Chrono Critique: The Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta Is A Pretty Fantastic Summer Watch That Won’t Break The Bank

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. In for review, just in time for summer, is a different take on a Regatta watch that is just affordable enough to be on the brink of being an impulse buy.

The Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta Is A Pretty Fantastic Summer Watch That Won’t Break The Bank

Full disclosure notice: I don't have a deal with Sternglas for any compensation for this review. They kindly loaned me the watch for a couple of weeks and that's it, I am sending it back as soon as this review is published. They have asked me to use a UTM in the url when I link to the watch, but that is only for their internal purposes of seeing where traffic comes from. I agreed to this and I get nothing in return. 

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There’s something special about summer on the Mediteranean that is almost impossible to put down in words. Many much talented writers have tried and still haven’t managed to catch every special details. It’s one of those things where you have to be there to know it. It’s about the sounds, the scents, the colors, all pretty impossible to put down on paper. For the life of me I couldn’t recall the dates and the locations of most of my summer holidays on the Adriatic, but I can talk about the details all day long. The sound wall of noise made by the crickets that fills your head every second of the day, the smell of the drying pine needles in the tiny patch of trees right next to the beach, that feeling of diving into a slightly too chilly sea that cools down your scalp that is a step away from combusting because the sun is so intense, the colors of old changing cabins and public spaces along the beaches with their incredibly vivid shades that have faded just as much as the investments into them. These are all the things that you know if you have spent some time on the Adriatic.

If you’re reading this, you like watches. And chances are you have more than one watch, leading to the horrible process of choosing which watch you take on a trip with you. Especially if it’s a summer vacation. You don’t want something too precious or expensive - I still remember the dread I felt when I did a stupid pool jump wearing my now-already-vintage Speedmaster which survived that brush with rushing water - but you also want something that will make a statement. A colourful G-Shock is always a good option. Or you could go for something a bit pricier in the Tudor range which will stand up to abuse, but you still have to contend with thieves which are rampant around summer apartments that are often left wide open to receive even the wheeziest of breezes. But what if you could find something that walks this very narrow line and meets quite a lot of the criteria for a great summer watch. I think I found it. It’s the Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta.

There’s a whole genre of watches - not a huge one, but it’s sizeable - that could be described as regatta watches. These are watches specific to sailing races, or regattas, that often have complications that make it easier for the user to count down from the 5 minute warning before the start of a regatta to the actual start. These watches also have a very specific look, one that mimics the colors usually associated with sailing boats that then carried over into the prep fashion style of clothing. These are a lot of intense reds, blues and yellows, with a good white or silver brought in for good measure. Very quickly, watch brands applied this style to watches that didn’t have the 5-minute countdown functions, creating simpler and more affordable pieces that carry the same look. And this is exactly what the Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta is.

And this watch is a wonderfully refreshing piece from Sternglas. The Hamburg-based brand has a crisply simple prerogative: to create minimalist watches in a simple Bauhaus design and good quality at a fair price. This is how the whole Sternglas story started, but since then they have created a huge number of models, sizes and colorways. I mean, for real, go check out their website just to see for yourself, you will be surprised. And throughout all of these models, Sternglas has kept their Bauhaus inspiration front of mind, which is a fantastic thing. It allows them to play as much as they want with the colors, while keeping the design instantly recognisable. I mention this because this is a trait that many much more established and much more prestigious/expensive brands often lack. So a brief applause for Sternglas on this front.

The Hamburg Chrono Regatta is one of these new colorways that I mentioned in one of the previous issues of the newsletter and everybody instantly fell in love. It combines the red, yellow, and blue characteristic of the Bauhaus school, with the same use of the colors in sailboat racing and it just might be a perfect fit. This watch was also released by Sternglas at the same time as two other variants - a stainless steel case chrono with a white dial and red details, and a bronze case with a green dial and orange details. Like I said, they are really good with colors.

