samoa and Hawaii is if your home time is CET. I don’t mind that slight tradeoff of functionality for better style, but I completely understand if some do. Oh, and speaking of the date sub-dial, it has a stamped sunray pattern to it, which contrasts the flat dial.

Frederique Constant is unique in the world of premium but not-so-expensive watches for their approach to their movements. While many brands will claim in-house movements, these will quite often be rebranded movements from manufacturers like ETA, Sellita or even Kenissi. FC, on the other hand, really does design their movements on their own. Now, the in-house status might be stretched a bit, as it’s possible they use partners to produce the movements, but they still are an incredible achievement for such a small-volume manufacturer. The movement inside this watch is based on the FC-700 series and it’s called the FC-718 automatic. This is their first world timer complication and it beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. I wish that could be a bit extended, as I have found the watch to run out of steam if I don’t wear it for a day. A positive of the movement is the accuracy, which hasn’t gotten any complaints from me.

So, what to think of the Ace Jewelers X Frederique Constant Highlife Worldtimer Amsterdam? All the best. I mean, it’s a solid, fantastically built watch, with an in-house movement, that takes the design choices of the original and streamlines them to make them more legible and, perhaps, more exciting. It will fit a lot of wrists quite well, despite it’s large-ish diameter and significant thickness that it hides through fantastic use of curves and cutouts. Are there things to nitpick about? Sure - I would love a slightly longer bracelet and maybe a way to solve the issue of the date sub-dial covering the three time zones at 6 o’clock. The one thing I would love to see from this watch is way more lume, but that’s pretty much the only downside I see. Especially at the price it sells at - €3,550 without VAT. Sure, when you take VAT into account it will break the €4,000 range, but it’s still quite a good price. Seeing how it’s limited to 100 pieces, you might want to grab one on the Ace Jewelers website while they’re still available.

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-Vuk