Tag Archives: Watches

adidas Originals’ Two Ring watch shrinks digital timekeeping into a minimalist retro-modern timepiece

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Smartphones have shrunk to the size of a wrist, and now smartwatches are beginning to appear on the fingers. Some of the better names in the industry have already tried ring watches. Casio did so with the Ring Watch CRW-001-1JR, and Timex collaborated with Beams on the Beams Boy x Timex Original Camper Ring Watch. Now it’s adidas Originals, which is expanding its athletic heritage to the jewelry and fashion industry with the new Digital Two Ring.

The timepiece is created under the Timex license, so in many ways, this miniature watch sits at the intersection of both brands’ identities. That partnership isn’t new, as Timex has long produced adidas timepieces, translating the sportswear giant’s aesthetic into accessible watches that balance function and street-ready styling.

Designer: adidas

What defines the Digital Two Ring is its intentional minimalism, which is to be worn on the ring. The interface strips away everything non-essential, focusing entirely on a highly legible digital display, punctuated only by the iconic Trefoil logo. There are no extra graphics or complications: just time, presented clearly. This clarity is amplified by the display layout, which is deliberately large and easy to read despite the compact form.

The design itself leans into a bold, industrial aesthetic. Built around a 20mm stainless steel case, the ring emphasizes a clean yet edgy metal texture that feels both contemporary and slightly retro. Despite its miniature proportions, it carries a surprising visual weight, giving it a strong sense of individuality. The absence of decorative elements further enhances its understated, almost architectural presence.

Functionally, the watch keeps things straightforward. It runs on a digital quartz movement and offers 3 ATM water resistance, enough for daily wear and light exposure, reinforcing its role as a practical yet style-forward accessory. The construction includes a stainless steel expansion band, designed to flex like a spring. This allows it to fit multiple fingers comfortably, starting from approximately size 11, while maintaining a secure, stress-free fit.

The Digital Two Ring arrives on April 17 in two metallic finishes that further position it as jewelry as much as a timepiece. The gold variant leans into statement styling, adding a subtle sense of luxury that pairs easily with other accessories. The silver version, on the other hand, offers a calmer, more understated tone, making it versatile enough for everyday wear across different outfits and occasions. The ring watch is expected to retail around the $125, placing it firmly in the accessible fashion accessory category rather than the high-end watch segment.

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This Luxury Italian Watch Has a Triple-Axis Tourbillon and Looks Like a Ferrari Dashboard

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Old sports cars had analog instrument clusters that told you everything through three or four circular gauges mounted in brushed metal housings, each dial showing a different slice of what the engine was doing at any given moment. The information was direct, mechanical, and laid out with the kind of functional clarity that only made sense if you understood how the car worked. Tachometers sat next to oil pressure gauges, fuel levels next to coolant temps, all of it visible through a steering wheel while you were doing 140 km/h on a mountain pass. Desder’s D001 takes that exact visual language and translates it into a wristwatch with a triple-axis tourbillon spinning where the tachometer used to be.

The watch displays time on two separate cylinders, one for jumping hours and one for continuous minutes, flanked by a GMT indicator on the right and a power reserve gauge on the left. Luca Soprana, the master watchmaker who cofounded the Ateliers 7h38 workshop that builds complications for Jacob & Co, designed the caliber with the same obsessive attention to architectural clarity that defined mid-century dashboard design. Mo Coppoletta, the tattoo artist and designer behind collaborations with Bulgari and Montblanc, shaped the case to follow the teardrop aerodynamics of 1920s and 1930s race cars. The watch debuted in April 2026 from Modena, in the heart of Italy’s Motor Valley, limited to six unique pieces. The case wraps around the movement like a coachbuilt body over a chassis, every surface flowing from the mechanical geometry underneath.

Designers: Mo Coppoletta, Luca Soprana (Desder)

Soprana’s caliber is a study in mechanical complexity made legible. The triple-axis tourbillon sits dead center, rotating on three independent axes to counteract gravitational effects on timekeeping accuracy. The movement beats at 3Hz with a 45-hour power reserve, hand-wound through a crown that feels more like a machine interface than a watch component. German silver forms the mainplate and bridges, chosen for its rigidity and traditional finishing properties. Titanium components reduce weight where it matters, while phynox, a high-performance alloy known for extreme strength and corrosion resistance, handles stress points. The entire movement comprises 465 parts, every single one made by hand in Soprana’s Vaumarcus atelier near Neuchâtel. The jumping hour mechanism snaps forward with the kind of mechanical decisiveness that makes you want to watch it cycle through an entire day.

The case construction follows Italian coachbuilding philosophy, where form and function develop together rather than in sequence. Coppoletta designed the case around the movement’s architecture, letting the mechanical volumes dictate the external silhouette. The teardrop shape references 1920s and 1930s aerodynamics, when wind tunnel testing was still a decade away and designers shaped metal based on intuition about airflow. Flowing surfaces connect the cylindrical time displays, each one sitting under domed sapphire crystal that distorts and magnifies depending on viewing angle. The brushed metal finish catches light the way a hand-formed fender does, with subtle variations in surface texture that reveal the construction process. Sculpted lugs integrate directly into the case body without visible seams, continuing the coachbuilt language where every panel flows into the next.

Each of the six pieces carries subtle variations that make it genuinely unique. Coppoletta, whose background in tattooing taught him to treat every commission as an individual artwork, approached each watch as a separate design exercise within the same architectural framework. Different finishing patterns on the case, variations in how the sapphire crystals dome over the displays, minor differences in how the lugs taper into the case body. These aren’t the superficial variations you get when a brand changes dial colors across a limited run. These are structural differences that change how the watch sits on a wrist and how light interacts with the metal surfaces.

The D001 competes with MB&F and Greubel Forsey in the kinetic sculpture category, but carves its own space by grounding the design in automotive heritage rather than abstract futurism. Where MB&F builds machines that look like they belong in science fiction and Greubel Forsey chases chronometric precision with architectural movements, Desder anchors everything in the tangible history of Italian industrial design. The watch references a specific moment when cars were still shaped by hand and instruments were analog by necessity. Pricing is on request, which in this category typically signals seven figures. For collectors who view watches as functional art and value radical design integrated with mechanical innovation, the D001 delivers both. Just don’t expect to wear it through airport security without some explaining.

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The NASA Artemis 2.0 Smartwatch Runs Python And Lets Kids Code Their Own Wearable

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NASA’s Artemis II lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, carrying four astronauts on humanity’s first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen are currently aboard the Orion spacecraft, preparing for a lunar flyby that will take them farther from Earth than any humans have traveled since Apollo 13. Space exploration feels immediate again in a way it hasn’t in decades, and CircuitMess timed the NASA Artemis Watch 2.0 perfectly into that cultural moment. This is a $129 programmable smartwatch, fully assembled and ready to use out of the box, inspired by the very mission currently making headlines.

The hardware inside includes a dual-core ESP32 microcontroller, a full-color LCD screen, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, and a temperature sensor. It pairs with iOS and Android devices over Bluetooth for activity tracking and notifications, and the firmware is entirely open-source, reprogrammable in Python, CircuitBlocks, or the Arduino IDE. You can design custom watch faces, build interactive apps, and modify sensor behavior as deep as you want to go. The age recommendation is 9 and up, which reflects the lower barrier to entry compared to CircuitMess’s Perseverance Rover kit we wrote about earlier. No assembly required, no soldering, just charge it and start exploring.

Designer: CircuitMess

Most smartwatches aimed at kids treat programming as something that happens elsewhere, if it happens at all. You get a companion app with preset themes, maybe a handful of watch face options, and locked-down software that assumes the wearer has no interest in understanding what’s running underneath. The Artemis Watch 2.0 flips that entire model. CircuitMess ships it fully functional, but every layer of the software is accessible and modifiable. The visual block-based CircuitBlocks environment gives beginners a starting point, while Python and Arduino IDE support mean users can graduate to full code without hitting an artificial ceiling. The firmware lives on GitHub as an open-source repository, so there’s no proprietary lock-in and no feature wall you can’t get past.

