Timex Releases Trio Of Racing-Inspired Marlin Chronos; Casio Pulls Off A Radical Look With New CoolEyes; Leica Shrinks Down Their ZM Watch; RZE Announces Their First Digital Watch; A Crazy RM

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I don’t think I’ve ever sent out a newsletter this late. And I’m sorry about that. Dog had surgery today, and that’s been an ordeal. He’s all fine now — except for the constant slow hum of his distain towards me for putting him under the knife — but it took up a lot of time. I hope you still enjoy today’s issue and if you were ever on the fence of becoming a paid subscriber, there’s no better time than now. Vets are very expensive. Very.

In this issue:

• Timex Releases Trio Of Racing-Inspired Marlin Chronographs At A Great Price

• Casio Pulls Off A Very Radical Look With The New CoolEyes Collection

• Leica Shrinks Down Their ZM Watch, Sets Up A Future Classic Collection

• RZE Announces Their First Digital Watch, The Titanium Cased UTD-8000

• Richard Mille Releases The New RM 07-02 Automatic Tourbillon In Gold Quartz TPT

👂What’s new

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Timex Releases Trio Of Racing-Inspired Marlin Chronographs At A Great Price

Perhaps more than any other brand, Timex has successfully tapped into its archives to revisit vintage designs. And they don’t just reach into one part of their history. From the 60s to the 80s, they take inspiration from all of the best parts of their history ranging from the more mainstream Q line to experiments like the World Time reissue. Nowhere is this more evident than in their Marlin line. Coming in a 40mm or a 34mm case, the Marlin features an instantly recognizable mid-century design and elegance and thanks to its low price, it’s on every single list of must have entry pieces. Now, Timex mashed up their retro design ethos with vintage racing liveries for the perfect affordable racing chronograph.

The watch comes in a polished 40mm wide and a 13mm thick stainless steel case. You get a pull out crown, meaning water resistance is not fantastic, but you still get 50 meters of it. In addition to the crown, you get an additional two mushroom pushers on either side. Everything about this watch is vintage-inspired, including the sloped bezel, sloped lugs and a massively domed acrylic crystal.

Then, there’s the dials. There are three different colorways, all with racing stripes reaching from 1 to 5 o’clock. The colors are dark blue with orange and light blue stripes, gold with blue, white and red stripes and a dark british racing green with double yellow stripes with a white border. All three dials get a sunburts pattern on it and the additional markings on the dial are all beautifully retro. The applied markers are shaped as simple polished batons, that match the polished baton hands and at 12, 3 and 9 o’clock you’ll find what Timex calls boxed numerals with a fantastic font. Even better, they ditched the 4:30 date aperture for a cleaner look. Surrounding the entire dial is a Tachymeter scale — blue on blue, green on green and black on gold — that’s pushed all the way to the edge of the domed crystal which gives it a sort of magnification effect.

Inside is a quartz movement. Timex doesn’t specify which one, but it is understandable that they opted for a quartz as a mechanical chronograph movement would have brought the Marlin into another price range. The watches come on quick-release perforated leather straps in blue, black and brown, made by the Leather Working Group.

The three new Timex Chronographs are available now and priced at €189, which is just a great price for such a nice looking watch. See more on the Timex website.

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Casio Pulls Off A Very Radical Look With The New CoolEyes Collection

I’ve been saying for some time now that we should be expecting a resurgence in 1990s design in watches. What I meant by that is more bright colors, chunky watches and, perhaps, more affordable quartz options as all the other prices skyrocket. Well, I would dare say that Casio had the same idea as I did, only not in the TAG Heuer-IWC-Breitling style of 1990s. More in the Nickelodeon style of the 90s. This is their new G-Shock GA-V01 collection they’re calling CoolEyes, and it’s really quite something.

G-Shock watches have always stood out from the rest of even digital watches with their robust look. But very few things have looked like this. It comes in a huge resin case that measures 58.2mm wide and a whopping 19.6mm thick. It also has a surprisingly normal lug-to-lug measurement of 49.1mm. It seems to be a largely resin-based case, since the total weight, with the resin strap, is 74 grams. It also carries on the G-Shock essentials, like robustness, being shockproof and 200 meters of water resistance. It also features a pretty cool 10 year battery life.

