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- Stop Hating Panerai And Just Look At These Gorgeous Gradient Pastel Dials, New Timex T80 Is Both Hyper And Bright, Rado Slaps High-Tech Ceramic On Captain Cook And Bulova Expands Puzzling CURV Collection
Stop Hating Panerai And Just Look At These Gorgeous Gradient Pastel Dials, New Timex T80 Is Both Hyper And Bright, Rado Slaps High-Tech Ceramic On Captain Cook And Bulova Expands Puzzling CURV Collection
In the past four or five years, Panerai has moved from a testosterone filled ad exercise into a good luxury watchmaker
Vuk Radic
May 03, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes
Hey friends, time waits for no one, but It’s About Time is always on schedule, so let’s get to it.
In this issue:
Panerai Introduces Beautiful Pastel Dials To The Luminor Due 38mm
Rado Slaps High-Tech Ceramic And A Skeleton Dial On Captain Cook
Bulova Expands Puzzling CURV Collection
The New Timex T80 Hyperbrights Get The Most Apt Name Of The Year
Two Watch Themed New Watches
And… invite your friends to win a Seiko Alpinist
Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 14 seconds
Everybody needs a green faced watch in their life. That’s why we have a new giveaway - it’s the Seiko SPB121J1, aka the Seiko Alpinist in a wonderful shade of green. In fact, we’re giving away two of them!
All you have to do is click the button below and have five of your friends subscribe. Both you and one of your friends will be eligible to win one of the watches
We only have two conditions when entering this giveaway - invite 5 of your friends to subscribe and live somewhere were you can buy the Alpinist, so we can get this for you and ship it to your address. That’s it!
👂What’s new
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The Panerai Luminor Due 38mm is now available, for the first time, with pastel-coloured dials. Would-be wearers are presented with a choice of three shades, including ‘pastel light blue’ (PAM01309), ‘pastel green’ (PAM01311) and ‘powdery pink’ (PAM01309).
You are free to hate on Panerai as much as you want, as the watch world likes to do, but they have come far from the hyper-masculine 47mm bricks of watches they were in the 2000s. Since 2018, the brand has introduced a variety of models to suit any wrist - small or large, male or female. The Panerai Luminor Due 38mm skews towards the smaller wrists and with the pastel colors, more feminine. Which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want the pastel green PAM.
The rest is as you would expect. A 38mm steel case, sandwich dial with incredible Super-LumiNova on the plongeur-style hour and minute hands, as well as the Arabic numerals and batons. A date window sits at 3 o’clock and a small seconds display is at 9.
The brand’s automatic P.900 calibre powers the watchwith a three-day power reserve and it comes on a steel bracelet. The Luminor Due Collection is part of a boutique exclusive program with availability of 500 pieces per dial shade, per year. Price is expected to be around EUR 7,700.
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Over the past couple of years, Rado has really come into its own with the Captain Cook collection. They put out models in various metals, colors and even a skeletonized model. Continuing from last year’s Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic Skeleton Limited Edition, Rado now adds a new non-limited ‘gunmetal’ grey and gold-coloured model to the collection.
Rado is one of those brands you don’t really know where they fit, but you know they did a lot of stuff with ceramic. So it’s no wonder they can do funky stuff with it, like get this dark grey, almost titanium, color on the new Captain cook Case. It’s topped with a less interesting rose gold PVD-coated bezel. It’s not small at 43mm and a whopping 14.6mm thick, but I guess you get more ceramic to admire?
Powering this new take on the ceramic Captain Cook is the same movement as in the previous limited edition and the True Square Skeleton, namely the Rado Calibre R808. This is essentially a slightly reworked ETA movement done specifically for Rado. It’s fitted with a Nivachron hairspring to improve magnetic resistance and has a power reserve of 80 hours. It can be seen through the titanium caseback, as well as the skeletonized dial of course.
The new Rado Captain Cook High-Tech Ceramic Skeleton comes on a three-link bracelet with brushed plasma high-tech ceramic outer links, polished titanium inner links and a double-folding clasp. It’s available at a retail price of EUR 4,800 (without taxes).
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Sometimes we get innovations we didn’t ask for. Sometimes these innovations solve a lifelong problem we didn’t know we needed solving. And then there’s the head scratching innovation behind Bulova’s CURV collection which in 2016 introduced the world’s first curved chronograph movement (quartz, mechanical, or otherwise). We have had curved cases for decades, allowing us to get better fit to the wrist, but Bulova decided that they needed to make a curved movement, as well. While completely unnecessary, I guess it was cool.
When first introduced, the collection consisted of 12 models. Now Bulova adds three new chronos - two stainless steel models and one two-tone steel and yellow cold color models. While the layout remains the same as previous executions with a crown and pushers located on the 3 o’clock side of the watch, the 44mm cases on the new Bulova CURV chronographs flow outward to surround the signed crown, making the watch not only larger but also more traditional looking, if you can say that for such a curved model.
The watch also gets a curved display caseback, which is weird as it covers a curved, gold-plated quartz chronograph movement. But damn, does it look cool. Since everything is curved, so is the dial, making it look a bit melted when observed from the side. The stainless models come with a grey dial with rose gold colored hands or a green dial with silver colored hands. The two-tone comes with a black dial and yellow gold colored hands.