The dual-core ESP32 processor does real work here. It handles Bluetooth pairing with smartphones, processes sensor data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in real time, and runs whatever custom apps you decide to build on top of the base system. The compass and temperature sensor add environmental awareness, which opens up coding projects beyond simple timekeeping. You could program the watch to log temperature changes throughout the day, trigger alerts based on compass heading, or build a step counter that uses the accelerometer to track movement patterns. The 1.77 x 0.5 x 2.76 inch form factor keeps it wearable for younger users, and the rechargeable Li-Po battery charges via USB-C.

CircuitMess sells the Artemis Watch 2.0 standalone at $129, but it also appears in a Mars Exploration Bundle alongside the Perseverance Rover for $399, a 23% discount over buying both separately. That bundle positions the watch as a companion device for tracking rover missions and staying connected during the 20-hour rover build. CircuitMess also offers a Collector’s Bundle that includes the watch and four official strap designs for $149. The company has sold over 300,000 kits worldwide, and the Artemis branding ties directly into the kind of sustained media coverage that makes space feel culturally relevant again.

The Artemis Watch 2.0 is available now at circuitmess.com. If you followed the actual Artemis II launch this week, if you care about wearable tech that doesn’t condescend to younger users, or if you want a smartwatch that teaches coding by letting you rebuild it from the inside out, this is one of the few products in this category worth the $129 ask.

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This $4,500 NASA Watch Reads Time Through a Prism and Only 100 Exist

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There are a few driver’s watches as acceptable and undeniably luring as the Amida Digitrend, first launched way back in 1976 (the same year when Apple was born). The fanfare had Amida and watch designer Matthieu Allègre revisit the timepiece in 2024, and now, to commemorate its 50th year since launch, the Digitrend is revived in a NASA Tribute mechanical watch.

The watch lands with a NASA logo slapped right on the doomed top, where you would otherwise find a dial on the other watches. The Digitrend, being a driver’s watch, features the dial placed perpendicular to the wrist for better visibility while driving. “Our inspiration comes from the iconic ceramic tiles covering the space shuttle’s exterior, to protect it against the brutal heat of atmospheric reentry,” the company notes.

Designer: Amida

The new, special edition timepiece is called the Amida Digitrend NASA Tribute and is designed to capture the spirit of the era of the Space Shuttle, “when humanity dared to reach for the stars.” Of course, the watch carries the same spirit and approach of the original Amida Digitrend of 1976, but the new one is now a direct tribute to space travel, which reflects first up on the white retro-futuristic watch face featuring the vibrant red NASA logotype, a nod to an era for the agency from 1975 to 1992.

Ready for takeoff, the Digitrend NASA Tribute features the same jumping hour and trailing minutes aperture on the perpendicular dial, which remains as it has always been on the watch series. The watch features a 40mm black DLC-faceted metallic monobloc case featuring a ceramic top shell. This atypical display and the case shape are both inspired by classic sports cars and modern architecture.

Made to be durable, the watch is powered by a Soprod Newton P092 automatic caliber, which is visible in action through the transparent caseback, and offers a 44-hour power reserve. The movement is connected to Amida’s in-house jumping hour disc comprising nine mechanical components that create a classic digital display. The watch comes paired with a matching strap featuring a black DLC steel buckle and a secure hook-and-loop fastening system. The strap is made of black leather and has quilted white nylon in the center.

The Amida Digitrend NASA Tribute is strictly limited to just 100 examples. A homage to the ingenuity of the space program, it is available at Amida for CHF 3,400 (approximately $4,500). The watch touts 50m water resistance and is actually priced exclusively because it is aimed at collectors and timepiece appreciators.

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Beams Just Turned the $120 Timex Camper Into a Ring Watch

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The Timex Camper has been around for decades, earning its reputation as one of those no-nonsense, reliable watches that quietly became a cult item. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t scream at you. It just sits on your wrist doing its job in that honest, military-practical kind of way that a certain type of person finds deeply appealing. So when I first heard that Beams Boy was turning it into a ring, my reaction was somewhere between “wait, really?” and “actually, that makes complete sense.”

