Update (12/21/09): This offer has expired, however we do plan to offer additional discounts on YES watches in the future. Please keep an eye on Watch Report for details.

If you're a regular reader, you know that we're big fans of YES watches. We reviewed both the Zulu and the Tati, and love them both. I also happen to know the founder and CEO of YES watches, Bjorn Kartomten, personally, and I know how passionate he is about his watches, and about customer service. In fact, I've heard several stories of people having their emails to YES Watches answered personally by Bjorn.

We seldom do promotions on Watch Report, but when Bjorn asked me the other day if I'd be interested in offering a discount on YES watches to our readers, I decided it was a good deal for everyone. From now through December 21, 2009, Watch Report readers can save between $100 and $300 on all YES watches purchased through this link. This discount covers the Zulu, World Watch, Tati, Luna, Inca, and the Kundalini.

Even if you're not in the market for a new watch, you might want to check out their lineup or our reviews just to see what YES watches are all about. They are some of the most unique and innovative timepieces out there.

By Christian Cantrell

Last week, Watch Report received an email from a very kind reader in Iceland who wrote to inform us of the JS Watch Co brand based in Reykjavik, Iceland. JS Watch Co is certainly worth a look on style and attitude alone. The small company only produces 5 models but takes the manufacture and quality of each seriously. This is a line taken from their website, "We say that we produce our watches 50 years ago when workmanship and personal attention of the watchmaker was the standard in the high end wristwatch trade". Given that the company opened its doors in 2005, that is quite the statement. Their watches have been seen on the wrists of celebrities like Quentin Tarantino and Jude Law, and this past June the Dalai Lama was presented a timepiece from the small manufacturer.

I instantly took a liking to the Frisland 42mm, with is simple lines, italian style numerals, and polished case. The Frisland 42mm was named after an island that started showing up on maps in the 1500's off of Iceland's south coast despite not existing in real life. The island proved to be fictional and still poses an interesting mystery as to why it was fabricated in the first place. Luckily for us, the Frisland 42mm is real.

Most of the time I wear geeky watches, or dive watches, but sometimes you just want to strap on something clean and elegant. Via, let us introduce you to a.b.art watches, who have a nice focus on clean, uncluttered dials and reasonable pricing. Here's the blurb from their front page:

Clean, simple, uncluttered. Every watch in the a.b.art collection is designed with a purity inspired by the Bauhaus tradition and engineered in Switzerland. Yet with prices from £120 to £898, these are Swiss watches you can happily wear every day.

Pictured on the right is the series O which has a really clever date display: the black disc rotates around the dial, which is visual, clean, and uncluttered. More pictures and commentary after the jump.

We're big fans of outdoor and analog-digital watches, and this new Wenger model scratches both itches. It's a men's quartz watch, with an old-school LED digital display beneath the analog hands, adding a compass to the more usual repotoire of functionality. Available on bracelet (model 70436) or red-stitched black silicone strap (70430), this one looks pretty good:

• 316L brushed-finish stainless steel case, 43mm across, 22mm lugs.
• Water resistant to 100m (330ft).
• Mineral glass crystal.
• Swiss quartz movement.
• Non-screw-down crown.
• Bracelet version is 5-link, alternating brushed and polished, with deployant buckle.
• Digital portion has a digital compass, day/date/month, second time zone.

The specifications leave some questions unanswered - are the hands driven by the movement, or set separately? Is the analog portion illuminated, lumed, both or none? Does it have a low-battery indicator? Can you turn off the LEDs for a cleaner face? (Almost certainly considering the power consumption of LEDs). Despite the unknowns, it's an attractive watch and I hope we can get one for review.

A quick internet search finds it for sale at around $400 USD. That's pretty good, though for that price I'd prefer to get a sapphire crystal.

By Paul Hubbard

I was recently contacted by the public relations firm from Skagen, a Danish company that's been producing minimal dress watches for many years. Several of my friends wear them happily, so when they offered us a chance to email questions to co-founder Charlette Jorst (pictured) I was happy to accept.

As a bit of background, Skagen watches are typically quite slim, with a characteristic spare face and quartz movement. Most are dress-type watches that make good all-around wearers, and are very well priced at under $200. As such, they seem excellent candidates for Watch Report.

Their PR firm has also loaned a couple of watches for review, so please keep an eye out for those here on WatchReport.

Can you tell us a bit about the history of how Skagen watches came to be?

