Timex Goes Green With A Solar Expedition; Marnaut's New Adriatic Dials And Gen 2 Divers; Awake Speculates On Atlantis; Perrelet Jumps On The Stone Dial Train; Akhor's New Lumiere Blanche Editions

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I dig when a watch brand tells crazy stories. That’s one of the reasons why I like Awake, they’re willing to be unhinged with their stories. First, it was the wild Jurassic Park watches. Now, they’re doing an Atlantis themed watch. I wonder if there’s a market for conspiracy theory watches.

In this issue

• Timex Goes Green With A Solar Powered Expedition Cosplaying As A Diver

• Marnaut Adds An Adriatic-Inspired Dial And Unveils Gen 2 Of Their Divers

• Awake Speculates On Atlantis With The New Mysteriously Blue Son Mai Silver Leaf

• Perrelet Jumps On The Stone Dial Train With Their Malachite Weekend

• Akhor Builds Out Their Collections With The Lumiere Blanche Editions

👂What’s new

1/

Timex Goes Green With A Solar Powered Expedition Cosplaying As A Diver

Timex has been making the Expedition line for decades, and the formula has always been straightforward: practical, durable, affordable. The Expedition Freedive Solar doesn’t deviate from that, but it adds two things that feel current: solar power and a case and strap made from #TIDE ocean-bound plastic, a recycled material produced from coastal waste, including discarded fishing nets, before it reaches the sea. It’s a field watch, posing as a dive watch, with a sustainability angle, and a great price.

The case measure 46 mm wide and 14 mm thick, made out of #TIDE ocean-bound plastic, with a stainless steel caseback and mineral crystal on top. A unidirectional rotating bezel adds elapsed-time tracking, and integrated crown guards protect against accidental knocks. Both the case and the bezel are done in green, slightly different shades. But it’s a bit of a confusing product. The size, #TIDE connection and rotating bezel scream this is a diver. However, the Expedition line is known for field watches and you get only 50 meters of water resistance. I love that Timex is not afraid to cut corners to give people great watches at fantastic prices, but that extra 50 meters would really make this a banger of a watch.

The green dial is where the whole design comes together. The colour runs consistently from case to strap to dial, and the result is a cohesive look that doesn’t feel forced. For extra visual interest, the base of the dial has a wavy texture, while the green flange has the first 15 minutes done in yellow. You get Arabic numerals and broad skeletonized hands with yellow tips on both the blunt-tipped hand and arrow-tipped hand. At 3 o’clock is a date aperture.

Power is solar quartz — the movement charges via the dial from both natural and artificial light, eliminating the need for regular battery changes. Functions cover hours, minutes, seconds, and date. It comes on a green Fast Wrap fabric strap, also made from recycled coastal plastic, with a quick-adjust system that works well with gloves on.

The Timex Expedition Freedive Solar is available now for €149. See more on the Timex website.

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Marnaut Adds An Adriatic-Inspired Dial And Unveils Gen 2 Of Their Divers

Let’s get the bias out of the way right at the start — not only am I a good friend with Mario, the owner of Marnaut, I’ve been using the Zagreb showroom of the brand as an office for a year now. So yeah, that biases me a bit when writing this, but it’s best you know up front. But come on, look at that dial! I love this thing. These days, Marnaut is making quite a move. Not only did they introduce the same Adriatic dial to three special edition watches, they are releasing the second generation of their entire lineup, with subtle tweaks and even better manufacturing.

Let’s start with the cases, which haven’t changed much in visual style, but get a fully new manufacturing process that gives better tolerances, more secure water resistance and smoother interfaces. There are three base collections that Marnaut makes, and all three get the Gen 2 cases. Starting from the smallest of the three, you have the Safe Harbour which measures 39mm wide, 13mm thick, with a 45mm lug-to-lug. Those dimensions, especially the thickness, sound huge, but they wear much smaller. My wife, who has tiny wrists, easily pulls one off. Most of that thickness goes to the domed sapphire crystal on top. Water resistance is 100 meters. One up in size and water resistance is the Seascape, which measures 40mm wide, 14.2mm thick and with a 48mm lug-to-lug. This one has more presence, especially since it doesn’t have an external bezel so the domed sapphire crystal extends to the edge of the case. The bezel is moved underneath the crystal, and you get two crowns on the side (one to set the time, the other to operate the bezel), which gives you a compressor-style case. With the Gen2 watch, the internal bezel gets a slight feel for the internal teeth when rotating, allowing for more precise adjustment. Water resistance is 200 meters. Last, we have the Dark Surge, the most rugged of the three styles, which measures 41mm wide, 14.2mm thick and with a 50mm lug-to-lug. On top is a unidirectional 120-click bezel with a new matte insert in black for two versions and a silver one for the all stainless version. All three variants also come in black PVD versions.