Beams, the Japanese retailer that started as a tiny 21-square-meter Americana shop in Harajuku back in 1976, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. With nearly 160 locations across Japan today, they’ve spent half a century proving they understand how culture and fashion intersect in ways most brands only dream about. For their anniversary, they didn’t release a standard commemorative watch with a logo on the dial or a velvet box. They took the Timex Camper and redesigned it from a wristwatch into a fully functional ring. It’s a bold, witty, and genuinely surprising idea, and it feels very Beams to pull it off.

Designers: Timex x Beams

The Beams Boy x Timex Original Camper Ring Watch draws its lineage from two points in history: the 1920s tradition of converting women’s timepieces into jewelry, and the 1990s ring watch trend that briefly made a cult appearance before fading out again. What makes this release feel fresh rather than nostalgic is how it leans into function, not just form. This isn’t a decorative piece masquerading as a watch. It runs on a Japanese quartz three-hand movement, with a crown at the three o’clock position to adjust the time. It is, technically, a fully working watch. Just one you wear on your finger.

The construction is straightforward and smart. The case is lightweight resin, the crystal is acrylic, and the band is a stainless steel expansion piece that stretches to fit ring sizes 9 through 15. Because the links aren’t removable or adjustable, the flexibility does the work instead, which is practical and eliminates the fussiness of traditional ring sizing. The whole thing comes in a single olive colorway, keeping it in line with the Camper’s military DNA. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish for a couple of color options, but the restraint is kind of the point. It’s the Camper. Olive green is the answer.

The dial stays true to what made the Camper worth caring about in the first place. Bold numerals, minimal clutter, the kind of face that tells you the time without asking for your attention. Shrinking that down to ring scale could have easily turned it into something illegible or toy-like, but it holds together visually in a way that feels considered rather than cute. The olive resin case doesn’t try to be refined or precious. It’s matte, slightly utilitarian, and completely on-brand for a watch that was never designed to impress anyone at a dinner table.

What I find genuinely interesting is how the expansion band was handled. A nylon strap would have been the more authentic choice given the Camper’s history, but it would have been impractical on a finger. The stainless steel expansion band solves the sizing problem without introducing the kind of visual heaviness that a chunky metal bracelet would have brought. It sits quietly beneath the case, doing its structural job while keeping the focus on the watch face itself. The proportions feel right. Small enough to be a ring, substantial enough to still read as a watch.

Ring watches are quietly gaining traction again, with a few other brands testing the format recently. The format suits a culture that’s increasingly interested in accessories that carry a story and a specific point of view, where what you wear on your hand says something intentional about who you are. A functioning military watch miniaturized into a ring does that in a way that a statement ring or a charm bracelet simply can’t.

The Beams Boy x Timex Camper Ring Watch drops on April 3, 2026, exclusively through Beams, priced at ¥19,140, roughly $120 USD. Whether it makes it outside Japan is still up in the air, which will make the hunt part of the appeal for a lot of people. For a 50th anniversary piece, this is the right kind of creative risk. Not safe, not predictable, but grounded in enough history and craft to earn its existence. That’s exactly the kind of thing worth paying attention to.

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CIGA Design Just Built the Most Interesting Tourbillon Watch of 2026

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In Mandarin, the phrase 马上 (mǎ shàng) translates literally as “on horseback,” but its common meaning is “immediately” or “without delay.” It’s a concept of swiftness and forward momentum. For its Year of the Horse timepiece, CIGA Design has built an entire watch around this clever piece of wordplay. The design embodies that feeling of instant progress and unstoppable movement, creating a narrative woven directly into the mechanical and aesthetic choices. It is a watch about the philosophy of action.

The central tourbillon is the engine of this idea, its constant rotation a visual metaphor for momentum that the wearer sees with every glance at the wrist. The dial’s concentric grooved rings radiate outward from this spinning core, amplifying the sense of energy in every direction. A 24K gilded horse at six o’clock connects the concept directly to its zodiac inspiration, rendered small and precise, more like a seal than a decoration. CIGA Design, the first Chinese watchmaker to win the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, has a track record of treating mechanics as design language, and this is the clearest expression of that philosophy yet. The cultural reference and the engineering are telling the same story, which is rarer in theme watches than it should be.

