Citizen Releases The Chronograph Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium; Timex Expands Waterbury Line With Smaller Heritage Chronos; Junghans Introduces 3 Pastel Dials Max Bill Damen; Two Puzzling Mosers

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Sorry for this one being so late, I caught a stomach bug and concentrating for more than 2 minutes is just an impossibility. But, more interestingly, of the four watches today, three are quartz powered. I don’t think this is a broader trend, it just lined up so today.

In this issue:

• Citizen Brings Chronograph Movements To The Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium

• Timex Expands Waterbury Line With New, Smaller, 39mm Heritage Chronographs

• Junghans Introduces Three Pastel Dials To The 33m Max Bill Damen

• H. Moser & Cie. Releases Alpine F1 Team-Themed Streamliner Duo, One With A Smart Watch Module

👂What’s new

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Citizen Brings Chronograph Movements To The Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium

Earlier this month, Citizen introduced a couple of more cool dials to their Zenshin 60 Super Titanium collection, which was a confirmation that their titanium Tsuyosa collection was getting a new name — Zenshin. And while that release was a time-only mechanical collection, this new collection from Citizen, the Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium Chronograph gives us a titanium case, a quartz chronograph Eco-Drive movement, great colors and an accessible price.

While the case of the new Chronographs measures half a millimeter wider than the time-only version, it’s also slightly thinner. That means you’re looking at 41mm wide and 11mm thick, made out of Citizen’s proprietary Super Titanium that gets the Duratect hardening treatment, with a vertically brushed surface with a polished 12-sided bezel that surrounds a sapphire crystal. The fluted crown is flanked by two pushers for the chronograph function and you get 50 meters of water resistance.

The dials of the new Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium Chronograph feature a checkerboard-style texture that comes in four colorways. There’s the white-silvery dial with a black running seconds sub-dial that matches the bezels of the chronograph counters, the black dial which features an inverted sub-dials, the blue dial with white running seconds sub-dial with darker-toned blue chronograph counters and the green which also has a white running seconds sub-dial and darker-toned green chronograph counters. You get a 24-hour indicator at the 3 o’clock position, a running seconds sub-dial at 6 o’clock, and a 60-minute counter at 9 o’clock. There’s also a date aperture at the 4:30 position. The hour markers and hands are faceted and filled with lume.

Inside, you’ll find the calibre E365 Eco-Drive quartz movement. It’s solar powered, accurate to +/- 15 seconds per month and pretty much indestructible. The watches come on a new Super Titanium integrated bracelet which has wide rectangular central links flanked by thinner side links, closed with a fold-over clasp.

The Citizen Zenshin Senkei Super Titanium Chronograph is now available as part of the regular collection and priced at €459. See more on the Citizen website.

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Timex Expands Waterbury Line With New, Smaller, 39mm Heritage Chronographs

We’ve known for a while that more and more watch brands are shrinking down their watches and it will certainly take a while for this trend to propagate through all the brands and all the collection. Timex is one of the brands that is working quickly on this move, introducing more and more of their watches in smaller cases. Joining the fray is the new Timex Waterbury Heritage Chronograph, which comes in a new, smaller, 39mm case with two dial options.

The stainless steel case of the Waterbury Heritage Chronograph measures 39mm wide and 13.5mm thick, a measurement that could have been cut down a bit since the watch is using a quartz movement. On top is a mineral glass crystal, surrounded by a fixed black tachymeter bezel. Despite the fact that the watch looks like it has screw down pushers, it doesn’t, so water resistance is 50 meters.

There are two dial options for the new Waterbury Heritage, a silver Panda dial with contrasting black sub-dials and a black dial with gold colored sub-dials. You get applied hour markers and hands — either silver or gold colored — and coated with lume. The chronograph function includes a center seconds hand, a 24-hour sub-dial at 3 o’clock, and a running seconds counter at 9 o’clock.

Inside, you’ll find a quartz analog chronograph movement that isn’t named, as Timex is known to do. The Panda dial watch comes on a self-adjustable H-link stainless steel bracelet, while the black gilt version gets a brown perforated eco-leather strap.

The new Timex Waterbury Heritage Chronograph 39 is part of the regular collection, priced at €279 for the gilt version on leather and €319 for the Panda on the steel bracelet. See more on the Timex website.

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Junghans Introduces Three Pastel Dials To The 33m Max Bill Damen

Strongly inspired by the legacy of the Bauhaus School of Design, the Junghans Max Bill has never really embraced all that much color, with the most popular versions always limiting themselves to black, white and silver. Now, the brand is introducing the 33mm Max Bill Damen with three pastel colors that give a whole new look to the design icon.

While the name of the watch is the 33mm Max Bill Damen, it actually comes in a stainless steel case that measures 32.7mm wide and just 6.9mm thick. Like its larger cousins, this watch features a super thin bezel that holds down a domed sapphire crystal. There’s a crown at 3 o’clock and solid case back. Water resistance is decent at 50 meters.

