Orient Introduces Smaller Mako 40 In Summer Colors, Farer Launches First Ever Collaboration, The New MeisterSinger Is A Great Looking Watch And H. Moser & Cie. Gets A Stunning Gold Case And Beautiful Green Dial

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m starting off with an apology. Something happened with the software I use to send out the newsletter and yesterday’s edition went out with the same title as the Tuesday edition. Everywhere else, the title was correct, it was just the newsletter that goes out to thousands of people that got messed up. Go figure! Anyways, people are assuring me this will never happen again, and I hope so myself. Now, on to the watches.

The giveaway for the Hamilton is coming to an end this week. Invite your friends or fill out the survey to enter while you still can. Submissions will close on Friday, 11.59 PM CET

In this issue:

• Orient Introduces New Mako 40 Dive Watch In A Smaller Size And Great Summer Colors

• Farer Launches First Ever Collaboration, The Farer × Worn & Wound Limited Edition

• New MeisterSinger Is A Great Looking Watch, Even If You Dislike One-Handers

• The H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Flyback Chronograph Boutique Edition Gets A Stunning Gold Case And Beautiful Green Dial

Today’s reading time: 5 minutes and 6 seconds

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👂What’s new

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Orient Introduces New Mako 40 Dive Watch In A Smaller Size And Great Summer Colors

Japanese watchmaker Orient is a weird one. They are owned by Seiko Epson, one of the pillars of the Seiko group, so one would expect they know how to make watches. And they do. Their Bambino watch is very well loved, and the Mako divers are respected for their decent robustness and low price. However, Orient has one major problem - they refuse to tell people when new watches come out. For example, they released the Mako III with a sapphire crystal a few months back, and very few people know about it. Just the other week, they introduced three new, smaller, versions of the Mako 40. I accidentally noticed this on their website, so here’s a writeup of these great watches that Orient is hiding.

Not only does Orient not want you to know when they release a new watch, they don’t provide any significant information on the new watches. They say that “this model brings a new dimension to the Diver design model, which is popular both as a fashionable item and for wearing around town. Its new compact 39.9 mm case, makes it ideal for both men and women.” What does this mean? Who knows.

The most important aspect of this watch is that they shrunk it down to 39.9mm from the 41.8mm of its predecessor. The new model continues the Mako tradition of being a watch with a vintage feel and dive-style design. Dive style is important here, since Orient themselves point out that the watch does not meet ISO standards for a true diving watch, but this is not a huge issue since many watches in this price range do not meet this standard. You still get an unidirectional rotating bezel, screw-down crown and 200 meters of water resistance. Inside the watch is Orient’s in-house calibre F6722 automatic movement with 40 hours of power reserve.

The Mako has a sapphire crystal, while the dial features bar shaped hour markers, a orange tipped seconds hand and a date window at three o’clock. The watch comes in conservative colors like white, black and blue, but Orient is also introducing two refreshing new colors - apricot and lilac.

The Mako 40 will be available in August and Orient is selling the black, blue and white dial versions with a 20mm stainless steel bracelet with trifold deployment buckle for EUR 405, while the apricot and lilac options are matched with a leather strap and cost EUR 380. See more on Orient’s website, if you can.

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Farer Launches First Ever Collaboration, The Farer × Worn & Wound Limited Edition 

The UK-based brand Farer is launching its very first collaboration watch, created with Worn & Wound, the online watch retailer/watch blog. Farer is a brand I most associate, at least lately, with introducing crazy and innovative colors to their dials and cases. So, it comes as a sort of refresher that this collaboration features a gray dial, gray case and just a few hints of color.

The slate-gray dial showcases an alternation of matte and circular-brushed finishes. Contrasting the not-at-all boring slate gray dial are very dark navy blue syringe hands and the navy blue shows up on the top sections of the hour markers which are applied blocks of lume. It’s all very simple, with Arabic numerals and a simple Farer logo at 12 o’clock. However, more color is introduced with the long cyan colored second hand that has a red painted tip. The chapter ring is white and punctuated by cyan and navy blue.

The case has a diameter of 39.5mm and is 10.8mm thick, and it’s coated in dark gray PVD. The finish looks suspiciously like titanium, but it’s not, which smells suspiciously of Farer and Worn & Wound trying to pass it off as titanium, which we don’t appreciate around these parts. Water resistance is 50 meters and the watch has a sapphire crystal.

Inside is the Swiss-made La Joux-Perret G101 caliber, which has an impressive 68-hour power reserve. It’s not much of a movement to look at, but you can if you want, since the watch has a transparent caseback. The watch comes on a navy Granolo leather strap that matches the navy-blue accents.

Sales of the Farer × Worn & Wound Limited Edition started yesterday June 28th, at 2:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time and they are limited to 70 pieces. At the time of publishing, you can still get one for $1,050. Find out more on the Worn & Wound website.

