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  • Citizen's New 890 Is The Integrated Bracelet Sports Watch For The Rest Of Us; Sinn And Revolution Make A Black 155 Chrono; Mido's Shark Inspired Ocean Star GMT; And New From Ciga And Renaud Tixier

Citizen's New 890 Is The Integrated Bracelet Sports Watch For The Rest Of Us; Sinn And Revolution Make A Black 155 Chrono; Mido's Shark Inspired Ocean Star GMT; And New From Ciga And Renaud Tixier

The bronze dial on the new Citizen is really something pretty special at that price range

Author

Vuk Radic
March 20, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. What a jam packed issue with have today. Not a single bad watch in the bunch, and I don’t want to hear anything bad about the Ciga!

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In this issue:

  • Citizen’s New 890 Mechanical Models Are The Integrated Bracelet Steel Sports Watch For The Rest Of Us

  • Sinn Teams Up With Revolution For A Blacked Out, Military Inspired, 155 Chronograph

  • Mido Introduces A Special Edition Ocean Star GMT Inspired By Shark Teeth

  • Ciga Releases A New Central Tourbillon Model That Pays Homage To Mount Everest

  • New Indie Brand Renaud Tixier Introduce Their Inaugural Piece, The Monday Watch

Today’s reading time: 9 minutes and 10 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

The past several years were flooded with all sorts of integrated bracelet sports watches, from the very expensive Patek Phillipes to microbrands like Ba111od giving their take on the genre with the affordable Chapter 7. Citizen, the brand most known for their affordable quartz, solar-powered, watches, has also entered this arena with their very attractive Citizen Series 8. Last year we got the great Series 8 880 GMT and now, Citizen is adding three more watches to the Series 8 lineup with the striking 890 Mechanical.

The 890 Mechanical is very much a sports watch. It comes in a stainless steel case that measures 40.5mm wide, a nice 11.7mm thick and has a comfortable 46.6mm lug-to-lug. The case is barrel shaped, has an integrated bracelet, faceted sides with a mixture of brushed and polished surfaces, and a chunky 8-sided bezel on top, surrounding a sapphire crystal. The left side of the case has a small bulge that matches the same on the right side which serves as the crown guard. Speaking of the crown, it doesn’t screw down, which is pretty weird for a sports watch. Even weirder for a watch that has 200 meters of water resistance. At 2 o’clock you’ll find a second crown that moves the internal bezel.

There are three variants of the 890 Mechanical. Two come in untreated, silver colored, cases - a regular edition that gets a blue dial and a limited edition with a copper dial - and a gold colored case with a grey dial. The blue and grey dials have a variation of the skyscraper dial found on the 880, but with much larger blocks here, while the bronze dial on the LE gets a fractal pattern of triangular peaks and valleys. Each dial is surrounded by a color matched rotating bezel with the first 15 minutes rendered in a lighter shade of the color. There’s a date window at 3 o’clock, the hands are very chunky batons and the hour markers are a combination of circular indexes and faceted bar indexes all coated with lume.

Inside is Citizen’s in-house Calibre 9051, manufactured by Miyota, which beats at 28,800vph and has a 42 hour power reserve. It’s also not a bare-bones movement and gets a bit of decorations like stripes on the mainplate and a signed rotor. Citizen says the movement is accurate to -10 to +20 seconds per day, which is not great, but also much better than comparable movements from Seiko in a much higher price range. The watch comes on an integrated steel bracelet, color matched to the case, with H-shaped links and a folding clasp.

The blue and grey dialed versions are part of the permanent collection, priced at €995 and €1,095, respectively, while the one with the fractal copper is limited to 1,700 pieces and priced at €995. See more on the Citizen website.

2/

Wei Koh, the founder of The Rake and Revolution magazines is quite a character. Known for his extensive knowledge of the watch industry, his eclectic style and prominent tattoos, he often lends his taste to collaborations with a wide range of watch brands and I’ll say that I haven’t seen a bad watch yet. The latest collaboration from Revolution comes in the form of a follow up collab with the German maker of military-inspired watches, Sinn. In 2019, The Rake, Revolution and Sinn released the 155 Bundeswehr “Dark Star” but the new watch, the Sinn 155 S Bright Star TEGIMENT limited edition gets much darker and much tougher.