The case looks like a splat of pain, with pushers and buttons sticking out at all angles, with 3D hour markers sticking over the crystal that seem to hold it down. The crystal is curved and underneath it is and indicator and LCD display that have a shape that resembles cartoon-like eyes described as being “CoolEyes”. G-Shock also uses a magnetic minutes hand which is supposed to be more shock resistant. There will be four colorways of the CoolEyes at launch: black, silver, purple and lime green. And let’s be honest, if you’re getting this, you should be getting the lime green or purple. Just go all out.

For now, the CoolEyes collection is launching in China, but there seems to be confirmation that they are expanding the collection to the rest of the world quickly. The price in China is set at 990 yuan or about $120. See more on the Casio website.

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Leica Shrinks Down Their ZM Watch, Sets Up A Future Classic Collection

I’m sure that making you world class in one thing — let’s say making cameras — doesn’t translate to making other consumer goods — let’s say watches. But I’m also sure that this applies to all other companies other than Leica. Because for more than 70 years, Leica has been making some of the best and most prestigious cameras in the world. Then, they started making watches. And of course, they were amazing at it. It seemed that their ZM 11 could establish itself as a really nice luxury sports watch. The only downside, many people noted, was its large size. Not to worry, Leica has you covered on that. They just introduced the ZM 12, a continuation of the 11, but now in a smaller case and more colors. This could be very good for Leica.

The case takes a lot of the design cues of the ZM 11, but in a new size. There are two materials offered, either stainless steel or grade 5 titanium, and the case measures 39mm wide and 13mm thick. I’m curious to see what the lug-to-lug is since they have hooded lugs that elongate the watches visually, but don’t seem to be all that long actually. The cases have a lot of brushed surfaces and strategically placed polished surfaces. On top is a sapphire crystal and there’s not much more to the case.

A lot more changes can be found on the dial. Gone is the central seconds hand in favor of the small seconds sub-dial at 6 o’clock. Leica also removes the date indicator. What remains the same, however, are the very cool grooves cut into the dial at uneven distances, creating an effect that brings your eye to the centre. There are four colors at launch — dark green, white and blue in steel cases and a sensational chocolate brown in the titanium case.

Best of all, inside is not just an off the shelf movement. Instead, it’s the calibre LA-3002 developed for Leica by Chronode. It beats at 4Hz, has a 60 hour power reserve and a pretty great accuracy of -4/+6 seconds a day. There’s a whole range of straps and bracelets, each unique to their respective models. You get a technical fabric strap, orang on the blue dial and beige on the brown dial, a black rubber strap on the green dial and a really nice flat single link bracelet on the white.

The Leica ZM 12 in silver, green and brown dials are available right away, while the blue dial will go on sale in April. Prices start at $6,800. See more on the Leica website.

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RZE Announces Their First Digital Watch, The Titanium Cased UTD-8000

This newsletter seems to work in cycles. On some days, I only feature very affordable watches. Others, they are eye-watering expensive. Sometimes we have a bunch of in-house movement. And at other times, like today, we have a lot of quartz movements. The internet has a lot of strong opinions on quartz, but I’m firmly in the pro-quartz camp. Give me all the quartz I can buy! And please, stop quartz hate. So, today we had the quartz Timex, the quartz G-Shock and we’re rounding it out with a new quartz watch watch from RZE, the Singapore-based maker of tough — often titanium — great looking watches for a really fair price. And the new UTD-8000, their first digital watch, makes perfect sense for a brand that makes unbreakable tool watches. I’m very enamored with it.

This is a tough watch. Its titanium case measures 41mm wide (with a slightly oversized bezel with exposed screws that pushes the overall width out to 42mm) and 13.4mm thick. That thickness is unusual, as quartz watches are often known for being much thinner than their mechanical counterparts. Sure, the movement is. But RZE packed this case with a bunch of tech to make it as durable as possible. The digital module is held in place by a compressible cushion material and there’s a ton of water and weatherproofing measures taken. RZE points out that they tested the watch in the Canadian tundra, exposing it to -30 degree Celsius temperatures for over 24-hours, as well as +60 degree temperatures for an hour, even strapping it to the front of a car to give it a rattle test. And it survived.

The backlit LCD display is part of that rugedness. The UTD-8000 has one of the largest digital displays I’ve seen on this side of a smart watch and it’s divided into three parts. The central part shows oversized digital numerals, the top shows the day of the week and the bottom the date. The displays also show you all the functions — chronograph timer, alarm, hourly chime and format changes such as 12/24 hour time display. The display is set inside the a colored ring that can be had in either blue, black or yellow.

