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.)

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!

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.)

Price: $89.95 to $124.99 (US) at Amazon.com. (Click any pic above for more details about a particular watch.)

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.) ]]> http://www.coolnewwatch.com/tokyoflash-denshoku/feed/ http://www.coolnewwatch.com/tokyoflash-fire/ http://www.coolnewwatch.com/tokyoflash-fire/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:25:52 +0000 Jason http://www.coolnewwatch.com/?p=18 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.)

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:

1. Watches as jewelry and fashion accessories allow us to have yet another great method of expressing our own personal styles.
2. A watch is a lot quicker and easier to bring up in front of your face than a wireless phone is.
3. 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.