Omega Expands Increasingly Popular Speedmaster 38 Collection; Amida Brings Back The Space Age Digitrend; MeisterSinger Updates Their Most Minimalist Neo; And Hautlence Is Inspired By 40s Radios

In this issue:

• Omega Expands Speedmaster 38mm Collection With More Diamonds And Gold Options

• Amida Brings Back The Very Quirky 1970s Space Age Digitrend Watch

• MeisterSinger Updates Their Most Minimalist Neo Collection With New Dials

• Hautlence Shows A Completely Wild Watch Inspired By Radios From The 1940s

Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 55 seconds

👂What’s new

1/

Omega Expands Speedmaster 38mm Collection With More Diamonds And Gold Options

Back in the 1980s, Omega took their legendary Speedmaster Professional model, a watch many consider to be the perfect chronograph (I’m one of them), and made it more appropriate for smaller wrists. The result was the Speedmaster Reduced, a model that did what it promised at 38mm wide and with a 44mm lug-to-lug. But it did so at a significant cost - sure the changes might seem miniscule, but they take what is a perfect chrono into the uncanny valley, making it look just a bit off and wrong. In 2017, whoever, Omega introduced a new smaller Speedy, the Speedmaster 38 which took on a gentler look, with enough changes to make it a distinct model and not just a shrunken down pro. It seemed to work well for Omega, especially the Sedna Gold version (the original came in a stainless steel case with black dial; stainless case with yellow gold bezel and white dial and a spectacular stainless case; Sedna rose gold bezel and a cappuccino colored dial). Now, Omega is introducing eight new versions of the Speedmaster 38mm in gold or steel, with diamond bezels and two dial colors.

Being the smaller version of the Speedmaster Pro, the Speedmaster 38 comes in, wouldn’t you guess it, a 38mm wide case that’s still quite thick at 14.7mm and has a 44.9mm lug-to-lug. The watch is thick when you try to slide it under your cuff, but it doesn’t look as thick thanks to the many layers it’s made out of. You can get it in steel or one of two Omega’s proprietary gold alloys – the more rose Sedna and the more yellow Moonshine. On top is a sapphire crystal, surrounded by a bezel that loses the iconic tachymeter scale and is instead set with diamonds, about 1,5 carats of them. There’s also a diamond embedded in the crown. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials are beautiful, as you would expect. The Sedna gold comes with a brown PVD dial with the recognisable oval sub-dials (and oval date window at 6 o’clock). The sub-dials are surrounded with diamonds and have a silver color to them. The hands are diamond-polished Sedna gold and lumed with Super-LumiNova. The Moonshine gold comes with the familiar green PVD dial that was used on the larger Moonshine gold watch, and the sub-dials have the same silvery finish and a yellow surround with diamonds. Just like the Sedna gold version, this one has matching material hands. The stainless steel versions can get either of the two dials.

Inside is the Calibre 3330, based on an ETA calibre that’s a development of the Valjoux 7750, but upgraded with a column wheel and a Co-Axial escapement. It has a free-sprung balance wheel and a silicon spring. Power reserve is 52 hours. The watches can be had on either a material-matching bracelet or a brown or green (depending on the dial) leather strap that has a material matching folding clasp.

This model has a huge price range. Starting at €19,300 for the stainless steel on strap or €19,700 on bracelet, they go all the way up to €37,700 for the gold versions on the strap and €51,500 on the bracelet. See more on the Omega website.

2/

Amida Brings Back The Very Quirky 1970s Space Age Digitrend Watch

The 1960s were a cool time. The world broke away from the conservative 50s, embraced rock and roll, drugs and free love. While fashion and design followed the free spirit of the era, industrial design - at least when it comes to watch design - was still a bit lagging. Well, after the revolutionary summer of 1968, and the murder of Sharon Tate, the 70s turned a dark corner. With increasing insecurity in the world, constant threat of escalating wars and an overall pessimism in the culture and the economy, design started looking towards a possibly brighter future. That’s how we got the space-age stuff full of futuristic, smooth and oddly shaped designs we love today. One of these objects was the Amida Digitrend, a unique driver’s watch which showed a vertical image of horizontal double discs through a optical inverting prism to show the time. Sounds complicated, but it isn’t. Now, the Amida Digitrend is back.

Without seeing the 70s version and the revival side by side, you would be hard pressed to say which is which. This is a very faithful recreation, which can often look a bit corny, but works pretty good here. You get the same strange sweeping and (now) retro-futristic shape. It’s a surprisingly compact watch, for how imposing it looks in photos. Just 36mm wide, it has a length (we can’t really talk about lug-to-lug here, since the entire case is one solid block) of just 39mm. It’s a thick watch - 15.6mm at the thickest point - but it also tapers down in a teardrop shape. The watch is made out of steel and features a brushed finish with a few select polished details. Interestingly, the watch has a 50 meter water resistance and you can even see a bit of the movement through the back.

Of course, there is no dial to this watch, as what you would call the dial, or even a face, on any other watch, in the Digitrend is just a solid wall of steel. Time is told on the bottom side of the watch, by twisting your wrist away from you. Here you’ll find a relatively small aperture in the steel, with a display on the left for the jumping hours, the name of the watch in the centre, and the crawling minutes on the right, both of which are framed in white. Through this you see a fantastically funky orange font for the hours and minutes, but you’re actually looking at a optical inverting prism which is reflecting the dual discs which lay flat against your wrist/the movement. It’s also reversing them, as the discs are mirror printed.

Powering all of this is not some exotic in-house movement, but rather the Soprod Newton P092, an automatic movement that beats at 28,800vph and has a 44 hour power reserve. It’s even nicely finished, with rhodium-plating, sand-blasting, Geneva stripes and circular graining while the customized rotor is openworked. However, to get the time to display through the discs and prism, a bit of in-house work had to be done, so they developed their own nine piece module. The watch can be had on either a stainless steel bracelet or, even better, a charcoal Alcantara strap with an orange calfskin lining.