Designer: CIGA Design

Putting a tourbillon front and center is a serious power move. Most watchmakers tuck it away at the six o’clock position, but CIGA’s in-house CD-12-SI caliber was clearly designed for the spotlight. The entire visual architecture of the watch is built to serve this mechanism. It runs at a modern 28,800 vibrations per hour, which gives the balance wheel a smooth, fluid sweep. A 38-hour power reserve is perfectly serviceable for a manual-wind piece, meaning you get to have that tactile interaction with it daily. It’s the kind of engineering that invites you to look closer, to appreciate the complexity instead of just accepting that it works.

The case material, Grade 5 titanium, is a choice that speaks volumes. At 45.5mm, this watch could have been a heavy, unwieldy piece of metal in steel, but titanium makes it surprisingly light and comfortable on the wrist. The black DLC coating gives it a tough, scratch-resistant finish that feels both modern and understated. Those concentric grooves on the dial are the most impressive part of the case work. They give the flat black dial a sense of depth and texture that plays with light in interesting ways. It’s a very architectural approach that prevents the watch from feeling boring, which is a real risk with monochrome designs.

You solve the problem of telling time without cluttering the main event with a pair of floating diamonds for hands. It’s a brilliant, minimalist solution. Legibility might take a slight hit in certain lighting, but it’s a worthy trade-off for maintaining an unobstructed view of the tourbillon. The strap is shell cordovan, a fantastic, non-porous leather known for its durability and rich patina over time. Pairing it with a hidden butterfly clasp was the right call, preserving a clean, unbroken line around the wrist. These details show a design team that was thinking about the complete ownership experience, not just the initial wow factor.

The $2,699 price fundamentally challenges the idea that an in-house tourbillon must cost as much as a mid-size sedan. This watch appeals directly to the enthusiast buying the complication itself, not the logo on the dial. The 199-piece production run feels like a calculated appeal to a very specific customer who values the engineering over the emblem. With this move, CIGA methodically builds its credibility on accessible complexity and a design language that is unmistakably its own. They are carving out a space by delivering serious horology without the traditional five-figure barrier to entry.

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Louis Vuitton Escale Mount Fuji Pocket Watch brings a functional landscape to life

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If you’ve reached here, stop scrolling any further, and just look at that goddamn watch. Isn’t this Louis Vuitton pocket watch simply incredible? Museum-worthy, my colleague cries out! Before figuring out the entire dynamism of it and setting out to write, I looked again. Is that even a watch? It’s more of an art piece and that’s what it looks like, I told myself. And then reality struck me.

This new Escale Mount Fuji edition pocket watch is the latest from Escales Autour du Monde, LV’s collection of highly detailed pocket watches coming out of the Geneva-based La Fabrique du Temps. Honoring Japan, this one-of-a-kind, high-end pocket watch features a dial that wears the peaceful scenery of dawn over Mount Fuji with hand-engraved details on one side and the functional watch with an open-worked design on the other side.

Designer: Louis Vuitton

Capturing the spirit art and nature, the Louis Vuitton Mount Fuji edition pocket watch features a 50mm 18k white gold case, which measures about 19mm at the thickest point. The beautiful double-sided design with Philippe Dufour-level polishing quality on the openwork view of the dial with the time on one side, and handmade artwork is made to make heads turn and details speak for their craftsmanship.

The artistic side of the Mount Fuji edition is adorned at the top by a vibrant sky comprising 33 distinct colors and 300 hours of painstaking toil with art and traditional techniques. At the 12 o’clock setting, here is a gold compass rose punctuated by Louis Vuitton Monogram flowers. With Mt. Fuji in the background, a wooden fishing boat carrying mythical Ebisu, a beloved figure in Japanese folklore, abode with his emblematic fishing rod and tai sea bream is a dynamic addition.

The boat rocks right to left, the miniature Louis Vuitton trunks onboard open and close, while the compass rose spins around. The defining element still is the Sakura cherry blossoms which also sways like they would in the wind in a natural setting. The entire artistic brilliance is confined within a bezel set with 60 baguette-cut sapphires. This scene within the gradient-matching sapphires, is celebrated with the pocket watch’s Jacquemart mechanism powering the four animations.