The five-link design of the bracelets fitted to the new 2023 models is significantly more dressy compared to the single flat-link design used throughout the rest of the series. Inside the new Bulova CURV watches is the same Caliber NR20 movement that can be found in the rest of the chronograph models from the current CURV series. While the curved structure of the Caliber NR20 is arguably the single most interesting detail, it is also one of Bulova’s High Performance Quartz movements that features a three-pronged quartz crystal with a frequency of 262 kHz (8 times the frequency of standard quartz), which results in an accuracy rating of five seconds per month.
The two stainless steel references are priced at $1,150, while the two-tone variant comes in slightly higher at $1,195.
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We love our Timex watches because they are fun, affordable and make us smile. What would make you smile more this summer than a trio of Timex T80 watches in hyper bright colors? The Blue Haze features a stainless steel case and complementary tones of light blue and green, and the Purple Haze is the latest watch to include what I think is clearly the color of the moment, along with darker tones of blue. Rounding out the trio we get the Pink Haze, which matches elements of the strap to the gold tone case for a rich, warm look.
All of the standard T80 specs apply here, of course. These watches all feature chronographs, alarms, and Iniglo Back-Lights that come on at the touch of a button. The watches are water resistant to 30 meters, and the cases measure 36mm across.
The T80 Hyperbrights collection is available now, with prices starting at $99.
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If you didn’t previously know that Leica, the legendary camera company, makes watches, what would you think they put out? If you said a low-quality cash grab on their name, you wouldn’t meet much resistance, as saying “Leica watch” almost seems like saying “Hugo Boss watch” or any other fashion brand.
But you would be dead wrong. Leica makes some extremely interesting watches, that look to have high finishing quality. After all, they do make the best cameras in the world. Now they’re updating two watches they introduced last year with a new colorway. The new ZM 1 and ZM 2 references are inspired by Leica’s latest black and white only camera, the M11 Monochrom. These Monochrom Edition watches, as you’ve probably guessed, have been sapped of all color, with a dial that is essentially black on black, with only the most minimal stark white accents on the dial that draw your attention to the watch’s power reserve and day/night indicator functionality.
The ZM 1 and ZM 2 differ only slightly in how they are used. The ZM 1 is a time and date model with a power reserve indicator, and the ZM 2 adds a second time function (via an outer ring at the dial’s perimeter) and a day/night indicator. Both calibers are hand wound, and Leica refers to them as “in house” (they also note that they have a patent on the push-crown mechanism which stops the movement and immediately brings the seconds hand back to zero). Both watches measure 41mm in diameter, have 50 meters of water resistance, and are equipped with sapphire crystals on the front and back of the case, which is stainless steel with a black PVD coating.
The new watches are expected to be available at select Leica stores later in May. The retail price for the ZM 1 comes in at €11,550, while the ZM 2 retails for €15,450.
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Speaking of photography-themed watches, Horage is coming out with their Lensman 2 Exposure. While it is a watch, it is also a tool for photographers to determine optimal exposure settings, combining form and function in a well-executed package.
Choosing the right exposure on your camera when you are rocking manual settings is a true art. With time you learn to adjust the exposure by feel, but there are numerous tools to help you get there, including electronic exposure meters. The Horage Lensman 2 has temaed up with legendary photographer Biran Griffin to create a bidirectional rotating bezel that’s a functional exposure calculator. The special edition of Lensman 2 is dedicated to Griffin with some design tweaks and upgrades and includes special prints by the man himself.
The construction is unique with an outer case of Grade 5 titanium and an inner case of black anodized aluminium, and the contrasting finishes recall the design of old-school medium format cameras. It’s not really a square case, but also don’t call it a cushion. It should ware nice as it’s 39mm in diameter.
But the case is less interesting. What you want to see is the bezel, which has ISO figures from 25 to 12,800 and f-stop figures from 1.4 to 22, covering the most common ranges in photography. A fixed inner ring has icons representing lighting conditions and shutter speeds, so the optimal shutter speeds and f-stops are given when the ISO (film speed) on the bezel is aligned with the lighting conditions – a sun for daylight, for example.
Camera functions aside, this is also a high-end, mechanical 24-hour GMT piece. The dial comes in black or yellow with both 12 and 24-hour tracks, and a lollipop central GMT hand is filled with X1 Super-LumiNova. The yellow dial features a gradient of black and white markings save for a classic red dot under the ISO designation on the bezel, while the black dial has splashes of yellow on the 12-hour track and GMT hand. There’s a matching black or yellow rubber strap with a deployant buckle.
Powering the Lensman 2 is Horage’s in-house K2 micro-rotor, COSC certified (-4/+6 seconds per day) and nicely finished. It comes with both a silicon escapement and hairspring, 72-hour power reserve and rhodium-plated tungsten micro-rotor, while the Brian Griffin special edition has an upgraded PT950 Platinum rotor.
The first VIP Preorders for the Horage Lensman 2 Exposure start on May 9th at 14:00 CET and last for just a few days until May 12th at 14:00 CET. Prices during this window are CHF 4,900 for the standard piece and CHF 5,900 for the Special Edition. From there they will go up. Not a bad price for such a unique watch with an in-house movement.
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Everybody needs a green faced watch in their life. That’s why we have a new giveaway - it’s the Seiko SPB121J1, aka the Seiko Alpinist in a wonderful shade of green. In fact, we’re giving away two of them!
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