My research took me in a slightly different direction than classic mechanical field watches though. My reasoning was that these great explorers from the past had used the best timekeeping tool they had available at the time; their focus was utility, not romance. I decided to try to find a modern, quartz-era successor to the classic field watch- what an Edmund Hillary might have chosen had he had it available.
This was a fun exercise. I did my research and eventually settled on something from the Victorinox INOX line- namely, the Titanium INOX with the gray dial and orange seconds hand.
(This picture makes it look absolutely huge. It fit better than this!)
This watch was simultaneously so cool and exciting and a big disappointment.
First, just look at that dial, case and handset!
It's absolutely gorgeous. The matte gray titanium case blending perfectly with the matte gray dial, the bright orange second hand giving that pop of color, the applied indices and that razor sharp chapter ring... I was blown away. The whole watch was extremely light but felt solid as a tank, and it was an absolute pleasure to run the fingers over that smooth blasted case. The screw-down crown is massive but fits perfectly between the equally massive guards, which make almost a cocoon around it. It was a big, stout watch and there was no hiding it, but it felt great on the wrist.
But there were a couple dealbreakers for me, and led me to resell it in less than a month. First, the lume was pathetic. Really, really, awful. Within less than an hour after fully charging it was completely 100% unrecognizable that there even was lume. An hour is being generous. The indices and hour hands were very narrow, so the quantity wasn't there, but evidently neither was the quality of lume. This was such a disappointment that I even considered for a bit getting it professionally re-lumed. I don't feel like every watch needs to be a torch but if this was going to be an exploring/adventuring/camping/field watch, I felt like it had better be readable in the dark.
The other thing was the wild imprecision of the seconds hand. It was all over the place, everywhere except striking the second markers. I try to be a bit generous with my expectations in this regard, but it was bad enough that most of the time it was hard to tell what second it was even striking.
So please, Victorinox, please- get some lume on this thing and get the movement alignment a bit better, and you'll have almost the perfect field watch.
