First, let me admit that I am sort of a watch geek. I've got quite a few. My favorite watches are Duograph and GMT watches that feature multi-time zone functions with one face. But I have been thinking of taking an extended trip across that would require travel in several time zones and several lattitude changes. So that said I started to look for a good watch for travel that would work with me. Normally I only consider mechanical watches, because that is what I like, but the two watches below are just interesting enough to consider and both are fairly modest in price too.
TISSOT has a nifty watch that has a host of features: Tissot T-Touch offers 8 separate functions, activated by pressing on the crown and then pressing on the touch-sensitive screen. With an accurate Altimeter (in feet and metres), Chronograph (split and add time), Compass, Alarm, Thermometer (in ºC and ºF), Barometer as well as Date and Time.
http://www.tissot.ch/?mod_collection/id_touchscreen
Of those functions, I like the compass and barometer, as both can be helpful when traveling. An alarm is a nice addition. I can usually figure out if it is hot or cold just by checking my nipples, so ther thermometer seems sort of pointless. For a Snow Trac or Jeep adventure in the mountains an altimeter might be handy for keeping track of engine performance at various altitudes, but not really needed. I've never really seen the need for a chronograph function on a watch. But again, nice to have the barometer, compass & alarm added to the watch feature. Photo #1 below is the Tissot.
I also stumbled on YES WATCH. This is a new concept to me. This is the most bizarre watch I've seen, and it seems interesting too. There are 2 photos of the YES ZULU watch below.
http://www.yeswatch.com/wrist-watch/timekeeper/index.html
From a YES review here are the functions/features of this odd 1 handed watch:
TISSOT has a nifty watch that has a host of features: Tissot T-Touch offers 8 separate functions, activated by pressing on the crown and then pressing on the touch-sensitive screen. With an accurate Altimeter (in feet and metres), Chronograph (split and add time), Compass, Alarm, Thermometer (in ºC and ºF), Barometer as well as Date and Time.
http://www.tissot.ch/?mod_collection/id_touchscreen
Of those functions, I like the compass and barometer, as both can be helpful when traveling. An alarm is a nice addition. I can usually figure out if it is hot or cold just by checking my nipples, so ther thermometer seems sort of pointless. For a Snow Trac or Jeep adventure in the mountains an altimeter might be handy for keeping track of engine performance at various altitudes, but not really needed. I've never really seen the need for a chronograph function on a watch. But again, nice to have the barometer, compass & alarm added to the watch feature. Photo #1 below is the Tissot.
I also stumbled on YES WATCH. This is a new concept to me. This is the most bizarre watch I've seen, and it seems interesting too. There are 2 photos of the YES ZULU watch below.
http://www.yeswatch.com/wrist-watch/timekeeper/index.html
From a YES review here are the functions/features of this odd 1 handed watch:
- Digital timekeeping. Although the YES watch's specialty is celestial timekeeping, of course it conveys standard hours, minutes and seconds, as well. The upper portion of the watch's face is a dot matrix LCD which, in standard "home" mode, ticks off time just like any other digital watch.
- Analog timekeeping. Both in contrast to and complimenting the digital portion of the watch, YES watches have a single analog 24-hour hand powered by a Swiss-made quartz movement. The 24-hour hand makes one full revolution per day, indicating the time in both 12 and 24 hour formats, and also indicating the sun's current position in the sky, which brings me to my favorite feature of the YES watch:
- Solar time. The digital and analog portions of the YES watch collaborate to convey solar time. Below the dot matrix LCD, the YES watch contains a sort of pie chart consisting of a bunch of thin LCD slices representing 15 minute intervals which divide the watch face very intuitively into day and night. As you change the watch's location, or as the year progress, the LCD changes to represent the appropriate day/night ratio so that it is accurate anywhere in the world, anytime of the year (up to the year 2100). When the 24-hour hand reaches the first shaded LCD segment, the sun is setting, and as it moves out of the shaded portion of the watch face, the sun is rising. A quick glance at the watch indicates how much light you have left in the day, or how much darkness is left in the night.
- Lunar time. The YES watch's outer LCD ring indicates the time the moon rises and sets, similar to the way solar time is indicated.
- Lunar phase. The YES watch contains a small circular LCD which waxes and wanes along with the moon. A quick glance at the watch will let you know how much of the moon is currently illuminated.
- Date. Press the upper right-hand button and see the month, date, and the day of week.