The Escale au Mont Fuji, as it’s referred to, is powered by the manual winding LFT AU14.03 caliber which comprises 561 components and provides the pocket watch with an eight-day power reserve. The watch’s hands move to tell time while the minute repeater chimes the hours, quarters and minutes. The visible tourbillon is a fantastic sight on the watch dial that shines in its glory when you hold in your hand. For that, you would need to shell out roughly €1,300,000 (a whopping $1,500,000).

 

 

 

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Citizen x Honda Revive Ana-Digi Temp in Prelude style and its easily the coolest car watch of the year

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You don’t necessarily have to be a millennial to appreciate the retro analog-digital display watches. But if you’re someone who grew up in the 80’s, you know the significance such watch faces had in the day. The charge was led by the likes of the Ana-Digi Temp, made in Japan, which was clearly modeled after the car dashboard. And now, as Honda releases the 2026 Honda Prelude, a revived version of its 2-door hybrid after a 25-year hiatus, the two Japanese brands have teamed up for a retro-modern Ana-Digi Temp watch to celebrate the Prelude’s return.

The automotive-inspired quartz watch, Ana-Digi, with its unique temperature display and Prelude accents, is one of the most striking models from Citizen in recent years. The Japanese watchmaker has been revisiting the Ana-Digi Temp since 2020, but this one, reimagined to celebrate the return of the Prelude, combines the best of the two worlds to display a car’s dashboard on the watch face like you wouldn’t want to take your eyes off, at least for a while.

Designer: Citizen x Honda

The exceptionally cool, new Citizen X Honda Ana-Digi Temp “2026 New Prelude” Limited Edition wristwatch doesn’t skim on functionality or aesthetics. It has the same functionality as the other versions of the watch (inspired by the 80s car dashboards in the past), in addition to the fresh finish and Honda branding to add substance to its appeal. Intrinsically, the stainless steel case watch measures 32.5mm wide x 40.6mm long and about 8mm at the thickest point.

The watch dial inside is divided into two halves. The top half comprises Honda’s “H” logo at the 12:00 position of the dial and two subdials: A1 and A2. Inspired by the speedometer on the car dashboard, one of them features the hour and minute hands, while the other has the running seconds hand, which fulfils some secondary functions like a second time zone and a stopwatch, depending on the watch mode.

The bottom half of the dial is again divided into two sections in the middle. On the left of the divider is an analog-style dial showing time, date, alarm, dual time, or stopwatch, depending on the mode you’ve activated. On the right side, you have two more displays (one above the other) displaying digital time and date, and other modes, while the display below shows temperature in Celsius. It can also show the 1/1,000th-of-a-second chronograph when running the stopwatch.

Another interesting aspect of the watch is the honeycomb-patterned speaker-like section just below the main casing. Inspired by the Prelude’s grille, this is the thermometer on the watch, and it is accompanied by the Honda banding on its right. The watch is paired to a single-row tapering bracelet and it’s powered by Citizen’s own caliber 8989 quartz movement.

The Citizen X Honda Ana-Digi Temp “2026 New Prelude” Limited Edition watch has a solid caseback with the Prelude logo, and it touts 50m water resistance. Made in white and black colors, the watch is selling through Honda’s “Fun Shop” for 45,000 Japanese Yen (roughly $292).

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TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E5 x Formula 1 Edition brings real-time race telemetry to your wrist

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The 2026 Formula 1 season with sweeping technical changes is just a week away, and motorsport fans are counting down to lights out in Melbourne. TAG Heuer marks the moment with the Connected Calibre E5 45MM x Formula 1 Edition, a smartwatch designed to translate the sport’s precision and telemetry-driven intensity into a wearable format. As the official timekeeper of Formula 1, the brand’s latest release feels less like a themed accessory and more like a digital extension of race weekend.

Priced at $3,850 and available from March 3 through the brand’s online channels, the watch builds on the existing Connected Calibre E5 platform while introducing exclusive Formula 1-focused software and design elements. Housed in a 45mm grade 2 titanium case with a black DLC finish, it features a fixed ceramic bezel engraved with a tachymeter scale—a direct reference to classic racing chronographs. The screw-down caseback carries special Formula 1 engraving, while the textured rubber strap reinforces its sporting intent. Water resistance is rated to 165 feet, making it suitable for daily wear beyond the paddock.