RZE doesn’t specify what movement is inside, but they do say that it has a 3 year battery life and offer a lifetime guarantee on it. The watches can be had on a full titanium bracelet or on a great looking elastic fabric strap.

The RZE UTD-8000 will go on preorder on March 20th and if you preorder before March 31st, you can have it for $169 on the fabric strap or $199 on the bracelet. Those are really great prices. After the 31st, price goes up to $219 for the fabric strap and $369 for the titanium. Still not bad. See more on the RZE website.

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Richard Mille Releases The New RM 07-02 Automatic Tourbillon In Gold Quartz TPT

Despite the name of this new Richard Mille — the RM 07-02 Automatic Tourbillon In Gold Quartz TPT — it does not fall into the category of quartz watches that has populated this issue of the newsletter. Nor does it fall into the category of affordable watches. In fact, this one is the exact opposite to the above mentioned RZE UTD-8000 in every single way. But there still seems to be a market for a $660,000 RM with a Quartz TPT tonneau case with a skeletonized movement.

The quartz in the name refers to the Quartz TPT, a composite material, that RM uses to make the top and bottom plates of this case, striated with 22k rose gold leaves. The case is tonneau shaped and strongly curved, measuring 34.4mm wide, 13.05mm thick and with a 52.63mm lug-to-lug. Thanks to the curve, it’s supposed to sit more like a bangle than a watch. On the side you can see that the midcase is made from 18k rose gold.

The dial is non existent, as this whole thing is fully skeletonized. Around the periphery is a PVD-coated rose-gold flange and from which a series of rose-gold bridges extend to hold up the movement. The hands are polished and silver in color, which stands out against the rose gold bridges. The movement you see is the in-house calibre CRMT5. It has a flying tourbillon, a variable inertia balance, variable-geometry rotor (which can be adjusted with a push of a button to the wearer’s activity level, enabling faster or slower winding), special gear teeth profile, and fast-rotating barrel. The watch can be had on a Speaking of straps, details are scarce but images show the option of a textured white rubber strap with a Velcro closure, smooth black rubber or a pretty wild rose gold Cuban bracelet.

Not that it matters, but the Richard Mille RM 74-02 is priced at a ludicrous $603,000 on the straps and an even crazier $660,000 on the bracelet. See more on the Richard Mille website.

👁️First look

More than a news item, a bit less than a review. I give you a more detailed look at a new release

First Look: The echo/neutra & Ace Jewelers Averau 39 Moon Phase Noctilum

This echo/neutra is the first watch I’m doing this first look format on, so I figure I should try and keep it up here for the rest of the week, in case you missed it.

Read the first look here.

⏲️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

• “Timeless decision theory.” “Roko’s basilisk.” “Vegan anarchotranshumanism.” The story of the group known as the Zizians is an explanatory minefield–one that Evan Ratliff artfully navigates for Wired. Following a recent, high-profile arrest, news outlets the world over published “explainer” pieces in an attempt to untangle the history of the neo-cult and the violent allegations against its members. Here, Ratliff explains on the fly, weaving years of reporting through a narrative whose brisk pace masks its complexity.

• For Virginia Quarterly Review, Will Boast follows his own gastrointestinal disorder into the archives, where he finds some morsel of relief among the bellyaches of famous writers. “From the Gut” is a history of writers’ efforts “to make meaning, any meaning, from even our most unglamorous suffering.” Walt Whitman warned that “too much brain action” caused indigestion. Franz Kafka’s father detested his son’s excessive chewing. Despite the heartburn, Boast seems to enjoy himself as he ruminates.

• Moët and Cristal used to be mainstays of hip-hop lyrics, with aspirational MCs flaunting the good life. Now, those same artists are putting their mouth where their money is—and owning brands that compete directly with those that once turned up their nose at a rapper’s cosign. For Taste, Abe Beame goes beyond the trend to sketch a compelling portrait of the artist as a mogul.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

These two dudes have had the most pleasing rise to stardom we have ever had a privilege of witnessing. Five years ago, they were struggling comedians when they started their Are You Garbage podcast. The premise is simple. Have a comedian guest on to talk about their childhood to figure out if they were classy or trash. And the stories, as well as the trashy details, are just astounding. They expanded the trash questions to their stand-up audience and it’s just as wild. Trust me, you won’t regret watching this special.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk