Since the whole world it turning upside down in last two years, it is maybe a right time to present a watch which really does everything opposite to what we are used to. I am talking about Raketa Russian Code.
Watch comes from the collection of new Raketa watches with automatic 2615 Raketa movement. You can find my first impressions about new Raketa collection in my review of Raketa Baikonur, which can also be found on my web.
So why is this Raketa Code so unusual? It's quite simple - ALL hands rotate in oposite way so anti-clockwise. Idea behind this watch is that in fact anti-clockwise rotation is more "natural" to our world since Earth rotates arround the Sun anti-clockwise. Also Moon rotates arround the Earth the same way. And since Raketa promotes itself as open minded company and as the company where they think differently (remember story about 0 instead of 12...) it is quite logical that they also want to experiment with the watch which works everything differently.
The simplest way would be to just add another gear to existing movement which would transform rotation but that would make movement thicker. Instead of that in Raketa they rearanged the whole movement vice versa and this movement has the label 2615R.
It is declared that watch is made in limited edition of 300 watches of which 150 has a black dial and 150 white dial.
So, let's go into details of fhis watch.
Even though everything is reversed in this watch, the crown stays in the standard right position. But settng the time and hand winding is done in opposite way than we are used to. So if one wants to wind the watch that can be done by turning crown backward, if you want to move watch forward, you need to turn crown backward. Odd? Not really, since hands follows natural way :) ... Crown has a typical Raketa red dot marking.
Interesting is the choice of the glass. As it can be seen from the pictures, glass is sapphire and domed what should add to a 3D effect of the Earth from the middle of the dial. To be honest, I don't quite see any positive effect of this touch.
Unfortunately in this watch Raketa has not decided for an open back case as it is quite common in other watches from the new collection. Pity and a mistake. Opened is just a small window above the balance wheel but that is not very impressive look...
Diameter of the watch is very wearable 40,5 mm and to be honest the watch looks and feels even bigger on the wrist. For 40mm watch it is unusual that they had chosen such a wide lug, namely it is - 22mm!! That gives bigger general impression of the watch.
A lot can be discussed about the general look of the watch. Dial is, at least to me, not very nice or if I am rude, it's ugly. Too many colours, Earth in the middle makes this watch not enough serious. But - this is a Russian production and if you are at least a bit familiar with the russian or ex. USSR design of the watches you can for sure agree that this is a typical russian approach to the dial designs. And it can be of course understood that they wanted to show how the Moon (second hand) rotates arround the Earth... And then there is also Zodiac as if there is not enough of everything already on the dial.
Since I mentioned hands, hands on this watch are terrible. I can't imagine worst choice. In other Raketa watches we can see a lot of very nice hands which would fit great to this watch as well. But here hands looks cheap, plastic, poor. It is interesting that white dial model has different hands which are much better.
Watch is worn very good, fits nice on the wrist. But it confuses constantly! Only when you wear it for a while you can see how difficult is it to change our habbit. Even though you are aware that you have to be carefull, you are still confused. I don't have problems with hour hand, but for minutes I need to think twice.
Just to give you an example. What time is it on tthe picture on the right? It's 1:22:44 (or 13:22:44). Not so easy, right?
And on the first picture? It's 12:43:48
It is quite obvious why Raketa gave the name Code to this watch and why they promote this watch with: "Can you read the time?".
As all new Raketa watches, watch is packed in a colorful box with Raketa booklet (were Code has an important part).
So, my final comment - great idea and concept, congratulation for that, I appreciate such crazy ideas. Raketa, this concept deserves better promotion!! But shame that the watch is ruined by dial and hands. Instead of having it on my wrist as often as possible to confuse all arround me, I wear it just on some special occasions and when surrounded by the friends who know that my taste for watches is weard.
P.S.: Shorter version of this review was first published in "Portal Satova" watch forum on March 2020.
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