Tokyoflash R75: Steve Austin, Eat Your Heart Out!
Tokyoflash Japan promises “bionic timing” with the release of its new R75 model watch. I’m not sure that I follow that description of it, but I do think that this watch looks cool.
Tokyoflash R75
Coming in 3 choices of colors (black, silver or gold stainless steel) and with either white or blue LEDs, the R75 offers 3 different ways to tell the time. This is facilitated using both the upper and lower display areas on the watch. In the hour-centric mode setting, the watch displays the current hour as a number on the lower display area while showing the approximate number of minutes (rounded to the nearest 5) on the upper display, with each lit LED light representing a 5 minute increment. The second setting, minute-centric mode, utilizes the lower display to show the exact number of minutes in numerical digits, while showing the current hour using LEDs within the upper display area. The third setting, binary mode, uses only the upper display to tell time. The upper row of LEDs within this part of the watch face display the hour in binary (where the furthest LEDs to the right have the values 8, 4, 2 and 1). To tell the current hour, one must then add the lit LEDs (such as 4+2+1 to equal 7 hours). The row of LEDs beneath this is used to display the current minutes (with each individual LED–from left to right–having the value of 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 or 1). As with the hour LEDs, one must add the values of the minute LEDs to tell the current minutes (such as 32+16+2+1=51 minutes after the hour). The watch also includes a “date mode” to tell the current date in months using a combination of the upper set of 12 LEDs and in days by displaying the actual numerical date on the lower set of LEDs.
The Tokyoflash R75 is available from Tokyoflash.com. Price: $235.48 (U.S.).
(Photo source: Tokyoflash.com.)
Tokyoflash Waku: LEDs and Leather, Together at Last.
For all of you who have been craving a Tokyoflash watch with a leather band, the folks at Tokyoflash Japan have answered your pleas with the Waku.
- Tokyoflash Waku
Available in your choice of black, brown or fur-covered (!) leather, each Tokyoflash Waku watch features blue, white, or multi-colored (red, yellow and green) LEDs, which flash once for the current hour (1-12), then again for the minutes (in 15 minute segments, 1-3 lights for 15, 30 and 45 minutes after the hour), and finally, once for any remaining individual minutes (1-14). The LEDs are surrounded by a black, silver or gold frame (which resembles a belt buckle). In all, there are 7 band/frame/LED color combinations.
The Tokyoflash Waku is available from Tokyoflash.com. Price (at the time of this posting): $130.77 (U.S.).
(Photo source: Tokyoflash.com.)
Tokyoflash Kisai Tenmetsu Watch Stops Traffic!
Tokyoflash Japan is definitely on a roll this holiday shopping season! Now they have announced the availability of the Kisai Tenmetsu watch, a tri-colored LED watch with red, yellow and green traffic lights–er, LEDs!
With either a black or silver aluminum face and band, upon the wearer’s press of a button, each watch flashes its LED sequence to display the current hour, minute(s), month and (in that order). The time is displayed in a 24-hour (i.e., “military”) format, with red LEDs equaling increments of 15 units (such as hours at or after 3 PM or minutes), yellow LEDs representing units of 5, and green LEDs displaying individual units of 1. One or two red lights flash at the top of the watch to indicate whether or not you are looking at the time (1 red light) or date (two red lights). You can additionally configure an “animation mode” to control the light show that follows the display of the time and date.
The Kisai Tenmetsu is available from Tokyoflash.com. Price (at the time of this posting): $257.32 (U.S.).*
*Thankfully, the shirt the model is wearing on Tokyoflash’s Tenmetsu product page is sold separately!
Tokyoflash Releases the Watch That Says “Ni!”
I just can’t help but think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Tokyoflash Ni
(Photo source: Tokyoflash.com.)
Nixon Newton Watch Blasts Into Orbit
Looking like a simplified astronomer’s diagram of the moon orbiting the Earth, the minute and hour hands on the Nixon Newton have been replaced by two colored dots on rotating discs.
Nixon Newton watch
This watch is available in black, red, white and (light) blue, from Nixon (although at the time of this posting, all four colors are currently sold out). Price: $100 (US).
(Source: Acquire, via Wrist Fashion.)
(Photo source: NixonNow.com.)
Yep! Skullcandy Makes MP3 Watches!