The 155 Bundeswehr chronograph has a long connection with actual military use, as it was developed for the West German Federal Defense Force in 1967. Some twenty years later, Helmut Sinn began selling issued Bundeswehr watches that had been decommissioned under his own brand name, so it’s no surprise that this is one of Sinn’s best selling watches even today. The new Bright Star comes in a 43mm wide stainless steel case that’s a chunky 14.75mm thick. The entire case gets Sinn's proprietary TEGIMENT Technology, a form of surface hardening that brings it up to five times the hardness of standard stainless steel and in addition to that you get a PVD black coating. Revolution notes that this is the first fully black version of the 155 ever produced. In addition to that, the bezel, pushers, and crown get the same treatment of TEGIMENT and black PVD. Seeing as how the case is tought, the sapphire crystal on top is expected.

The dial is equally as dark as the case, with a fully black finish and a bi-compax chronograph setup. Prominent Arabic numerals and the hands are rendered in white with a lot of lume inside them, and just above 6 o’clock is Revolution’s star logo, also lumed.

Inside is the automatic Sellita SW510 caliber. The SW510 is a reliable movement and it’s manually wound here to help with keeping the slimmer profile. The movement beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 63 hours. The watch comes on a black Bund-style leather strap, a nod to the roots of the model.

The Sinn 155 S Bright Star TEGIMENT limited edition is available for preorder right now and only 300 pieces will be made. Price is set at $3,600. See more on the Revolution website.

 3/

I love when a watch brand we usually don’t get to mention that often gets on bit of a roll. This time it’s Mido. Last week they unveiled the go-anywhere-do-anything Mido Multifort M Freeze with a gorgeous deeply brushed icy blue dial. Now, they have a new limited edition of their very handsome Ocean Star GMT, now with a beautiful blue dial and shark teeth-like markers.

While I believe that their Ocean Star Decompression World Timer is their best looking watch by far, the brand owned by the Swatch Group has had a lot of success with limited editions in the Ocean Star GMT lineup. I particularly mean the one they made with Hodinkee, as that might be one of the better looking Hodinkee LEs. Encased in their smaller 40.5mm wide case instead of the 44mm one, this new LE gets the same stainless steel case that’s 13.4mm wide and has a great lug-to-lug of 40mm, making it extremely wearable. The only issue I see with the case dimensions is the slightly non-standard lug width measurement of 21mm. On top is a box-shaped sapphire crystal, surrounded by a bidirectional bezel with a 24 hour scale on a blue aluminium insert. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is equally as blue, with a glossy finish and triangular applied markers that point to the center of the dial almost like shark teeth. The hour hand is alpha shaped, while the minute is a baton, and the GMT hand is rendered in red with a arrow on top. The dial is also surrounded by a radially-brushed internal flange with odd-numbered hours.

Inside is the Mido Caliber 80, a dual-time version of the Powermatic 80 movement. It beats at 3Hz and has an 80 hour power reserve, and it’s a flyer GMT, meaning you adjust the local hour hand independently. The watch comes on a multi-link stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp, and you also get an additional NATO-style navy blue strap with a grey centre line. It looks like a regular NATO strap, but it’s actually fantastic - it features sown-in spring bars making the strap as sturdy as a regular fabric case. Go see it on the brand’s website because it really is cool.

While the new Mido Ocean Star GMT Special Edition is a special edition, it’s not limited and it can be yours for €1,440. See more on the Mido website.

4/

The tourbillon is a notoriously useless complication that is adored by many almost exclusively for their aesthetic contribution to watches. The tourbillon has for decades been a staple of high end watches, costing often in the tens of thousands of any currency, but things have changed. Swiss brands like Ba11od (second time I mention them in this newsletter) and Horage have proven that you can get a Swiss-made tourbillon for under €10,000. However, before Swiss brands broke into four figures with their tourbillons, Chinese watchmakers have been doing it for a while. And CIGA Design was among the most prominent of these lower-priced tourbillon bands. Now, they’re bringing a theme to their Central Tourbillon with the CIGA Design Central Tourbillon Mount Everest Homage Edition.

It’s not a small watch. It measures 45mm wide, but being made out of Titanium, it’s a bit easier on the wrist. It’s a fully round, blocky case, with no lugs and a gear-toothed polished bezel on top. Outside of the brushed and polished flourishes of the bezel, the main case is simple and to the point, with a crisp cylindrical form and a matte-blasted overall finish. On top is a sapphire crystal and out back is a sapphire display caseback with Sir Edmund Hillary’s famous line “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves,” engraved into it. Despite this incredibly rugged look and satin finish, water resistance is only 30 meters, so do keep in mind that this is not actually a sports watch.

