Feature: 5 COOL Apple Watch Alternatives For Enthusiasts
If you like the idea of an Apple Watch because of its modern, simplistic styling, but just can’t bear the thought of going for a full-on smartwatch, there is an answer. Here are five enthusiast-friendly alternatives to the Apple Watch.
Sequent
If you still want a bit of smartness in your non-Apple smartwatch, then the Sequent SuperCharger HR 2.2 NASA edition might be just the thing you’re looking for. You won’t receive any calls or texts on this thing, because its pared back functionality is exclusively limited to tracking your health and wellbeing.
The pressable crown serves as the button to kickstart the various modes, including step tracking, heart rate, workout and blood oxygen level. A blinking LED just above the famous NASA worm logo lets you know what’s going on. It does mean you need to memorise the button press patterns and LED colour meaning, but if your watch can be smart then so can you, too.
The lower sub-dial on the watch is really where it’s all at. The watch does log the collected data to your phone with a specific press of the crown which backs up all your data, but if you want some instant feedback, you can get it straight from the device. That includes the power reserve of the watch, which, being smart, is of course battery powered.
But one really neat little trick with the Sequent is that it can be charged not just by plugging it into the wall, but via the spinning rotor weight in the back too. Reminiscent of automatic mechanical watches, you can keep the battery going for as long as a year. Prices start at £495.
Ochs Und Junior
What makes smart watches so smart is the fact they can do so many things, like remind you to collect your children from school, feed the dog and turn up for your daily check-in with your probation officer. But digital smarts are kind of boring these days. We’ve seen it everywhere. Even a lightbulb can do things without you telling it to.
So, what about a smartwatch that’s smart more because of the clever way it works? That’s exactly what watchmaker Ludwig Oechslin set out to achieve when he created the Ochs Und Junior Annual Calendar, a watch that keeps you abreast of the months and days without you having to lift a finger.
Okay, so you have to lift a finger once, maybe twice, at the end of February and the end of a leap year, but otherwise this purely mechanical device knows how many days each month has without a single bit of digital information passing through its titanium innards.
Normally doing this in a mechanical watch requires the addition of around forty extra parts, but with some clever thinking, Oechslin managed it with just two. The result is an unusual readout that actually makes perfect sense once you get used to it. The month is the smaller dial at the top, the day the lower one, and the date goes all the way around the outside. Want one? The price is an equally mind-blowing £7,000.
Nomos
If your favourite thing about the Apple Watch is just how sleek and simple it is, then you can do so much better with something from Germany. Yes, Germany, not Switzerland, because Germany is home to a bunch of watch brands like Nomos that really know how to make simplicity sing.
The Nomos Tangente Reference 139 is the perfect example of that, its Bauhaus lines somehow both incredibly pared back but also immediately recognisable. You can imagine the designer sweating for days just over the kerning in the logo.
That’s what makes the Nomos what it is, long, drawn-out consideration over every detail, and it really shows. The dial may be as simple as simple gets, but the skinny, heat-blued hands floating over a silver-plated backdrop invites the kind of scrutiny that most watches pray they never receive.
But the benefit of having a watch like this over an Apple Watch isn’t just the extra quality and sumptuous German design, it’s the fact that you can enjoy the mechanism that makes it operate in a far more involved way than you ever could its digital opposition.
The Nomos has the in-house calibre Alpha, which is completely hand wound. That means every day or so it needs to be wound manually via the crown. This is the kind of interaction that makes owning the Nomos much more rewarding, giving power to it through your own deliberate movement instead of just plugging it in. Expect to pay £1,660.
Junghans
For even more crisp German design, you can pay a visit to Junghans for the Max Bill Chronoscope, a chronograph version of designer Max Bill’s famous watch. There’s more to take in here but with no less attention to detail, every digit sitting just so on the dial.
So, if the Nomos is just a bit too simple for you, the addition of the chronograph complication makes the Chronoscope just a more intricate looking watch, and a more functional one as well. We make fun of chronograph users perpetually timing boiling eggs, but the chronograph really is one of the few genuinely useful mechanical functions that’s great to have quite literally on hand.
For the ultimate smartwatch-not-smartwatch look, this particular edition of the Max Bill Chronoscope comes with a black on white dial seated in a black PVD-coated stainless steel case. In profile, the whole thing has a very pebble-like shape, further adding to that Apple Watch feel. It’s yours for £1,650.
Moser
But perhaps the most non-Apple Watch Apple Watch is the H. Moser & Cie Swiss Alp Watch, which isn’t just loosely inspired by Apple’s class-leading wrist computer, it is a complete parody of one. That’s because H. Moser decided to use the shape as a campaign against the rising digital watch industry, to tempt people back into the old-school method of mechanical.
And they’re doing a pretty good job. Not only is the sunburst dial, set with classically Moser leaf hands, a thing of beauty, the calibre HMC 324 is every bit an Apple Watch death knell with its exceptional design and finish that makes the bulbous eye on the back of a Series 8 look like a bit of a disaster.
This watch was designed by H. Moser to show off the fact that is completely autonomous when it comes to making movements, the rare rectangular shape specific to the Swiss Alp Watch the kind of execution just not possible to many other watchmakers. But it is possible for H. Moser, and so make it they did, if only to troll their digital compatriots over in California. If you want one, you’re paying £30,000.