Then, we have the dials. I’ll leave the Adriatic for later. The regular Gen 2 versions keep the now iconic dials inspired by the exoskeleton of a sea urchin, which we kids in Croatia spent our summers diving for and then reselling at night to get ice cream. That means you get a series of dots expanding from the center, increasing in size, with lume in each dot. The Safe Harbour model comes with either black or white dials, the Seascape has all black dials with one model coming with a white bezel and the Dark Surge is all black dials. Previous versions of the watches came with enamel dials that had an interesting blue sheen to them when rendered in black, and both the black and white versions had quite a lot of reflection. The new dials, however, come with matte enamel color on them, cutting down on glare significantly.

Then, there’s the new Adriatic special editions. They all get the same dial, a wonderfully textured one with waves engraved into it, and a beautiful blue color that’s matched to the color of the Adriatic sea. On the Seascape, it’s paired with the white bezel and on the Dark Surge it gets a matte blue ceramic bezel that looks fantastic.

Inside, no changes, as the watches still come with the very familiar Sellita SW200 movements which beat at 4Hz with a 38 hour power reserve. What is new, are the new straps and they’re hilariously cool! They are all FKM rubber. Safe Harbour gets a black, green or brown rubber strap with horizontal grooves cut into them. Seascape comes on either black, blue and grey rubber straps with square openings. The Dark Surge comes on a rally-style rubber strap in either black blue or beige. The Adriatic versions of the Seascape and Dark Surge get the same style strap, but in bright orange, while the Safe Harbour keeps the same style, but in green.

The new Marnaut Adriatic special edition watches as well as the Gen 2 Safe Harbour, Seascape and Dark Surge are all available for pre-order right now. Regular pricing will be €899, €999 and €1,099, respectively, with the Adriatic versions adding €100 to each of those. However, during the pre-order window, the prices are set at €719/€799, €799/€879 and €879/€959 for each of the models and their Adriatic counterparts. See more on the Marnaut website.

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Awake Speculates On Atlantis With The New Mysteriously Blue Son Mai Silver Leaf

The French brand Awake has a great story. For years, they made limited edition watches. All of their releases were special projects that very often included collaborations, there were a lot of space-themed watches and all of them were pretty cool. Then, late last year, Awake introduced their first permanent collection called the Son Mài. It is a beautifully elegant watch that features incredible Vietnamese sanded lacquer dials. Building on the Silver Leaf collection, we’re now getting the new Son Mai - Silver Leaf “Atlantis Blue” model, an ode, as the name suggests, to the Atlanteans, the humanoid beings capable of breathing underwater, and to the myth of Atlantis, which remains one of the greatest mysteries of our world, captivating our imagination for centuries.

The case of the watch remains virtually unchanged, made out of recycled stainless steel, and measuring 39mm wide and 11.8mm thick, including the crystal. Without the crystal, the thickness drops down to 10.9mm. On top is a rounded bezel, surrounding the sapphire crystal, the side of the case is brushed, and you get polished surfaces on top of the lugs, with a wide polished chamfer stretching down the edge od the case. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The new dial is made using the same lacquer over silver leaf technique as the original Silver Leaf series, which gives a textured finish, and now all the dials get a fumé gradient that Awake calls a vignette finish. At the center is a bright blue finish, that quickly fades to black, as one would expect in the deep sea. On top of that dial you get the signature hands and applied markers. However, instead of just painting them with lume, the hands and indices are made out of solid blocks of SuperLuminova BGW9, which is then capped with a faceted, polished steel overlay. That gives them both a backglow, which is just beautiful.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic movement, an alternative to the ubiquitous but increasingly hard to source ETA 2824, and the Sellita SW200. However, it has a much better power reserve than those two at 68 hours, and the same beat rate of 4Hz. The movement is decorated with Geneva stripes and a customised tungsten rotor. The watches come on a blue suede with rubberized calf lining strap.

The new is available now, limited to just 100 pieces. Deliveries will start in April. Price is set at €2,000 without taxes. See more on the Awake website.

