Interesting Modern LED Watch

[redleds]

I recently found this watch in a local Macy's. It looked pretty good so I bought it.
[img][img]http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/5813/p1000284.th.jpg[/img][url]

The style is clearly based on this design from Armitron:

http://www.ledwatches.net/photo-pages/armitron2.htm

It unfortunately has an animation on the first press as so many modern LED watches do, but thankfully it's very fast and can also be canceled with a quick second push. I really like the BIG dot-matrix display! The functions are hours, minutes, date, and month. Interestingly, there is both a men's and women's model, with the women's version being much closer to the size of traditional 70's LED's and the men's being the typical oversized modern version. I like the women's much better, it looks more authentic and doesn't look 'feminine' to me at all.



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[redleds]

Here's another picture showing the difference in size between the men's and women's models. Also notice the difference in button placement.



The animation consists of a single vertical line that scans very quickly (probably takes less than half a second) from left to right across the entire display before the time is shown. The animation can be canceled with a quick second push.

[LEDluvr]

Hi redleds,
I saw this watch at Macy's maybe a year ago. I was excited until I pushed the button. I agree, the case has a 'groovy 70's feel'
but I was dissapointed with the display. Personally I wish they would have gone with smaller LEDs rather than those big police siren looking ones. But that's just my 2 cents...

[redleds]

I actually like the large display. It reminds me of the original Hamilton prototype. These new LED's don't have the daylight visibility problems that many of the 70's LED's had - that was a major problem back then and one of the reasons that people flocked to LCD technology when it became available. I think the newer displays, with larger numerals and brighter more efficient LED's, are one of very few actual improvements over the original LED watches.

One thing I didn't like about this display is that If you look closely you'll see that it doesn't have the traditional dark, ruby red lens of the 70's LED's, instead it's black - they actually used a translucent black paint on a glass lens. This makes the LED's appear much dimmer than they really are. In the picture below are two watches, one with the paint still on and one with it off. You can see the difference in brightness. But in the end, I think the painted one does look better, and outside visibility is still good.