Designer: TAG Heuer

The 1.39-inch OLED touchscreen delivers a sharp 454 x 454 resolution, ensuring clarity for both everyday functions and race-specific graphics. Powered by the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ platform and running on Wear OS, the watch supports GPS, heart-rate monitoring, sleep tracking, and a wide range of fitness modes. A 430mAh battery provides up to 24 hours of typical use, including around one hour of sports tracking, and fast charging allows a full recharge in approximately 90 minutes, practical for users who rely on it throughout the day.

The Formula 1 integration is where the watch distinguishes itself. Owners receive real-time updates across practice sessions, qualifying, sprint events, and race day. Notifications include session start alerts, grid formations, and race results, complemented by subtle audio cues inspired by trackside sounds. The experience is designed for professionals who cannot follow every lap live but still want immediate access to key developments.

A standout feature is the dynamic Race Track watch face, which adapts to the championship calendar. As each Grand Prix approaches, the display updates with a stylized outline of the upcoming circuit, along with the corresponding national flag. Whether the race is at Silverstone Circuit, Circuit de Monaco, or the Red Bull Ring, the dial evolves to reflect the season’s progression across 24 venues. The companion smartphone app expands on this by offering detailed schedules, team standings, and calendar information, presenting data in a clear, structured format rather than overwhelming the interface.

 

Importantly, the watch does not sacrifice everyday usability for thematic design. Standard smartwatch features like notifications, contactless payments, music controls, and customizable watch faces remain fully accessible. The motorsport elements feel integrated rather than decorative, aligning with Formula 1’s identity as a technologically advanced championship.

 

 

 

 

 

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This wristwatch lets blind people tell time by touch, looks like any other timepiece

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Around 285 million people worldwide live with visual impairment, according to the World Health Organization, and something as routine as checking the time can become a daily negotiation between independence and assistance. How do blind people tell time without relying on someone else? The traditional watch for the visually impaired has long answered that question through sound or exaggerated tactile cues. Yet many of these solutions, while functional, visibly signal that they are assistive devices. The lingering design question is simple: why can’t a watch for the visually impaired look like any other watch?

The current landscape offers a mix of approaches. Talking watches announce the time aloud at the press of a button, prioritizing clarity over discretion. The classic braille watch uses raised numerals beneath a hinged crystal cover that flips open, allowing users to feel the dial directly. Brands like Citizen have explored tactile adaptations within more mainstream aesthetics, but even these models often compromise on visual subtlety or require noticeable interaction. The tactile watch concept has existed for decades, yet many designs still feel engineered first for utility and second for style. For a wristwatch for blind people, that trade-off can unintentionally reinforce differences.

Designer: Jinkyo Han

A new concept christened “Wristwatch for the Blind,” rethinks the tactile watch for the visually impaired through restraint rather than amplification. Instead of adding bulky covers, voice modules, or overt braille markers, the designer retains a conventional analog form. At first glance, it resembles a standard minimalist timepiece with a clean dial and classic proportions. The innovation lies in the details: raised numerals and subtly ridged hands that can be read by touch. By tracing a fingertip along the dial, the wearer can feel the position of the hour and minute hands in a natural circular motion. The tactile elements are integrated into the geometry of the watch itself, allowing it to function as an accessible timepiece without announcing its purpose. It is an inclusive watch design that communicates through texture rather than technology.

That discretion is what makes the concept compelling. Inclusive design succeeds when it removes stigma instead of adding layers of accommodation. The most effective accessible products often become invisible in the best way, serving everyone without labeling anyone. An accessible watch design that mirrors mainstream aesthetics follows the same philosophy. It supports independence for users who are blind or visually impaired while preserving personal style and social ease. In doing so, it reframes assistive technology as simply good design.

The concept remains a proposal rather than a commercial product, but it points toward a future where adaptive wearables blend effortlessly into everyday life. As interest in tactile watch solutions continues to grow, there is clear room for designs that balance dignity with functionality.

 

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