The Amida Digitrend Take-Off was just shown off, but won’t go on sale until May 28th. And even that won’t be a regular sales window, but rather a pre-order, with deliveries expected in October of this year. Price is set at CHF 2,900, without tax. See more on the Amida website.

3/

MeisterSinger Updates Their Most Minimalist Neo Collection With New Dials

Find the one thing you’re really good at and put your all into that one thing. I think that’s how the proverb goes. MeisterSinger also heard that proverb and since 2001 they have been honing into making just one type of watch - watches that use a single hand to tell the time. These won’t be watches for everyone. They won’t even be watches for the majority of people. But out there, there is a very enthusiastic fan base that just can’t get enough of the single-handed creations, and MeisterSinger is here to keep cranking them out. Thank you! Their latest watch is an update to the Neo collection, perhaps their most simple one and a collection that perhaps best suits a watch so minimal it uses only one hand.

The new Neo collection comes in a stainless steel case that is very wearable at 36mm wide and 9.7mm thick. The new versions brings some much-wanted updates. Instead of an acrylic crystal on top, you now get a domed sapphire, and water resistance has been updated from 30 to 50 meters.

The dials also get a significant update. The new colors are ivory and blue with a sunburst finish, which have been seen on other MeisterSinger watches, but there’s also a new white dial. I’m not exactly sure whether there’s something going on with their pictures or if the dial has a subtle silver finish. It looks fantastic. Especially when combined by the gold coloured and simple Arabic numerals. The central, and only, hand is black on the ivory and white models, and white on the blue dial. There’s nothing else on this dial other than the MeisterSinger logo and model name.

Inside is the same movement you’ll find in a lot of MeisterSinger watches, the very basic Sellita SW200 which has been modified for a single hand. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. The watches can be had on a choice of either a Milanese bracelet or leather straps in pine green, cream white, or ocean blue.

The new MeisterSinger Neo will go on sale in May at a price of €1,890. See more on the MeisterSinger website.

 4/

Hautlence Shows A Completely Wild Watch Inspired By Radios From The 1940s

No strangers to weird watches - or watches shaped like televisions - Hautlence seems to have outdone themselves with their newest watch, just in time for the celebration of their 20th anniversary. Not unlike Amida who looked back at the 70s for the Digitrend, Hautlence looks back to the 40s for their inspiration. However, instead of just plucking a design from the era and doing their thing, Hautlence did something else - they imagined a watch, a TV shaped watch, they would have made if they wer eestablished in the 1940s instead of 2004. What they came up with is the Retrovision ‘47.

Televisions weren’t as ubiquitous in the 40s as they are today, so Hautlence ditched the idea of styling it after a TV and went with something that was in every home - a radio. In fact, it’s styled after the Model 5A5, made by General Television & Radio Corp. Chicago. It even includes the speaker grill reminiscent of the original. Despite looking like it’s made out of jade, the case is actually constructed out of steel and hand painted to resemble bakelite. It measures 44.4mm wide, 12.1mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 39.1mm. Speaking of the lugs, they are incredibly well hidden in the two protruding steel handles, with a crown hidden underneath the bottom one.

On the right side of the face of the radio - or watch - is a tiny, tiny dial, perhaps the most regular dial Hautlence has made, formed out of brass and 2N gold with an embossed pattern, with central red hands. But this is a Hautlence, so of course you can see the flying tourbillon underneath the radio grill that’s to the left of the dial.

Inside is the D20 self-winding mechanical movement which features a 1-minute flying tourbillon. It beats at 21,600vph and has a 72 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a bright red leather strap.

The Hautlence Retrovision ‘47 is a concept watch, made in only two pieces for Watches and Wonders and shown to collectors there. However, seeing as how Hautlence hinted that the price is CHF 60,000, it’s reasonable to assume that they will build you one if you ask.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

1/

A review of the Vanguart Orb

2/

Hands-On With The New Zenith Defy Extreme Diver

3/

A review of the F.P. Journe Élégante 'Gino's Dream'

⚙️Watch Worthy

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

The Archimede Outdoor Protect 39 Black Forest is the right tool for the job

The Archimede Outdoor Protect 39 is a modern and distinctly German take on the classic field watch that has more than enough tricks up its sleeve to make it something truly special — at a surprisingly reasonable price. Housed in a 39mm case, the Outdoor Protect 39 is right in line for modern field watch dimensions, but its hooded lugs, bring the lug-to-lug distance down to just 43.5mm. Add a thickness of just 11.2mm (not bad for a 200m water-resistant watch), and you get an incredibly easy-wearing watch that disappears on the wrist, especially when paired with a NATO-style strap.

Read the whole review on A Blog To Watch

⏲️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

• As COVID-19 swept across the world, a preacher in Kenya lured thousands of people into a remote forest, promising them safety and salvation. Then he told them to stop eating and starved them to death. In this feature, Carey Baraka details the terrifying rise and fall of a cult.

• Pigeons. Rats. Opossums. Raccoons. Most people consider these critters as pests—they don’t belong in our homes and neighborhoods and should be exterminated instead. But there’s a group of people across New York City’s boroughs who rehabilitate these injured creatures.

• Ramen that’s more than three times as expensive than it is at Target. Water prices that shot up 50 percent in a year. Peanut butter marked up 70 percent. These are just a few of the findings from a nine-month investigation of prison commissaries.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Two of my favorite people in the food world, Brad Leone and Matty Matheson team up for a very fun episode of procuring your own seafood. Brad’s YouTube channel is absolutely incredible.