But before we dive into colors more, let’s deal with the case first. Keep in mind I have a chunky writs that measures 8.2 inches / 21cm around, so very few watches look large on me. And yet, this one seemed a bit chunky even on my hand. But not in a bad way. The measurements aren’t really all that bad. In fact, they’re pretty great - while 42mm in diameter sounds large, the watch is only 9.3mm thick and has a pretty incredible lug-to-lug of 46mm. The appearance of chunkiness comes from the shape - the watch has a fully round case with almost no bezel and super short lugs that dramatically angle down right as they leave the case. That, in addition to the fact that there is almost no bezel to speak of and the watch is almost all dial, makes this look a bit like a hockey puck on a writs. But I do not mind it at all, especially since this is a summer watch that is meant to be worn with short (or even better, no) sleeves. On the right side of the case is the crown and pushers, which require very little pressure to operate and the top one having an orange band around it. Water resistance is 50 meters, which is decent, but I would have liked a regatta style watch to have 100 just be better protected.

The dial looks busy, but is so far from it. The central part of the dial is colored in a very nice silver that catches the sun perfectly and it’s surrounded by four rings of varying color and segmentation. The outermost is just a black ring, followed by black and yellow blocks every 30 seconds, the middle blue marks out 5 minute segments and the innermost red one indicates the minutes. All of this is combined with a very minimalist and Bauhaus-inspired font for the double digit numerals - double digit minutes on the outermost black ring and double digit hours on the silver central part. There are two sunken-in sub-dials at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions, which will bring up the most controversy, so let’s get that out of the way. The watch is powered by the Seiko VK64 Mecha-Quartz movement, so the 3 o’clock sub-dial is a 24 hour indicator. This is often regarded as one of the most useless complications on a watch and while I’m sure it has people who like it, there are many more that just can’t stand it. I’ll allow it here because it’s just a great watch, but there has to be a better option than this.

The 9 o’clock sub-dial, on the other hand is much more useful. it’s a 60 minute totaliser that uses colors to address the fact that it doesn’t have a dedicated regatta-timer. By divvying up the first 15 minutes into three red blocks, it allows you to keep track of the countdowns to the start of the race. There’s a date window at the 6 o’clock position which has another unique feature. It’s deeply set, framed on the inside in red, and shows the date only every other day. Between each numeral it shows a colorful signal flag that are used in regattas. Now, I’m no sailor, so I have no idea what the flags mean, and I assume most of the customers will have the same experience, but it’s just plain cool. The hour and minute hands are thin and lume filled, the central seconds hand is orange, the sub-dial hands are… maybe reverse paddle shaped?… and colored black and orange respectfully. There are also three lumed pips at the 3, 9 and 12 o’clock positions.

Like I said, the movement inside is the very well known Seiko VK64. It’s a quartz movement, which is just fine for this purpose, intention and price bracket, but it also has a mechanical movement that powers the chronograph. This gives it a mechanical feel when it comes to chrono timing. The highlight is the 2-point hammer system. After pressing the reset button, all chronograph hands return to zero immediately and synchronised - just like a mechanical chronograph. The movement also doesn’t have a running seconds which hides the fact that it’s a quartz movement, but I’m the first one to say that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our quartzes.

And finally, the strap, my only real gripe. It’s not that it’s bad, despite not being my style, it’s more that there could be more appropriate choices. The strap you get is what Sternglas calls Vintage 20 mocha and is made out of genuine cowhide leather with two yellow stitches at the top. I am a very heavy sweater, especially in the summer and near bodies of water. And in the few weeks that I wore this watch, I pretty much devastated this strap. Sure, it’s aging the leather in an interesting way, but I’m not sure I like it very much. Sternglas does sell the watch with an orange nylon strap which seemed incredibly weird when I saw it the first time, but it now seems to be the better option - not only will it handle the summer swears better, it actually looks pretty funky on the orange.

You don’t have to keep your expectations low to enjoy the Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta. It’s a refreshing watch that serves a very specific purpose. I would say that the lume-dialed Citizen Promaster Aqualand Depth Meter and the Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta just might be the perfect summer-watch duo if you want to have a good time for not a lot of money. The Citizen will run you about €400, while the Sternglas is priced at €349, which is a pretty unbeatable price for what you get. And you should get it. Check it out here.

-Vuk