It’s right on the edge of being a rip-off but actually it isn’t quite and is also aimed at the affordable market – so here it is poor man’s Doxa on acid!
This is the NTH Devil Ray. Its case is in 316L Stainless Steel and is fitted with a double-domed anti-reflective Sapphire crystal.
Diver features include: a 120-click unidirectional bezel, a screw-down crown, and engraved and etched screw-down caseback.
The bezel is a DLC-coated Stainless steel saw-tooth type with an insert with X1-SuperLuminova markings. Its water-resistance is 500m.
Its sunburst dial can be had in 4 colors and there even seems to be a date version which doesn’t exactly make it harmonious.
Neither does that chrono-matic minute-track. Power comes from a Swiss Technology Production caliber STP1-11.
So what do you think – am I being unfair? Is this a fair affordable Doxa alternative or is it an abomination? Comments, please!
Obviously OceanicTime has no affiliation with NTH. All info. came from HERE.
You're not unfair, but the watch is definitely not an abomination. He got a couple of ideas here and there, mostly from the '70s watches like Eterna, Doxa, Certina etc..
ReplyDeleteFor what it offers, the price its very fair at the preorder price (it retails for 700$ so thats an easy pass).
The dial is to crowded and theres a superfluous minute-track inner bezel, dont understand why have a 2nd one. It does look good tho, from the renders...
It's not superfluous minute track. It's a depth meter, based on how colors disappear as you go deeper underwater.
ReplyDeleteI know how it works i've studied a bit of photography ;) What i was saying is not that the depth meter is superfluous, there are 2 minute trackers, one on the inner bezel and one on the depth meter, the way i see it one its unnecessary. The depth meter its too small btw, you should remove the inner bezel and keep the depth meter and make it a bit bigger, plus the green color is missing. my 0.02$
DeleteThe depth meter is on the dial, fixed in place, and there are minute (or, if you prefer, seconds) numbers overlaid on top - 00-55. The other set of markers is on the bezel, which rotates. They're both functional - one for tracking actual time (on the dial), one for tracking elapsed time (on the bezel). Neither would be redundant, in that way.
DeleteAs for the width of the depth meter - there's only so much real estate to work with on the dial. We do our best to make the designs functional - both in the practical, everyday desk-diver "real-world" sense, as well as the "this is how a 'real' diver would use it" sense, but the reality is most divers wouldn't rely primarily on their watch for timing dives or estimating depth, so sometimes we make trade-offs of function in favor of overall legibility and/or aesthetic appeal.
If "real" divers like the watch, that would be fantastic, but I expect most will be purchased by non-divers, who'll appreciate the balance we struck.
Case in point - we left the green off the depth meter as a concession to aesthetic design - how many colors do you want on there? We decided we had enough, especially as green disappears at 110m of depth, which is an odd number, and we figured the turquoise we had would disappear at ~200m, which makes the depths indicated by the depth meter easier to remember, for those who might actually use it - 5m, 20m, 50m, 200m.
I think this watch will be awesome :-)
ReplyDelete