My husband and I started pounding the pavement in New York City with watches that companies could add their logo to.  The designs of the watches were received really well, and many vendors wanted the watches without a company logo, that they could sell at a retail level; and thus, Skagen Denmark watches came to fruition.

Over the past few months I have had the pleasure of sitting down with (read: frequently emailing) Mitch Feig, owner and founder of Ocean7 Watch co. You might remember that I had the opportunity to review two Ocean7 watches (the G2 and LM-2) earlier this year, and I walked away impressed with the high quality, reasonable prices, great customer service, and client interaction. After getting to know Mitch a little better, I feel he is yet another reason to consider buying an Ocean7. He is a successful entrepreneur who spends his time answering questions on forums, and ensuring that customer feedback never falls on a deaf ear.

JS: Have you always loved watches?

MF: Yes, I have always loved watches.  I have a degree in computer science, but I studied watch making for two years, in the early 1990’s. I am comfortable working on mechanical watches including chronographs. I have a little experience with quartz movements.

Ever wondered what the most accurate watch in the world is? It's probably not what you think.

You might guess a radio-controlled quartz watch like the Casio G-Shock Gulfman, or the Citizen Skyhawk. That's a good starting point. Atomic watches are very accurate if you can receive the radio signals. But there are large portions of the world where they don't reach (Central/South America, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, the poles, out on the ocean — even plenty of places that are technically within range, but for whatever reason, not conducive to signal penetration).

Another possible answer is a GPS watch like the Suunto X9i which works almost anywhere on the globe. Unfortunately, it has very limited battery life, and doesn't sync automatically.

Conventional quartz movements are generally accurate to ±15 seconds per month, or 3 minutes per year. That's good enough for pretty much any application, as evidenced by the fact that accuracy hasn't improved much since the 1970s. More modern technology has brought a few high-accuracy quartz movements:

• The ETA Thermoline movement, as used in some Breitlings.
• Seiko 8F and 9F movements, generally good to 10-20 seconds per year.
• And today's mystery contestant: the Citizen A660.

Say hello to one of the best wolf-in-sheep's clothing watches in existence: the Citizen Chronomaster (aka "The Citizen"). The A660 movement inside the Citizen Chronomaster is the most accurate in the world right now, rated to an amazing ±5 seconds per year. There's a variety of faces and hands, but the basic watch style is a very understated men's dress watch. The cost is around $1,100 - $1,300USD at present — not bad for such impressive technology and looks.

Specifications for the model shown to the right, the The Citizen Chronomaster CTQ57-1022 (our favorite):

Today I'd like to introduce you to another maker of fine aviation watches that we think you'll like: Fortis. Meaning "strong" in Latin, Fortis was founded in 1912 by Walter Vogt in Switzerland, and has made a strong resurgence since 1987. Specializing in flight and space watches, Fortis is the official supplier to the Russian space program and the International Space Station. They have a strong design aesthetic of clear faces, instrument-themed hands, and high-contrast dials. Very functional, and with their ETA/Valjoux movements, quite reliable as well. I'd like to pick a few out of their lineup to go over in detail.

The Fortis Flieger

Probably the most iconic Fortis is their classic Flieger watch. Built around the well-known ETA 2824-2 automatic movement, it's 40mm wide (also available in a 34mm wide case) and features a screw-down crown and caseback that combine for an unusual (for an aviation watch) 200m (660ft) water resistance. The super-hard sapphire crystal is anti-reflective coated on both sides, and the hands and indices are superluminova-coated for legibility under any conditions. I've actually opened one of these and regulated it; it's well-made and quite sturdy. I was impressed, and enjoyed wearing it for a day. The orange second hand is wonderful, and I really like the uncluttered face and dramatic hour & minute hands. With a street price of around $600, it's a good price for a solid Swiss watch of high function and durability.

If you like your dive watches colorful, distinctive, and rich with history, then we think you'll like Doxa SA. Founded in 1889 in Switzerland, Doxa foundered in the quartz crisis of the 1960s, but was reopened in 1997. Although they make a wide variety of watches, they are best known for their dive watches, and their perennial inclusion in the Dirk Pitt books by author Clive Cussler.