To my surprise, stylish headphone manufacturer Skullcandy has apparently been selling MP3 watches for the past few years. Okay, so maybe that isn’t exactly breaking news, but it’s still kinda cool, right? With two watch styles (the “Bully” and the “MacGyver”) and a variety of colors, the available storage on these watches ranges up to 1 GB, depending upon the model. Each watch is compatible with both MP3 and WMA files, has a built-in 5-mode audio equalizer, comes with a set of earbuds and can also be used as a voice recorder or USB flash drive.
Price: $89.95 to $124.99 (US) at Amazon.com
Frak! New Tokyoflash Kisai Denshoku Is Bursting With Cylon-y Goodness!
Resembling the visor of an “old-school” cylon centurion from “Battlestar Galactica”, the Denshoku watch has just been released under Tokyoflash Japan’s new Kisai brand.
- Tokyoflash Kisai Denshoku watch
Available in a black (shown above) or silver aluminum case with an aluminum/stainless steel band, the design of this watch is said by its manufacturer to have been inspired by neon-lit buildings in Shinjuku, Japan. The current time can be displayed across 12 LED lights on the case of the watch. To achieve this, one must press a button which will first cause the lights to flash on 3 times, then they will come on again to display (first) the current hour, then the minutes in tens (i.e., 10 through 50), and finally, the remaining individual minutes. The Denshoku also features an “animation” mode in which the LEDs light up in sequence once each minute for 12 minutes after the time is shown. The brightness and speed of the orange LEDs can also be changed via the watch case button.
The Tokyoflash Denshoku is available from Tokyoflash.com. Price (at the time of this posting): $247.72 (US).
(Photo source: Tokyoflash.com.)
Tokyoflash Hangs Out the Christmas Lights Early with the Fire
Just in time for Christmas, er . . . Thanksgiving, Tokyoflash Japan has released the Fire watch.
Like a miniature, multi-colored Christmas lights display, when the top button on this watch is pressed, the Fire displays an “X” pattern of lights radiating from the center of the watch outward before then showing the time using a series of yellow (hours: 1-12), red (minutes x 10: 10-50) and green (individual minutes: 1-9) LEDs.
The Fire is available worldwide from Tokyoflash.com. Price: ¥12,900 (approximately $135.50 U.S. at the time of this posting.)
(Photo source: Tokyoflash.com.)
Welcome to Cool New Watch!
Wristwatches have certainly come a long way since the 17th century French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal first attached his pocket watch to his wrist with a piece of string and began wearing it that way. However, now that worldwide wireless phone service subscriptions are approximately equal in count to 1/2 of the world’s (almost) 7 billion person population, some people have noticed that many young people aren’t wearing a watch anymore, preferring instead to check the time on their wireless phones.
One might wonder then, why someone like me might be starting a blog today about watches, since (after all) there aren’t any popular blogs about buggy whips. (”Whipmodo”, anyone?) In answer to this question, three points come immediately to my mind:
- Watches as jewelry and fashion accessories allow us to have yet another great method of expressing our own personal styles.
- A watch is a lot quicker and easier to bring up in front of your face than a wireless phone is.
- Despite the recent addition of GPS chips, digital cameras and other “high-tech” features to a few watch models, none of us yet–more than 60 years after its first appearance in the comics–are wearing anything as cool as Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio–and I think there’s still enough life left in the wristwatch market until we finally get to that point!
Keeping the above points above in mind, Cool New Watch will focus on the time-honored tradition of wearing a watch, both for fun and for more functional purposes. At the same time, it will recognize that we live in a very fast-changing, digital age and the watch–like all other consumer technology products–must therefore change, adapt and its individual characteristics even be “mashed up” with the features of other electronic products, else it will go the way of the reel-to-reel tape player, the typewriter and the rotary phone. (If you’re not old enough to remember any of these things, ask your parents about them–and please invite them to read this blog. And if you’re old enough to remember these things, don’t worry: this blog is for you too.)
Cool New Watch is, as the tagline says, about “cool, new, futuristic, unique and unusual watches” (and perhaps even about a few other select watch-related adjectives in addition to that). It’s not about the boring watch that your great aunt Myrna (bless her heart) is planning to purchase for you at the drug store on Christmas Eve. It’s about watches that you will actually find to be cool. It’s also not about presenting to you glossy pictures of Rolexes that you and I both may never own. It’s about discussing watches that you will actually be able to buy (although a few watches may appear on these pages that are prototypes or that are ones that you’d be willing to save up awhile for). This blog will also recognize that a few of you out there are ladies, and that ladies like wearing cool watches too, so if you are one, you may also find some watches here that you would enjoy wearing.
So, with all of that being said, please let me welcome you to Cool New Watch! I hope that you will have a good time here and that you will come back again for another post.