Reviews

It is a little known fact that during the Swiss watch industry’s most terrifying years in the quartz revolution, Swatch came to its rescue and took on the three giants in Japanese watchmaking. This resistance gave high end Swiss watchmakers a chance to come up with a winning strategy to safeguard the industry. Since then, Swatch has sold its 6,000,000th timepiece to their very loyal fan base. Swatch has always been at the helm of innovation and has made owning a Swiss timepiece mainstream. ..

Swatch recently introduced a line of inexpensive mechanical chronographs. Previously, any Swiss watch with the ubiquitous ETA/Valjoux 7750 was typically $700 or more. The new line (pictured at right) starts at $360! Movement is the ETA C01.211, about which information is a bit scarce. It seems to only be available to the Swatch group, which is a bummer. As with the movement in the Irony skeleton, they've cut costs by using some plastic parts, but the result is inexpensive and still durable. ..

One watch brand that needs no introduction on Watch Report is Swatch. Their PR just contacted us to let us know that their new lineup for Fall/Winter is online at their store. Pictured at right is a chronograph that caught my eye as a nice design. As always, Swatches are very inexpensive and most often quartz movements and mineral or plastic crystals. The new line has over 100 watches; there's probably something there to catch your eye, and for $100 to $175 or so, why not? Not every watch n..

As an engineer, it's always interesting to me to think about what a watch is designed for. In some ways, it's easy to make "The World's Finest Watch" if cost and time are no consideration. It's much harder, on the other hand, to make a world-class watch for the masses for under, say, $200. Engineering both low-cost and style into a mechanical watch is not a simple task. Today I'm reviewing a watch that tries for just that. Say hello to the Swatch Irony Automatic "Body and Soul". It's a sk..

In the 80's, where I went to elementary school, the more Swatches you owned, and the more you wore simultaneously, the cooler you were. I wasn't very cool because I only had one, but the one I had was, and still is, an undisputed Swatch classic: the Jelly Fish. I don't remember what happened to my Jelly Fish, but I always loved that watch, and I've often wished that I'd kept it. In fact, about a month ago, while in a particularly nostalgic mood, I decided to see if I could find a used Jel..