The Force Awakens With Devon's $28,500 Star Wars Limited Edition Watch 112
MojoKid writes: If the Force is strong in your bank account and you're looking for a new timepiece, luxury design firm Devon Works has come up with a limited edition watch that's perhaps more advanced than the Death Star. It's the new "Star Wars by Devon" co-branded watch with a patented system of interwoven "Time Belts" and hybrid electro-mechanical power. The watch is a celebration of Devon's fifth anniversary. It combines glass-reinforced nylon belts (same as used in the gauges on the original 747 aircraft) with multiple high-tech optical recognition cells, micro-step motors, and no less than 313 electrical contacts. Materials used in the construction of the Star Wars timepiece are sourced from an aerospace company located in California. Keeping true to the Star Wars franchise now owned by Disney, the watch incorporates elements of Darth Vader and the TIE Fighter. Only 500 of these watches are being made. If you want one of these timepieces, you'll need a $2,500 down payment towards its $28,500 retail price.
K.I.S.S. (Score:1)
313 electrical contacts
HAHAHAHAHA...........
Re:K.I.S.S. (Score:5, Interesting)
313 electrical contacts... what does that even mean?
Does it mean they didn't know how to make a simple PCB?
It uses the same glass-reinforced nylon belts used in a 45+ year old aircraft... how is this a good thing?
Also; the watch is garish and gaudy. A casio calculator watch looks more stylish than this..
Re:K.I.S.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
It means this watch has AT LEAST 313 single points of failure.
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Bear in m mind, I LOVE the belts and the seeming use of electromechanical elements. But the visual design is so... painful to look at with its dragon's worth of scales, ridges and pointy bits.
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This watch is nothing more than a miniature Rube Goldberg machine.
A functional, reliable watch is dirt cheap and has no moving parts.
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True, but I admit to disliking digital watches. I'm willing to pay a little more to get a watch with moving hands. Thousands of dollars never made any sense to me, though. This, of course, is ridiculous (and manages to be digital while having moving parts more complex than most watches with hands).
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If you want to call it "moving"; it's vibrating and its movement is probably completely imperceptible to the human eye.
Microchips have moving parts too... the electrons are moving around on them.
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I'm in my late 40s now and this has got to take first place as the ugliest watch I've ever seen in my entire life. I wouldn't pay $5 for it, let alone $28,000. I would consider wearing one if they paid me $10,000.
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Seriously??!?! You are cheap! We would be talking at least $50k before I would leave the house with that folly strapped to my wrist.
Wicked-cool Collectable (Score:2)
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m1 and z1 are pretty nice looking cars.
oh the new stuff?...
this watch is complicated for the sake of being complicated, that's stupid. its also pretty ugly. as a 5 dollar watch, ok, but 25k? wtf. 313 electrical contacts? what for? and the belts? why? could just as well be direct gear driven from the steppers. oh and the steppers are what makes it complicated for the sake of being complicated, not because there's steppers in there but because of that you know it could have been done with less than 14 point t
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m1 and z1 are pretty nice looking cars.
When did "attractive" become "looks"?
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A BMW 1 series is never attractive.
And you won't get one at that price.
(At least , not one worth having...)
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Or if cars aren't your thing... it'd just barely buy you a BMW S1000RR and an AR-15 with a 'fun switch' (lightning link or registered receiver).
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I don't think the 1//M looks that bad:
http://www.mecaniqueexpertpres... [mecaniquee...estige.com]
most of BMW's current designs are pretty horrid, but its hilarious that everyone still copies their design language as ugly as it is.
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The 1 series is a very underrated line. Genuinely excellent cars.
Although only in coupe form. These days you need the 2 series instead.
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Yeah, but some tacky/nerdy Dubai prince can't show off his BMW 1 at next years ComicCon.
Driver's ed? (Score:2)
looks like somebody ran over Vader's face--not a chick magnet
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i doubt that your choice of timepiece is what's holding you back in that area.
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Granted, but why pour gasoline on a fire?
Re:Driver's ed? (Score:5, Funny)
This watch? nah, it just won't pull them in like a good Vader voice.
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"I am already out, darling. I'm just hairy."
Re:Driver's ed? (Score:5, Funny)
looks like somebody ran over Vader's face--not a chick magnet
It's almost as if you've never googled "star wars chicks"...
(Or been to one of those conventions where half the girls are dressed in Princess Leia outfits and the other half are dressed as the bounty hunter. With that watch you can take your pick!)
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Those are planted. Most are not there to date real fans, only pretend, for money. And if they are wearing a mask, there is probably a good reason. Paint me skeptical.
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Regardless of the design, showing that you can afford a $30,000 watch will make it quite an effective chick magnet.
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A watch patterned after the Naboo Royal Starship could look attractive AND have "nerd cred".
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Ok, I might be extrapolating.
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looks like somebody ran over Vader's face--not a chick magnet
"Druish princesses are often attracted to money, and power, and [this watch lets you know] I have BOTH!!!"
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Wow, two week battery life (Score:4, Insightful)
When other electromechanical watches last years.
Sounds like some great engineering there.
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Most "electromechanical watches" watches don't have pulleys and rubber belts inside them.
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Nylon is a type of plastic, not rubber.
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An electromechanical watch is a watch that uses electrical energy instead of a mainspring (so it uses a normal battery) and has a conventional mechanical timekeeping regulator system so it uses a swiss escapement lever for instance (instead of a quartz crystal). Companies stopped making them because they were the worst of the two worlds. It's like 8-track tapes, they're never coming back.
I don't think that's what's meant by "electromechanical" here. The video mentions that the watch has a microprocessor and keeps very accurate time, so it sounds to me like the microprocessor is the actual timekeeper (which means the time is ultimately based on a crystal oscillator). The mechanical part is the belts, pulleys and stepper motors.
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Beats Apple Watch by 13 days.
astoundingly ugly (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow that's an astoundingly ugly excuse for a wristwatch. On the bright side, it is so large that you could scrap it and recover about 50% of it's value by recycling the aluminum.
Re: I guess the world is full of suckers... (Score:1)
Yeesh (Score:2)
If you want one of these timepieces,
then you've got more money than sense and should give me the cash instead.
I'm not just saying that because it's $28,500. I'm also saying it because it's fugly and looks like it's made out of LEGO.
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That's because of how they built it--digital display, but physical flip panels to display the number, have to run a stepper motor to advance the display, plus a seconds display that's actually a nylon belt driven by its own motor...it all adds up to a hell of power drain.
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I wonder how difficult would it be to 3D-print a Star Wars watch case and fit a regular watch in it.
Mmhm, the chump is strong with this one. (Score:1)
Don't give in to marketing. That leads to the dark side.
All that money, yet... (Score:2)
At the heart of the watch beats the same quartz crystal that operates those cheap £2.99 watches from the supermarket, and with equal precision.
Re:All that money, yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quartz is the technically superior solution. Gears may have a nostalgic appeal but are less accurate.
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And their batteries last a lot longer than two weeks.
$28,500??? (Score:3)
I can think of an awful lot of other things I'd prefer to spent $28,500 on (even if I were in a situation where $28,500 was back pocket change, which unfortunately I'm not) that would be much more preferable than that rather garish watch that I'd probable pick up, for a laugh, if it was maybe $10...
What were they thinking? Like, I don't think even Apple would go so far as to sell one of their products for that amount of money (and they _know_ that the apple fanboys would buy them at any price) -- apart from, maybe, the overly ridiculously priced gold apple watch.
Yeah, they made 500 of them, and there are probably enough people out there to buy them. And if I even meet one of them, I'll probably just laugh in his face.
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But will you laugh in their face when they auction it for $150k in 20 years time?
Don't bet against it..
Disney Watch (Score:2)
It looks just like something you'd expect from a Disney branded watch. Something an 8 year old would wear.
It's butt ugly!
And that promo video sounds like a remake of the Turbo Encabulator [youtu.be] video.
well done... (Score:3)
Objective achieved, Captain (Score:3)
I can't even tell the time... (Score:5, Insightful)
on the included picture. This is one of the ugliest watches I have ever seen.
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I was just coming here to say that. It would seem every watch ever advertised on Slashdot costing over $1000 has been a race to the bottom in terms of ugliness. The other recent one being the gold Apple watch. An expensive watch is supposed to be a piece of designer jewelry.
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Really? You can't read the very plain to see "12:23:40"? I find that hard to believe.
I won't dispute that it's crazy expensive and a little over the top ... but it's not like it's hard to read the damned thing.
It's more of a feat of technology than anything, but let's face it ... you could slap Star Wars on a butt-plug and people would buy it.
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Looks to be 12:23. Yes, it's digital. Yes, it's an amazingly ugly watch.
Writing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anyone consider re-writing this blatant advert into something a little less... like an advert?
Limited Edition? (Score:4, Funny)
Is that like an Edition Watch with less features?
Since when is polycarbonate "scratch resistant"? (Score:2)
If it's so scratch resistant, why don't they use it for the whole watch casing?
Polycarbonate is plastic. Plastic is soft. It will resist scratches from your shirt sleeve and not much else.
Pffft!
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I've got polycarbonate glasses. Even with a scratch-resistant coating, they don't stay in immaculate condition for long...and I'm good with glasses.
well... (Score:2)
Give me your answer, do. (Score:1)
"...create products...that bend reality. I'm excited to introduce our latest...", droned the robot with far less personality than any droid.
Also, for that kind of money there should be no fewer than 17 pictures on it of Daisey Ridley.
This is not the watch you are looking for (Score:2)
Slashvertisement (Score:1)
I thought ads were supposed to be clearly marked?
Thats one heck of a porn star watch! (Score:2)
Thats one heck of a porn star watch!
Once upon a time, male porn stars wore huge dive watches, and this is reminiscent of that.
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For men at least, its one of the few forms of acceptable jewelry, and thus can be seen as a status symbol.
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Because nobody's successfully made a Urwerk UR-202 for less than several thousand dollars.
Forget mere accuracy, ignore the jewellery element entirely, that's a mechanical masterpiece.
More proof... (Score:2)
...that some people just have too much money.
And I thought NTP was complicated timekeeping (Score:2)
It's not the only one (Score:2)
Hop on over to http://watchismo.com/ [watchismo.com] and take a look at the high-priced items available there.
Not that there aren't plenty of seriously ugly watches under $200...
Speaking as a watch collector, (Score:4, Insightful)
that's $28,500 for a badly designed prop, except that it's not actually a prop, it's just an ugly and impractically cluttered commemorative watch.
The belt time indicator is an interesting idea, but it's not really impressive. Of course you can make series of mechanical belts tell time, and if you make only a few thousand of them a year by hand of course they'll cost like crazy. If you want to make it *impressive* you've got to make it small -- say 12mm thick by 45mm across at a minimum. 6mm thick would be better.
The humblest Chinese-made mechanical watch movement is a marvel of miniaturization. You can get one from a watch materials company like Esslinger or Otto Frei for under $15; self-winding movements for as little as $22. Typically the movement will be 11.5 ligne wide (that's 25.6 mm; "ligne" is a length unit used to measure watch movements and buttons); and about 5mm thick. If you look though a magnifier at the tiny gears running in their almost microscopic jeweled cups, it's astonishing that you can buy something like that for the price. For about 15x as much you can get a fine Swiss ETA movement that shaves 1.5mm off that thickness.
For less than half the price of this monstrosity you could have a Jaeger LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Jubilee, a watch that is only 4mm thick fully assembled. The movement is 1.85 mm thick, which is exactly halfway between the thickness of a quarter and a nickel.
Of course I understand that the market for *this* watch is not the market for fine watches; I'm not part of that market either, I collect *cheap* watches. But design should be more about separating customers from their money -- which by the way is the dominant design philosophy in the cheap watch market segment. That's what makes it challenging to find well-designed cheap watch. The technology in that price range is more than good enough, in fact on an objective level the technology in cheap watches is *better*. What's hard to find in a cheap watch is good taste.
Better uses for money if you are a rich SW fan (Score:2)
Features? (Score:2)
For 30,000$ it better have force projection allowing me to at least force choke someone...