In 1967, Doxa's research led them to use an orange dial for visibility on their Sub 300T model which was unheard of at the time. Water absorbs some colors more than others, and Doxa's work found that orange remained legible to the greatest depths. The orange dial become a symbol of Doxa, and is now an option available on almost all serious dive watches (except the Rolex Sea-Dweller which has stubbornly stuck to black). Doxa also began incorporating an adjustable bezel with a decompression table into the Sub 300T. Resold in the US, it was a tremendous success and was reintroduced in 2002 as a special edition.

Doxa watches have a distinctive "cushion" case (referring to the shape), and since 1973, the crown is located at the 4 o'clock position for comfort (to prevent it from digging into your wrist). This, combined with the unique bezel, bracelets, and eye-catching colors, makes for a watch with great presence. They're very well made, as well, utilizing Swiss ETA movements of impeccable pedigree.

Doxa currently makes four hardcare dive watches:

• Sub 5000T
• Sub 1000T
• Sub 750T (GMT)
• T-Graph Sub 600T (chronograph)

Most of Doxa's dive watches are available in multiple colors which are indicated by the names Professional (orange), Sharkhunter (black), Caribbean (blue), and Divingstar (yellow).

There is plenty more to Doxa's history and innovation (Helium escape valves, Bugatti car dash clocks, 8-day movements, ratcheting dive suit extensions, etc.) which you can find on Doxa's site. The upshot is that if you're a serious diver, or if you just want a unique watch with good legibility and an interesting history, Doxa is a very good place to look.

Additional Resources:

• The Doxa homepage
• Doxa 40th anniversary book
• doxa300t.com
• Doxa entry on Wikipedia

View the Oceanus OCWM700TBA-1AV Photo Gallery.

Watch Report recently received the black Ion Plated Oceanus OCWM700TBA-1AV. Since I already reviewed its silver-colored titanium sibling (the Oceanus OCWM700TDA-1AV) which has identical functionality, I decided to use this opportunity to write an article on the process of turning metal watches black.

When deciding which materials to use for a watch case or bracelet, manufactures have to take several things into consideration like cost, intended use, desired color, and target weight. They also have to consider the drawbacks of various materials. For instance, titanium is strong, super light, durable, non-corrosive, non-allergenic (some people cannot wear stainless steel due to nickel allergies), and unlike stainless steel, it's unaffected by salt water. This combination makes titanium a great material for dive watches, however one drawback is that its surface hardness is relatively low which means it's easily scratched.

One method that can be used to change the surface properties of a material is called Physical Vapor Deposition, or PVD (you'll also see it labeled as Ion Plating, or IP, which is a variant on PVD). The PVD process involves placing the item to be coated in an inert (non-reactive) atmosphere, heating it up to 400° C or so (depending on the process), and basically spraying it with the molecules that you want to coat it with. That's the general process, however there are a lot of subtle variations like using charged ions for the ion plated variation. PVD has been around since 1838 and is heavily used in semiconductor manufacturing, automobiles, and many other places including, or course, watches.

PVD results in a coating up to a micron or so thick that's tightly bonded to the base material. It won't flake off, as the coating is interpenetrated with the underlying material which is what makes it different from paint, powder coats, or anodizing. If you hit it with sufficient force, however, you can go through the PVD and into the material below, and since it's still a coating, polishing to remove scratches is not recommended.

Another more advanced technique is Chemical Vapor Deposition, or CVD. The main difference between PVD and CVD is that the deposited material is produced via a chemical reaction instead of directly coating the surface. The titanium nitride hardening on the Citizen PMT56-2711 that I reviewed is the product of CVD, and holds up extremely well.

Better still is DLC, or diamond-like Carbon, where, via secret-sauce processes, the surface of a watch is coated with something very much like synthetic diamond! With an incredible surface hardness, this is very nearly impossible to scratch, and can been seen on some high-end Citizens like the Attesa, on the Casio MR-G watches, and on watches like the Rado V10K. DLC is also used in the engines of most super sport motorcycles, on implantable human heart pumps, and in other exotic tasks than can afford the artistry required to create it.

In the world of watches, PVD is most commonly used to produce a flat black "stealth" finish which is quite attractive. It wears better than the stainless or titanium underneath it, and is used on both cases and bracelets. There is a lot of variation in the technique used, so different brands and models will have different levels of durability; unfortunately, the relative quality is hard to discern when purchasing. Be aware that PVD cannot be re-applied, and even marquee brands like Panerai will only remove the coating if its damaged. Many people consider scratches in PVD finishes to be signs of real use, however. They feel that scratches give a "tool" watch some serious character, and wouldn't buff them out even if they could.