The dial also remains very faithful to the regular Max Bill, except for the three new colors — arctic blue, bright yellow and pale pink — with all three having a soft pastel hue. All of the dials feature thin, white printed hour markers and a matching minute track that runs along the edge of the dial. The three polished central hands are filled with lume, with more lume dots at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions. There’s also a date aperture at 3 o’clock with a color matched wheel.

Inside, you’ll find the Junghans Caliber J643.29, a 7-jewel quartz movement. It features an end-of-life (E.O.L.) indicator, which alerts the wearer when the battery is almost out and that’s pretty much that. The watches come on leather straps — turquoise for the blue dial, navy blue for the yellow dial and grey for the pink dial.

The new Junghans Max Bill Damen pastel dial is available now as part of the permanent collection. Price is set at €795. See more on the Junghans website.

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H. Moser & Cie. Releases Alpine F1 Team-Themed Streamliner Duo, One With A Smart Watch Module

The partnership between H. Moser & Cie. and the Alpine Formula 1 team has proven to be quite the lucrative one. While we have a couple of brands, like TAG Heuer, making the best of their partnership with F1, cranking out dozens of watches at all price points. Moser went the other way, deciding to release just a few watches pers season, but those releases would be something quite special. And special it is, this latest release from Moser and Alpine, a duo called the Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition and the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition. Moser claims that each of the two models has been purpose built — the Drivers Edition is built for legibility under race conditions, while the Mechanics edition is a connected tool. I’m not exactly sold on the concept, but let’s move on.

Since both of these watches are Streamliner models, they come in very similar cases. They both measure 42.3mm wide, with the skeletonized Drivers Edition measuring 14.2mm thick with a blue PVD treatment, while the digital Mechanics Edition is, surprisingly, thicker at 14.4mm and gets an untreated steel case with a fine radial brushing on top of the case. A major difference can be seen in the setup of crowns and pushers. The Drivers Edition features a crown at 4 o’clock with a white rubber ring around it, and two pushers at 10 and 2 o’clock. The Mechanics Edition doesn’t come with a traditional crown, instead you get three flat pushers on the right side and a special button on the left marked Sync. Both cases feature the signature cushion shape with no lugs, a domed sapphire crystal and sapphire casbeacks.Both also get 120 meters of water resistance.

Even more differentiation can be found on the dial side. The Drivers Edition features a fully skeletonized, with centrally mounted blue hour and minute hands filled with Globolight inserts. Chronograph minutes and seconds are also centrally displayed, so there are no sub-dials. Like I said earlier, I’m not sold on the claim that this watch has been made for race legibility, as it’s just a sea of grey. It’s not bad looking. But it’s not that legible either. Visible through the dial is the calibre HMC 700, a fully skeletonized column wheel and a two-stage horizontal clutch automatic developed with Agenhor. It beats at 21,600vph and has a a 72 hour power reserve.

Then, there’s the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition, a connected watch co-developed with Alpine F1 engineers. The Mechanics Edition integrates mechanical and digital systems, offering motorsport-centric functions such as race countdowns, pit alerts, GMT, perpetual calendar, and a split-seconds chronograph. It features a hybrid movement with a one-year power reserve (in time-only mode) and connects via Bluetooth to iOS and Android. I am a huge fan of ana-digi watches, but, unfortunately, this isn’t doing it for me. Not to be overly critical, but that display looks like it would be sold on AliExpress.

The Streamliner Alpine Drivers Edition is limited to 200 pieces and sold only as a boxed set with the Streamliner Alpine Mechanics Edition. The Mechanics Edition will be available for owners of the 2014 Streamliner Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton Alpine editions. The boxed set is priced at CHF 59,000, without tax. See more on the Moser website.

⏲️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

• Recently, I’ve read a lot about how microplastics can get into your blood and your brain. All of it scares people. Like Elyse Hauser, folks have been worrying about the plastic around us, trying to ditch Tupperware for glass and eliminate using freezer bags. Is that enough? Will it ever be enough in this plastic-infused world? For Slate, Hauser attempts to get some baseline data on her body by measuring the microplastics present in her blood with a $150 kit she bought online.

• “For most of my lifetime, Flushing was the humble immigrant enclave that could,” writes urban planner Jefferson Mao in Urban Omnibus, the publication of the Architectural League of New York. In his reflective essay, Mao examines the evolving culture and identity of Flushing, Queens, over the last few decades.

• Will Steinfield spends time with Anchorage resident Mike Thompson, uncovering the bizarre story of how he found his father, a former GQ model. Keeping this decades-spanning story pithy, Steinfield manages to reveal Thompson’s staunch character and own impressive achievements while documenting the journey to finding his long-lost dad.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I wish we had YouTube when I was in high school, I likely wouldn’t have failed physics with videos like these.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk