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Nixon Heat Gunmetal Positive — Worst Buttons Imaginable

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your_man_in_Hamburg

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Nixon Heat Gunmetal Positive — Worst Buttons Imaginable

Post09 Nov 2022, 23:07

The niche with slim digital watches, reasonably water resistant, and with easy to read digits, is not a very populated one. So, in the end I could not wait for a review here at DWF, and bought myself one of these.

I really tried to buy it in Hamburg, but none of the dealers there had this particular model. This means that I did not see it in the flesh before the purchase.

This review is structured around some views expressed by other reviewers on the homepage of the online shop (https://no.nixon.com/products/heat-gunmetal-positive, visited 2022-11-09). To some degree, I regret I did not read them before I bought the watch.

"Way too small for my average size wrist."

My first two spontaneous thoughts on this remark:

  • The size is no secret. It says "38 mm" right there in section "Product Features". If that is "way too small", then why did you buy this watch?
  • What size a watch should have is fairly subjective, and the trend with "oversized" watches has warped the perception of what's normal and not. Dig up a watch from the 60:s, watch an old movie, then ask yourself what's "way too small" for an average wrist.

I have fairly skinny arms, and welcome every indication that the trend of "oversized" watches has started to wear thin.

"[A] $15 Casio has more features."

This remark elicit about the same feelings for me as the previous one. What features this watch have, are stated quite clearly, so if you have a problem with that, keep walking.

That said, I do find it odd that there is no alarm. I mean, it is a close relative to the count-down timer, and wouldn't have costed many lines of source code.

Given the lack of an alarm, it is doubly remarkable that the watch has one of the least socially acceptable features in digital watch history: chime. It is called "beep" in the Nixon Heat, and isn't mentioned in the manual. Worst of all, it is on by default (but can be turned off).

"You sent me the wrong watch"

I think I experienced the same thing as the reviewer behind this remark.

The web shop page for Nixon Heat Gunmetal Positive has a small text flag telling us that this colour is new. In hindsight I ask myself if it is the colour showed on the pictures on the homepage which is new, or the colour of the watch Nixon delivered.

Be that as it may, the colour of the case of my watch is more like graphite, than the somewhat-darker-than-aluminium colour shown in the pictures.

OK, I admit that if the picture showing the watch on a ladies arm is interpreted generously, one could say that it does, perhaps, show a watch with the same colour as mine.

One picture out of 9 is, however, not a great batting average.

"The buttons are junky."

I totally agree. They give close to no haptic feedback at all, and the galvanic contact being established, appear to be extremely stochastic and unreliable.

Not only that, Nixon does not seem to have bothered to make them watertight at all. In the warranty section it says that "You will void your warranty if you /.../ push the buttons underwater /.../". This makes me wonder how many watches the surfers/models ruined during the photo shootings for the PR pictures. I also wonder what good this "Sending it" feature is, when you cannot activate it in the environment it is claimed to be made for.

An alternative interpretation is that the legal department slaps these kind of caveats on every product nowadays, simply telling us that there is no warranty.

"/.../ not intuitive."

To some degree I am inclined to agree. I get the feeling the UI would have been much easier to design if there had been one more button (and if all the buttons would have been half decent).

As it is now, the UI design relies on several timeouts. This means that certain actions are only activated if you hold one of the buttons pressed for several seconds. Such timeouts are not that easy to find/explore, so you will save yourself a decent amount of frustration by reading the manual.

"The back light is /.../ not very bright."

Spot on. It has to be pretty much pitch black for it to be visible.

I picked a model with dark digits and light grey background, since I am convinced this is much easier to view in difficult light situations. Given the feeble back light, however, there is most likely a fairly large range of light levels where this watch must be difficult to read.

One thing is cool with the back light, however. Even though the digits are dark, and the background light in daylight, the contrast relationship will be reversed when the back light is on.

"/.../ it absolutely EATS batteries!"

I have not owned my watch for long enough to cast my vote on this yet, but I can imagine that the "custom digital LCD" watch movement is nothing more than the cheapest microcontroller the producer could get his hands on, shoddily programmed to moot. This in combination with an inefficient back light, could make this a rather hungry watch.

"Fashion watch"

Yes, yes, yes! Quite obviously so.

(After having passed this damning judgement on the watch, it will probably outlast every watch I have ever owned, and will ever buy, just to annoy me.)

My Additional Comments
  • That Nixon delivered a watch which looks quite different from what is shown in the pictures in the online shop, is disrespectful, sloppy, and will be remembered ("Well, whoever was in charge of quality control at the Verbatim Corporation in 1989 — congratulations, you just made the list").
  • 8 mm is not "ultra thin", but the watch does slip under the cuff of a shirt with no problems.
  • The second time is sort of interesting. Most often "T2" is described as a means for keeping track of a second time zone, but the concept appears to have been generalised the concept in the Nixon Heat.

    Here "T2" is not just the ability to display a time which is an integer number of hours offset from "T1" (not counting the more esoteric time zones), the programmers have simply endowed the watch with a complete duplicate of "T1". In "T2" you can set hours, minutes, seconds, day, month, and year, completely independent from those settings in "T1".

    This must be great for time-travelers, but mostly a nuisance for the rest of us.
  • If the "hardened mineral crystal" had been a sapphire window instead, then the Nixon Heat would have stood a greater chance to be labelled a wristwatch, rather than being just another a wearable gadget, as fragile as a modern smartphone.

Summary

Pro:
  • It has a distinctive look.
  • Legibility is good (in good light).
  • The designers have avoided the temptation to make this a tank.
Con:
  • Sadly enough, too many details have been pushed to the market before they were ripe, and/or too many details were clearly left undefined in the specification which was sent to the production plant in China.
    • The buttons!
    • The back light
    • The UI
    • A possible battery consumption problem.
  • What colour you actually get, appears to be a lottery.

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