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Perrelet Jumps On The Stone Dial Train With Their Malachite Weekend

Stone dials have been one of the more consistent trends in watchmaking over the past few years, showing up everywhere from entry-level independents to the big Geneva maisons. Where I wouldn’t expect them is on a Perrelet watch. But that’s because the Perrelets you best know are the crazy contraptions that feature turbine dials. But the Weekend collection is their dress watch line that can easily take a stone dial, and that’s exactly what they did with a malachite stone dial. This is the new Perrelet Weekend Malachite.

The case is made out of stainless steel and measures 39mm wide and 9.56mm thick, with brushed and polished finishes. On top is a anti-reflective sapphire crystal, while out back is a see-through display caseback. The crystal is surrounded by a thin polished bezel and you get 50 meters of water resistance.

The malachite dial does what malachite does: stripes of light and dark green veining, each dial unique by nature of the stone. Applied rhodium-plated indices with double batons at 12, 3, 6, and 9 sit cleanly against the green background, along with faceted dauphine-style hands. Date window at 3 o’clock, silver-framed with black Arabic numerals on a white disc.

Inside is the automatic calibre P-321 — esentially a Soprod A10, which makes sense given both Perrelet and Soprod are owned by the Festina Group. It beats at 4 Hz with a 42-hour power reserve, with an openworked rotor on ball bearings visible through the caseback. It comes with two straps: a 7-link steel bracelet with alternating polished and satin-brushed links and folding clasp, and a green alligator-pattern leather strap with pin buckle, both on a quick-release system.

The Weekend Malachite is available, priced at €1,590. See more on the Perrelet website.

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Akhor Builds Out Their Collections With The Lumiere Blanche Editions

Geneva independents working with genuinely novel dial architectures are rare enough that Akhor stood out immediately when it launched its Le Temps en Équilibre collection in 2025. The hook is a patented dual-disc display, an upper plate suspended above a lower disc, with the hands moving in the space between the two layers, and it earned the brand real attention for what was, a fresh structural idea. Not revolutionary, but fresh. The new Lumière Blanche editions build on that foundation and keeps it very elegant with gold cases and white dials.

The case is a 39 mm cushion shape in 4N or 5N gold, 11 mm thick, with alternating polished and satin surfaces that follow the case’s curves. You get sapphire crystals on top and bottom, and depending on the variant you get, you might get a diamond-set bezel. Water resistance is not great at 30 meters, but this is not a sports watch, obviously.

The dual-disc dial construction carries over unchanged in principle. There’s an upper plate suspended above the lower disc, with hands running underneath and peeking out. Mounted on the upper plate is a long and slender seconds hand. In the white versions, this structural arrangement reads more clearly than in darker colourways, giving the dial an almost mechanical, blueprint-like appearance. Two versions are offered — a white sunburst dial with numerals at cardinal positions and stick indices, with rhodium- or gold-plated hands, and a white honeycomb dial with a diamond-set bezel and clasp for a more jewellery-oriented take.

Inside, you’ll find the manual-winding calibre AK10, developed for Akhor and manufactured by Clamax. It beats at 4Hz, has a 60 hour power reserve and is COSC certified. Finishing includes hand-applied anglage, fan-shaped Côtes de Genève, and decorated wheels, with screw heads shaped to echo the cushion case profile. Both versions come on a hand-stitched white alligator strap with a folding clasp in matching case metal.

The Akhor Lumière Blanche editions are available now, priced at CHF 57,800 for the sunburst version and CHF 67,800 for the diamond-set honeycomb. See more on the Akhor website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Jet-black Phantom MK-1, revolver in grip, stalks factories today—tomorrow, battlefields. Foundation's Marine vet co-founder pitches AI soldiers as war's humane upgrade: tireless, fearless, no PTSD or coffins. With Pentagon contracts and Ukraine tests underway, amid drone swarms and autonomy arms races, the slippery slope beckons—human control or robot reckonin.

• At a North Carolina Goodwill, Jennifer Thompson snags an $8 NES game that sparks a memory: Stadium Events, the rarest video game alive. Her thrift find ignites a frenzy among obsessives—an orthodontist drops $25K, myths swirl of destroyed pallets, and a hoarder's secret cache threatens to shatter values. In a hobby fueled by scarcity, one dusty box rewrites lives and legacies.

• For Defector, in a piece republished from his newsletter, Unabridged, Stefan Fatsis looks at the history of Scrabble source dictionaries, how words get added over time, and how confusion over the validity of the word JAKER made the difference in a key match between two high schoolers at the 2025 North American School Scrabble Championship.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Can it even be called skiing if it’s rock and not snow? I guess for Candide Thovex, yes.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk