The Best Nixie Tube Watch Ever

The first time I saw a nixie tube watch was more than a decade ago. I thought the idea was pretty rad, but to be honest, I don’t think the design of the watch lived up to the nixie tubes themselves. I also thought the two digit display was a bit difficult to use as a practical timepiece. While it’s much more expensive, this nixie watch solves both of those problems.

Designed and created by Trento, Italy based Nixie Horizonte, this gorgeous timepiece features a body milled from a block of aluminum and brass. It’s got four mini nixie tubes, so it can display the complete time in either 12- or 24-hour format. It also has a built in accelerometer which it uses to detect when you turn your wrist, as well as a temperature sensor.

Those LED accent lights can be configured into any of 512 different colors (or deactivated entirely), and the tubes offer 7 brightness level settings. It’s charged by placing it on the included wooden docking station, and can run for 2 to 3 weeks between charges in accelerometer mode, or about a month if you don’t mind manually activating it.

It’s a truly stunning piece of design and engineering, and I’d absolutely throw my Apple Watch out tomorrow if I could have one of these instead. Each Nixie Horizonte watch is custom built to order, and sells for about $850 over on Etsy.