I Want a Solar Watch (2/2), or any watch that does not run on batteries

26Apr08

This post follows a previous post I Want a Solar Watch. After some disappointing research, I had promised I would come back with more… so here we go.

In the beginning, I wanted a good looking fierce watch that runs on solar power. After having seen what is being proposed to me, I now have to extend my research to all watches that do not run on batteries.

Note that I will not mention brands such as Seiko, Swatch or Orient, and others which are great but not what I am esthetically looking for.

Runs on Air

The UR-202 by Urwerk is the world’s first watch featuring a winding system regulated by compressing air utilizing miniature turbines. Its predecessor can be found around $40,000 so I am afraid to guess how much this one costs.

Kinetic or Automatic

I found one to my taste: the Bell & Ross 01-92. Still too expensive for me, between $3,000 and $8,000.

Ventura has nice Automatic watches. I could not find their official website, only a reseller. Their prices are way too high.

I also liked the Ceramic Player shown below from Nixon at $1,400, automatic and has a self-winding mechanism. In the same collection, Elite, note the Capital Automatic and Zillamatic.

Vestal and its Fathom watch are closer to my budget at $336. Although it does look a little too classic.

Water powered

While there are many water powered clocks, I could not find one water powered watch… If you know about one, even still in prototype mode, feel free to share.

It seems it might have been more popular about 20 years ago. I found in fact people who bought it from Edmund Scientific’s for instance, but could not find it on their new website. Here more people talk about their knowledge of water powered watches. But nothing for today. Ebay also does not return any results.

Good news is Samsung is working on water-powered cell phones which might come out by 2010. So the water-powered technology for watches might come back soon on the market.

USB powered

I found a couple of brands and models (edge, xonix, Mr. Gadget, ) up to 4GB, but my favorite stays this one… but wait, it’s not out yet and might never be… There are in fact a couple of USB watch prototypes or concepts and so my winer is the iRiver, photo below. It also does MP3.

That’s all. Still unsure what I will get for myself. I might go towards one of the Nixon Automatics.

Filed under: A must be on it, Green   |  
Tags: marine boudeau, solar, watch, wristwatch, sun, water-powered, no-battery, air, USB, mp3, automatic, kinetic, urwerk, nixon, bell & ross, vestal, ventura, edge, xonix, mr. gadget, iriver