The dial is even stranger than the case. There are no markings, no scales, no indices. What you get is a base made out a charcoal gray slice of raw stone, a stone that came from the base of Mount Everest. The only printed thing on the dial is a stylized silhouette of Mount Everest at 12 o’clock, along with the height of the peak. At the center of the dial is a cutout for the central tourbillon display. Inside you’ll see a polished, skeletonized three-arm tourbillon cage and you get a peek at the movement inside. Traveling around the tourbillon opening are the most controversial part of the watch - the hands. Controversial because they do not look like regular hands, but rather like ice axes. Quite a statement. Both hands are engraved with inspirational words – “Courage” for the hours hand, and “Exploration” for the minutes, which are also tiny enameled flags for each of the four groups involved in the first summit of Mount Everest in 1953 – India, Nepal, Great Britain, and the United Nations.

Inside is the CD-05 hand-wound central tourbillon movement which beats at 21,600bph and has a pretty impressive 120 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a black leather strap with a quick-release mechanism.

The CIGA Design Central Tourbillon Mount Everest Homage Edition is available now at an early bird price of $3,000 which will increase to $3,600 after April 1. This is certainly not a watch for everyone, but it will have a very dedicated audience. See more on the CIGA website.

4/

I was about to point out that we don’t get new watch brands that often, but that wouldn’t be exactly true. In the past several years we have seen a proliferation of indie brands coming onto the scene, and that’s absolutely brilliant. The latest new brand comes under the name of Renaud Tixier, formed by two well known watchmakers: Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier.

Renaud is a legend in the field, who has been responsible for developing some of the most elaborate movements for the likes of Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille. Tixier, on the other hand, is only in his early 30s and is one of the few watchmakers in the industry who can make very element and component of a timepiece from scratch. Go look at their website I linked, they look like an unforgettable duo! The two worked before together on a watch called Tempus Fugit under the brand DRT that was nominated for the GPHG, and they worked on Furlan Marri’s 2023 Only Watch, the Secular Perpetual Calendar. Now their formed their own independent brand called Renaud Tixier.

According to their interviews, the brand will produce seven concepts that Renaud has come up with, with the first called “Monday”, their take on the micro-rotor. The watch comes in a white gold or rose gold case that measures 40.8mm wide and 11mm thick. Depending on the version you get, the dial will be slate gray or silver, with a sunray or hand-grained finish.

The watch is powered by the RTVI2023 movement, which brings some serious improvements to the micro rotor movement. Micro rotors enable the creation of thinner movements, as the winding system is integrated into the movement rather than placed over it. Yet, one of the drawbacks of this elegant solution is that micro-rotors tend to have lower winding efficiency due to smaller size. To combat this issue, Renaud Tixier will use an auxiliary mechanism, dubbed the dancer, to improve its efficiency. To do so, a central propeller and shock absorber, capable of absorbing and restituting energy from the wearer’s move, will wind the main spring optimally. The watches will come handmade leather straps.

Renaud Tixier’s “Monday” will not be limited in number but rather by their production capabilities and first deliveries are expected by the end of 2024. Price is set at CHF 79,000. See more on the Renaud Tixier website.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

Starting with the dial, you have MMI’s signature roulette-table date display (with lumed indicator!), applied lume-filled hour markers with polished metal surrounds, a finely-printed white minutes track, just inboard of which you’ll find similarly fine-printed odd numerals for the 24-hour scale. There’s refreshingly minimal branding, with just MMI’s graphic logo above the pinion and two lines of text — one reads “GMT” in red, and the second denotes the water resistance level — below the pinion. I wouldn’t object to the removal of the “GMT” text, as the bold orange-lined GMT hand effectively announces that function, but it isn’t bothersome in its current guise.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Not all videos on YouTube are created equal. Some, like this incredibly well made and confusingly informative video on a seemingly incredibly boring topic - why it’s hard to make blue LEDs - will just blow your mind.

💵Pre-loved precision

Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us 

  • LOOKING TO BUY: Here’s a crazy request. One of you is looking to buy the Ōtsuka Lotēc No. 7.5. Sure, it’s a big ask, but if any of you have one and want to sell, reach out to and I’ll put you in touch

  • SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.

  • LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

Want to sell your watch to a community of passionate horologists? Reach out to us and we’ll put your ad up.

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-Vuk

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