- Multiple time zones. You can use the YES watch to officially keep track of three different time zones, though it occurred to me that you can eke out a fourth if you really need to. The digital portion of the watch supports two time "profiles": home and away. Each are set by picking from a list of 583 cities around the world, or by specifying your longitude and latitude. You can maintain a third time zone by rotating the outer 24-hour bezel to compensate for the offset between the time indicated by the 24-hour hand, and your third time zone (much like a Rolex or Omega GMT watch). If you really need to, you can actually track a forth time zone by first setting your 24-hour hand to a third time zone (so that it is out of synch with the digital time), then setting the 24-hour bezel to a fourth time zone. The celestial data will out of whack, though, but in a pinch, it will get you through. Anyway, without cheating, it easily supports three time zones.
- Sun and moon calculator. The YES watch can calculate sun and moon data for any location between the years 2000 and 2100. Simply select the location, year, month, and date, and the watch will give you day of year, longitude and latitude, sunrise, sunset, solar noon, moon illumination percentage, moon rise, moon set, date and time of the next new moon, and date and time of the next full moon.
- Phase Elapsed Time (countdown timer). Rather than simply specifying a number of hours, minutes and seconds as you would with a standard countdown timer, the PET lets you specify a date (year, month, and day), and a time. The watch then counts down the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds to that event. For instance, as of the time of this writing, I know there are only 340 days, 22 minutes, and 51 seconds until Christmas, 2005. If you specify a date in the past, the time actually counts up rather than down. In other words, the watch indicates how much time has elapsed since a particular event. The documentation states that the PET feature is a NASA standard. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I certainly do see how it could be incredibly useful for counting down to a mission.
- Automatic daylight savings adjustment. The digital portion of the watch will automatically adjust for daylight savings time based on your location and the date. This function can be manually overridden if you're in a location with non-standard DST rules. The instruction manual contains a chart outlining the DST rules the watch observes for specific locations, so you can be sure if it will work for you or not. Unless you live a pretty exotic life, however, and frequent some pretty obscure areas of the globe, it will work just fine. (Note that the analog 24-hour hand will not automatically adjust, so remember to reset it manually.)
- Stopwatch. The YES watch contains a 24-hour stopwatch with a lap function. Time is only measured in full seconds -- no fractions. The interface is not like any other stopwatch I've used before. You use one button to start it, and another button to stop it, but there is no way to reset it. Instead of resetting it, you can either restart it again at 0, or simply leave the stopwatch mode. It threw me off for a minute, but you can actually do all the same things with it that you can do with any other stopwatch, and in fact, one could argue that it's more efficient since it saves you a step between resetting and restarting.
- Alarm. The YES watch contains a single standard daily alarm. The one unique feature it has is a 10-minute snooze. The volume is adequate. I was thrown off by the fact that the alarm is not accessed by cycling through various modes as it would be on pretty much any other digital watch. When in time mode, you access the alarm feature with the upper left-hand button as opposed to navigating to it via the mode button on the bottom left. I think the idea is to make the alarm quickly and conveniently accessible, which it certainly is, but it makes the watch slightly less intuitive for the first-time user.
- Sunrise alarm. The sunrise alarm will sound 30 minutes before sunrise, and right at sunrise. The tone is different from that of the daily alarm to make them easily distinguishable.
- Solar noon indicator. Rotate the bezel so that the "sun stone" (the yellow jewel at the top of the bezel) is halfway between sunrise and sun set. When the 24-hour hand points to the sun stone, it's solar noon.
- Compass. Not a magnetic compass like you might find on a Casio, Tissot, Timex, or Suunto, but on a sunny day, you can align the sun stone to solar noon, then point the 24-hour hand toward the sun. The moon stone (the blue jewel at the bottom of the bezel) will point north, and the sun stone will point south.
- High and low tide indicators. Rotate the bezel so that the moon stone is halfway between moon rise and moon set. The tide will be high when the 24 hour hand hits the sun and moon stones, and low tide will be where the bezel changes from light to dark. (Note that these are only indicators, and one should not bet one's life on the YES watch's ability to determine high and low tide since it cannot take into account topographical features that also effect tides.)
- Solstice and equinox alerts. The YES watch will alert you on solstice and equinox dates by the center LCD turning into a sun icon every 30 minutes, and either the word "solstice" or "equinox" flashing on the dot matrix LCD.
- Time data rotation. If you press and hold the upper right-hand button for two seconds, the watch will cycle through all kinds of time and celestial information like location, year, day of year, week number, longitude, latitude, sunrise, sunset, solar noon, moon illumination percentage, moon rise, moon set, date and time of the next new moon, and date and time of the next full moon.
- One-handed time. I don't know what the official term is for this function, or even if there is one, but I think it's an interesting feature nonetheless. Push the backlight button twice and the dot matrix LCD goes blank, leaving you to deduce the time from only the single 24-hour hand. If your life is planned down to the minute, this isn't going to do you much good, but since each hour is divided up into 15 minute intervals, you can actually get a pretty good approximation of the time.