Tuesday, November 24, 2009
13:03 by FoxTwo Recently I came to know of a brand of watches called Reactor. They are supposedly the most rugged watches you can get, somewhat on par or perhaps even better than G-Shocks, due to their Reactor DNA philosophy. I looked for this brand in Singapore, but (of course) they weren't available locally in retail shops. So I had to go online and get one if I wanted one.
I picked the Reactor Trident 59501 watch, and purchased it off Amazon.
It has day and date display, and hour, minute and seconds hand. I don't like analogue watches with chronograph functions - they clutter up the dial too much. The numbers on the dial are coated with Super Luminova, which is supposed to last longer than most luminous paints on other watches. The Trident series has something more - tritium tubes that stay lit permanently for at least 25 years. Thus, when the luminous glow fades away over the night, the hands and markers remain visible in the dark. It also is waterproof to 200 metres, which makes it a "divers watch" with a screw-down crown, and it also has a battery life of 10 years.
When it arrived, I was pleasantly surprised at the heft of the watch - it has some weight to it, and makes it feel rugged. I actually stuck the watch on a scale and weighed it - it is 190 grams (although the website says it is 198 grams). It outweighed my Pulsar watch by 10 grams :)
Over the course of about a month, the watch has thus far lost only 2 seconds. Pretty impressive accuracy, better than the Pulsar in fact (which gains 3 seconds a month on average). So if I set this watch once and never fiddle with the time again for a year, it'd only be 24 seconds out. This makes it the most accurate watch I have in my modest collection now, a far cry from my older G-Shocks. They could be out as much as 40 seconds a month.
The day/date window is adjusted the usual way - turn the crown one way for day, the other way for date. The day display is in 2 languages - English and probably Spanish. Thus, at midnight, the day doesn't flip over to the new day immediately. It'll flip twice between midnight and 5am, where it will finally display the current day in the language of your choice.
I have now made this watch my "daily wearer". It's casual enough to go with T-shirt and jeans, and it fits in pretty nicely in office-wear too. I have had some colleagues commenting on how nice it looks, especially with the black nitride steel band. This makes it different to the rest of the watches with normal stainless steel brushed-metal bands.
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13:03 by FoxTwo Recently I came to know of a brand of watches called Reactor. They are supposedly the most rugged watches you can get, somewhat on par or perhaps even better than G-Shocks, due to their Reactor DNA philosophy. I looked for this brand in Singapore, but (of course) they weren't available locally in retail shops. So I had to go online and get one if I wanted one.
I picked the Reactor Trident 59501 watch, and purchased it off Amazon.
It has day and date display, and hour, minute and seconds hand. I don't like analogue watches with chronograph functions - they clutter up the dial too much. The numbers on the dial are coated with Super Luminova, which is supposed to last longer than most luminous paints on other watches. The Trident series has something more - tritium tubes that stay lit permanently for at least 25 years. Thus, when the luminous glow fades away over the night, the hands and markers remain visible in the dark. It also is waterproof to 200 metres, which makes it a "divers watch" with a screw-down crown, and it also has a battery life of 10 years.
When it arrived, I was pleasantly surprised at the heft of the watch - it has some weight to it, and makes it feel rugged. I actually stuck the watch on a scale and weighed it - it is 190 grams (although the website says it is 198 grams). It outweighed my Pulsar watch by 10 grams :)
Over the course of about a month, the watch has thus far lost only 2 seconds. Pretty impressive accuracy, better than the Pulsar in fact (which gains 3 seconds a month on average). So if I set this watch once and never fiddle with the time again for a year, it'd only be 24 seconds out. This makes it the most accurate watch I have in my modest collection now, a far cry from my older G-Shocks. They could be out as much as 40 seconds a month.
The day/date window is adjusted the usual way - turn the crown one way for day, the other way for date. The day display is in 2 languages - English and probably Spanish. Thus, at midnight, the day doesn't flip over to the new day immediately. It'll flip twice between midnight and 5am, where it will finally display the current day in the language of your choice.
I have now made this watch my "daily wearer". It's casual enough to go with T-shirt and jeans, and it fits in pretty nicely in office-wear too. I have had some colleagues commenting on how nice it looks, especially with the black nitride steel band. This makes it different to the rest of the watches with normal stainless steel brushed-metal bands.
Labels: watches
Friday, December 12, 2008
00:53 by FoxTwo
Image via WikipediaLong long time ago, when man finally made a miniature clock small enough to put into the pocket, the watch industry was created. Through the years, the Swiss made a name for themselves in their craftsmanship in making watches.
Fast forward to modern day, the 21st century.
Now we have watches with tiny pieces of rocks inside it, called "quartz watches". They are supposed to keep very accurate time. Because quartz's (quartzes? quartzi?) need a current to be passed through them to cause them to vibrate and keep time, our watches no longer are just mechanical. Now, they have a power source, and are electrically powered! Witness the advent of Casio, Seiko, Citizen and a whole slew of other non-swiss watchmakers. The quartz truly did revolutionise the industry!
With this spawned a whole breed of humans, who are known as watch fanatics (or "fan" for short). Like any other fans, be it sounds (audiophiles), cars, bikes, planes etc. These people know everything there is to know about their favourite topic.
One particular argument that keeps popping up with watches and fans is the debate about "accuracy". Swiss or Japan? Which is more accurate?
Some people don't mind the watch being off by a few seconds a day. Some people are anal-retentive about their watches being off by even 1 second a week. Yes, even with a quartz, watches DO gain or lose time. Like all things man-made, it's not perfect. A quartz vibrates at a frequency that enables time to be kept more accurately than say, a pendulum, or water drips from a water clock. However, it still isn't "perfect". Perhaps the vibration is off by a few hundred beats a second, and the makers think that these few hundred beats equate to less than a few millionth of a second, so it's "ok" to ignore it.
It's just like 22/7 is a rough approximation of pi. It's close, but not a match.
Personally I don't mind that the watch loses or gains a few seconds a MONTH. However, I do adjust the watches I have every month to sync with atomic time. Why? It's just something I enjoy doing - to correct the time on my watches every month.
Eventually I learned that my Casios are the "least accurate" of all my watches. My oldest Casio G-shock can gain as much as 40 seconds a month. The most accurate was a Victorinox watch given to me by good old SAF to thank me for my years of Reservist training. That watch was only out 1 second every TWO MONTHS. Unfortunately, this particular watch died an early death. I replaced the battery on it one day, and then it died. Getting it fixed would cost me almost $100. I decided to not fix it. I may as well go out there and buy a new watch. If I added up all the costs of replacing all my watch batteries, I'd have spent like $50 every couple of years just to keep all of them running.
Hence, I have decided to stop buying watches that require battery replacements. That meant kinetics or solar powered watches. There's really only 1 brand that does kinetic watches - Seiko. Yes I own one of those. Not really the most accurate - it gains 1 second every 2 days. In other words, it'll be always 15 seconds too fast every month.
(No, an "automatic" is technically not a "kinetic", even if both use the body movements to generate power. An automatic watch is purely mechanical. Gears and springs make it work. A Kinetic watch uses electricity and a quartz crystal to keep time)
As for my solar powered watches - I have a cheap Casio. That one loses 1 second every 3 days. In other words, it's 10 seconds slow every month. Well it's cheap - only $50. What is ironic, is that my $50 Casio is "more accurate" than my $600 Seiko Kinetic (15 seconds fast every month). It also points something out - even if the watch is made by the same maker, it's not a given that it has the same kind of accuracy in every watch that it makes. Note my earlier reference to a Casio G-shock watch that is out 40 seconds a month which I bought way back in 1994 or so.
My Timex is also solar powered, and thus far it's more accurate that any watches I have that is still working. This is only my 2nd week owning it, and so far it's lost 2 seconds. Extrapolating, it will be 4 seconds slow every month. Not bad for a "cheap" $120 watch. But it still hurts to think my $600 watch is not the most "accurate".
Why all these talk about accuracy, especially when it's only mere seconds "off"?
No, it's not because my life is ruled by time down to the last second. It's just the watch geek in me that would like to have bragging rights about the watches I own. Unless someone owns a working atomic watch here in Singapore (such as one of those in the Waveceptor series by Casio), there is no way to automatically adjust the time-keeping function of a watch.
So I guess, "accuracy" is relative. Compared to the early 19th century watches, what we have today are highly accurate. Our watches are just mere seconds "off" every month.
ps: the clocks in your computer is also not accurate. It uses the CPU frequency to regulate time, and thus, computers do not need a quartz crystal. That is why we have clock-sync software to sync your computer time with atomic clocks on the Internet. If you pay attention to your computer clock, you will notice that on some days, it loses more seconds per day than other days. Why? Because different software you run, stresses your CPU differently. Running CPU-intensive apps will slow your computer clock down, because CPU time is taken away from updating the clock.
pps: the clocks on your mobile phones work on the same priciple too - your phone has a CPU, and the time is regulated the same way. Unless your telco is able to send clock-sync signals to your phone, your phone will be "off" every month by a few seconds too.
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00:53 by FoxTwo
Let's Talk About Accuracy In Watches
Image via WikipediaLong long time ago, when man finally made a miniature clock small enough to put into the pocket, the watch industry was created. Through the years, the Swiss made a name for themselves in their craftsmanship in making watches.Fast forward to modern day, the 21st century.
Now we have watches with tiny pieces of rocks inside it, called "quartz watches". They are supposed to keep very accurate time. Because quartz's (quartzes? quartzi?) need a current to be passed through them to cause them to vibrate and keep time, our watches no longer are just mechanical. Now, they have a power source, and are electrically powered! Witness the advent of Casio, Seiko, Citizen and a whole slew of other non-swiss watchmakers. The quartz truly did revolutionise the industry!
With this spawned a whole breed of humans, who are known as watch fanatics (or "fan" for short). Like any other fans, be it sounds (audiophiles), cars, bikes, planes etc. These people know everything there is to know about their favourite topic.
One particular argument that keeps popping up with watches and fans is the debate about "accuracy". Swiss or Japan? Which is more accurate?
Some people don't mind the watch being off by a few seconds a day. Some people are anal-retentive about their watches being off by even 1 second a week. Yes, even with a quartz, watches DO gain or lose time. Like all things man-made, it's not perfect. A quartz vibrates at a frequency that enables time to be kept more accurately than say, a pendulum, or water drips from a water clock. However, it still isn't "perfect". Perhaps the vibration is off by a few hundred beats a second, and the makers think that these few hundred beats equate to less than a few millionth of a second, so it's "ok" to ignore it.
It's just like 22/7 is a rough approximation of pi. It's close, but not a match.
Personally I don't mind that the watch loses or gains a few seconds a MONTH. However, I do adjust the watches I have every month to sync with atomic time. Why? It's just something I enjoy doing - to correct the time on my watches every month.
Eventually I learned that my Casios are the "least accurate" of all my watches. My oldest Casio G-shock can gain as much as 40 seconds a month. The most accurate was a Victorinox watch given to me by good old SAF to thank me for my years of Reservist training. That watch was only out 1 second every TWO MONTHS. Unfortunately, this particular watch died an early death. I replaced the battery on it one day, and then it died. Getting it fixed would cost me almost $100. I decided to not fix it. I may as well go out there and buy a new watch. If I added up all the costs of replacing all my watch batteries, I'd have spent like $50 every couple of years just to keep all of them running.
Hence, I have decided to stop buying watches that require battery replacements. That meant kinetics or solar powered watches. There's really only 1 brand that does kinetic watches - Seiko. Yes I own one of those. Not really the most accurate - it gains 1 second every 2 days. In other words, it'll be always 15 seconds too fast every month.
(No, an "automatic" is technically not a "kinetic", even if both use the body movements to generate power. An automatic watch is purely mechanical. Gears and springs make it work. A Kinetic watch uses electricity and a quartz crystal to keep time)
As for my solar powered watches - I have a cheap Casio. That one loses 1 second every 3 days. In other words, it's 10 seconds slow every month. Well it's cheap - only $50. What is ironic, is that my $50 Casio is "more accurate" than my $600 Seiko Kinetic (15 seconds fast every month). It also points something out - even if the watch is made by the same maker, it's not a given that it has the same kind of accuracy in every watch that it makes. Note my earlier reference to a Casio G-shock watch that is out 40 seconds a month which I bought way back in 1994 or so.
My Timex is also solar powered, and thus far it's more accurate that any watches I have that is still working. This is only my 2nd week owning it, and so far it's lost 2 seconds. Extrapolating, it will be 4 seconds slow every month. Not bad for a "cheap" $120 watch. But it still hurts to think my $600 watch is not the most "accurate".
Why all these talk about accuracy, especially when it's only mere seconds "off"?
No, it's not because my life is ruled by time down to the last second. It's just the watch geek in me that would like to have bragging rights about the watches I own. Unless someone owns a working atomic watch here in Singapore (such as one of those in the Waveceptor series by Casio), there is no way to automatically adjust the time-keeping function of a watch.
So I guess, "accuracy" is relative. Compared to the early 19th century watches, what we have today are highly accurate. Our watches are just mere seconds "off" every month.
ps: the clocks in your computer is also not accurate. It uses the CPU frequency to regulate time, and thus, computers do not need a quartz crystal. That is why we have clock-sync software to sync your computer time with atomic clocks on the Internet. If you pay attention to your computer clock, you will notice that on some days, it loses more seconds per day than other days. Why? Because different software you run, stresses your CPU differently. Running CPU-intensive apps will slow your computer clock down, because CPU time is taken away from updating the clock.
pps: the clocks on your mobile phones work on the same priciple too - your phone has a CPU, and the time is regulated the same way. Unless your telco is able to send clock-sync signals to your phone, your phone will be "off" every month by a few seconds too.
