Today, I would like to share with you my first (and second and ...) impression of the watch which is quite unusual member of my collection. It does not fit to any of the categories to which I pay attention to, but yet it attracted me. I am talking about World watch V7 made by YES company.
It all started back in 2019 when I purely by luck or faith found an Indiegogo crowdfunds campaign from the YES watch or better say it's owner Bjorn Kartomten for the new release of YES World watch. Campaign was released for the funding of the seventh generation of this watch, this time the main development issue was to develop a wireless charging of the battery.
I must admit I have heard about the YES World Watch before and it intrigued me. But it was always sold out and on the other hand used watches or ebay were priced higher than I was willing to pay.
The campaign offered quite attractive price, possibility to choose upon several bezels, straps, hands, so in fact tailor made watch for each supporter. After a few days of hesitation I decided to support a campaign.
Well, even though campaign finished successfully, project was on the edge of collapse several time. Development of the charger was bigger issue than expected, then covid crises, all resulted in more time and money consuming than expected. But Bjorn regularly informed us about the situation, he was able to constantly find solutions for raising some additional money (selling shares, additional founding, sellling V7 version with standard charging system, etc) and at the end of 2021 the project reached the end with success.
At the beginning of this year my watch was produced. Bjorn contacted me before final assembly to check if I have changed my mind about the general outlook of the watch, asked me about the color of the hand, and few days latter watch was sent to me.
So, what is so special about this watch? In general, this watch is a perfect watch for all sun or moon freaks. In every moment you can get the exact time for sun rise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, moon phase, and of course time for more than 650 cities in the world. For all those 650 predefined cities this watch knows exact geographical location and based on that it can calculate the exact position of the sun and the moon in each moment of time. If your city is not among the listed one, you can add manually your exact LAT/LON location and watch will do the magic for you.
From the instruction manual you can see how all those information can be read from the dial. In my experience, even though some thing are intuitive, for some you need some time to get to know what it is shown.
Of course managing 650 cities is not a trivial thing and to be quite honest also not needed on your every day's life. That's why the watch has a list of ten cities to which you can put your favorites. And among them you choose two - home and away city. Switching between those two is a easy task, selecting home and away between ten is a bit more time consuming, setting the list of ten favorites is a process. Logical approach, right?
Apart from stated functions watch has a lot of other "standard" functions such as alarm, countdown, 99min timer, sun rise alarm, cuckoo alarm (rings every full hour within the chosen period), stop watch.
If you add also a backlight function for a night view, battery status function, all settings, ... you realize that watch has so many functions that it is quite difficult to operate with it. You need four pushers to get all functions and to be quite honest - a regular look to an instruction manual. As it is usual, after few days you get used to the daily standard functions, for others you forget that are there at all.
I have to point out one very unusual setting for a quartz movement - trimming the time. If your watch goes faster or slower than regular time, you can set faster or slower running from -63 to +64 seconds per month. My watch had a factory setting of -9 and it went slow. So now I set it to 0 and then I will calibrate it from time to time.
Ok, maybe I started with the functions of the watch to soon. Let me give you some basic informations about the watch.
Watch has a diameter of 46mm, case is titanium. There are 6 different bezel inserts in four different colors available, each buyer can choose his own preferred one. So 24 combinations. As you can see, I have taken the 2400 bezel so that allows me to have in fact another time zone. Bezel rotates bidirectional with 120 clicks, for my personal feeling rotation is too easy. Unintentional rotation is quite possible here. Inner dial has a 14 tritium tubes on a "night" part of the dial and 10 lume markings on a daily side of the dial. That approach is very interesting in the night tritium tubes light very strong, you have the impression that only night part is seen. But during the day when you enter to total dark (driving the car into the tunnel for example) quite opposite thing happens. Now, daily part of the dial lights stronger, you have a feeling that just daily part is seen. Very interesting!
I have decided to take the rubber strap, in addition one nato strap was also received. But of course bracelets are also available, for me this watch is too sporty for a bracelet.
Watch fits very comfortable to my 19,4cm wrist. My rubber strap version is very light, I believe that also the titanium bracelet versions are light enough as well. If you hide the digital time (what is possible), then watch turns to a one hand regulator 24h watch. But even that can be changed to a standard watch. Namely, you can change what is displayed on the both led rings and one of the options for the outer - yellow ring - is that this ring shows minutes. So analog hand shows hours and inner yellow ring shows minute marking. But - by all means - good eyes are needed for this. I can't see inner ring minute marking without glasses.
I said a lot about watch and it's functions and still,until now, this V7 has almost nothing new compared to previous versions (or at least to the last version) of World Timer watch. I don't have any of the previous versions so it is hard for me to make a fair comparison between versions, my pstated claim is based on the instruction manuals and pictures of the previous versions. So, if there are some changes, they are not big and important.
But - as said in the introduction - one thing was important, and that is the new charging approach. First, I must admit, it is a bit strange to have such a watch with a charging battery. Charging battery watch is something that associates to smart watches or sport watches, right? "Standard" quartz watches have normally some kind of button replaceable batteries. Well, not in this watch.
Originally all previous watches used rechargeable batteries, but all used clips to which watch (battery) had to be connected.
The main announced revolution here was the wireless charging. You just put the watch on the charging bed, which is connected via USB to the computer or to the charger. Uhaaa, great !?? Really? Sorry, but even the cheapest Chinese smart or sport watch has this charging principle for quite a while. So, to be quite honest, I don't know why this wireless charging was such a pain in the ass in the development of the watch and why this is such a special feature of this version.
Battery is charged more than 24h from almost empty to fully charged. But I must congratulate, when charged, battery last for a looooong time. I have my watch now for almost one month and the battery indicator still shows fully charged battery (four out of four). I read somewhere that it can last for at least three months, this yet has to be checked, but first results are more than promising.
What is a bad thing is that when battery dies, you can not replace it by yourself or by your local watchmaker, but you need to send the watch back to the YES company. Quite annoying if you live outside of USA.
Watch is packed in a solid watch box, as said, you receive one additional strap, two screwdrivers for the strap replacement, very good instruction manual. I have to praise good web page with a lot of useful information - all instruction manuals for all versions from the last 20 years are there for example. And I also have to mention again a very agile and responsive project owner Bjorn. He informed all us regularly, he offers a post purchase support, answers all questions, really a good customers experience.
Watch is available for the purchase, as I can see it is in stock at the moment. Price depends on the buyers preferences, but in general varies around 800-900 USD (plus import taxes if you are outside of USA). Much higher than we as initial supporters paid, so I am biased in giving a fair assessment of this price range. I gladly paid 500 USD for a black satin version, but I would not pay 845 USD which is/was a full price for my watch. Don't forget, I have to pay 25% taxes to that price, so that is another reason why full price seems too high for me.
But, if you are a moon/sun freak, travel a lot all around the world, watch is very good, right choice for you. You will not regret it. If not, skip it.
Add comment
Comments
Thank you for giving the V7 such a thorough review. Greatly appreciated.
A sun freak, huh? Yeah, you probably got me there. Aren’t we all? Turn that thing off and all life will cease to exist within 24 hours. Luckily it is estimated to burn for another 4.5 million years.
I have always been a sun worshipper. Growing up in frosty Norway might play a part but it is a worldwide phenomenom. From the Egyptians to the Incas to the realities of the Anthropocene.
Check out any and all organized religion, what lies behind? The light of the heavens. The halo, the morning prayer and the golden shrines all pays homage to the sun. The essence of life.
Dig into the soul of time keeping and you’ll find the sun at the center of all recorded time keeping as well, along with the moon.
Check out this link for our story:
https://www.yeswatch.com/wrist-watch/worldwatch/our-story.html?id=jBiTizEV
Cheers.
Bjørn.