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The New MeisterSinger Is A Great Looking Watch, Even If You Dislike One-Handers

There aren’t a lot of companies out there that focus almost solely on making one type of watch. And yet, here’s MeisterSinger, with their stubborn insistence they should only make one-handed watches. At first everybody chuckled. Now, we love them. In fact, they have been doing this one schtick so long they have overcome the novelty factor and the watches have become interesting for aspects other than the one hand. That’s fully visible with the newly introduced MeisterSinger Pangaea.

MeisterSinger’s newly unveiled time-only Pangaea line offers three dial variants: ivory, sunburst blue, and white. Each variant comes in a 40mm polished stainless steel case. The bezel is so tiny on this watch that it’s almost all dial, with just the tiniest bezel present to keep the domed sapphire crystal in place. The dial is supremely simple, not only because of the lack of hands you would expect, but also because of their simple markers, clean font and large numerals that make the entire thing super-legible.

Inside is the Sellita SW 300, a reliable and familiar movement that you can get serviced pretty much anywhere and you also get 42 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a leather strap in dark brown or cognac hues, but you can also get it on a mesh bracelet.

The prices start at EUR 2,190 for the references fitted with a strap, while the mesh bracelet will cost you a an extra 149. For more information, visit their website.

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The H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Flyback Chronograph Boutique Edition Gets A Stunning Gold Case And Beautiful Green Dial

Despite being made in just 100 pieces and just before the pandemic, the H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner, a luxury sports watch elements with an unusually fluid shape, was a huge hit for the brand. Since January 2020, the Streamliner has evolved into a collection with time-only, tourbillon and perpetual calendar models. Just the other day the brand introduced an update of the internals to the Streamliner Flyback Chronograph. Now it’s time for a beauty update.

The latest interpretation of the Streamliner Flyback Chronograph celebrates the opening of Moser boutiques in Hong Kong and Shanghai and, for the first time appears in a stunning red gold case on a rubber strap with a Matrix Green fumé dial. There are very subtle tweaks to the regular Flyback Chronograph, but the majority remains the same - the case still measures 42.3mm wide and 14.2mm thick, with a radially brushed bezel and polished pushers and the crown at 4 o’clock. The watch comes with a 120 meter “dynamic water resistance” ‘since the flyback function can be activated underwater.

Fumé dials are kind of Moser’s thing, and this one is stunning. The Matrix Green is lighter in the center of the dial and darkens towards the edges. In keeping with Moser’s minimalist design tenets, the Streamliner relays the elapsed times of the chronograph on two scales, meaning there are no sub-dials. The red and white outer track on the dial measures the seconds, while the inner track counts the elapsed minutes A nod to stopwatches of the 1960s and 1970s there is an applied numeral 60 at noon, and the chronograph hands look like those found on car dashboards or measuring instruments. The hour and minute hands are gilded to match the case colour, slightly curved and have Globolight inserts, a ceramic-based material containing Super-LumiNova.

Inside the watch is the meticulously complex calibre HMC 907 developed by movement maker Agenhor, now one of H. Moser’s partner companies (MELB Group). This automatic column-wheel chronograph has an innovative horizontal friction wheel, and the power reserve has been increased to 72 hours. While the Streamliner is strongly associated with its bracelet, this version comes on a textured rubber strap which actually looks great.

The Streamliner Flyback Chronograph in red gold retails for CHF 60,000 (incl. tax). For more, head on over to H. Moser & Cie.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Zenith Defy Extreme Carbon

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Hands on with the new 37mm Citizen Promaster Dive

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The quirky Mancheront Pacer and its unique features

With more and more microbrands on the rise, the idea of creating your own brand is something that’s become easier to stomach, whether through a melange of ready-made parts or a single factory custom-making an entire design. The path that Dilon Wong, the founder of Mancheront, took to get there, was pretty much the polar opposite. To create his first-ever watch, the pulsation scale-equipped Mancheront Pacer, he not only hand-selected each component that makes up the watch, but also personally made the pilgrimage to every single factory that manufactures them.

⏲️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

• OK, sex-themed articles seem to be the theme of the week. First it was the doctor that’s fighting to enlarge penises, then it was the guy who wanted to make condoms sexy. Today, we have a piece on Thirlling Bits, the first mail-order sex shop operating in the UK, and the lesbian couple that had to smuggle sex toys from the US, as they were illegal in the UK at the time.

• You might have noticed that I completely ignored the Titan submersible incident. I had nothing of merit to add to it, but this is a great article by David Pogue who famously took a ride on the Titan and criticized the CEO of the company for shoddy production.

• Being not from the US, I was always fascinated by the culture of Elvis impersonators. So I thoroughly enjoyed this article about the art of keeping Elvis alive in small-town Florida.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Porsche has a great Instagram-based magazine called Type 7. Every now and again they put out a video on their YouTube channel, and boy, is it an event when they do. They are fantastically produced and usually tell a great story. Like this new one does.

💵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: 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

• FOR SALE: Longines Heritage Skin Diver, box and papers. €1400. Reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

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