Division Furtive Type 50 LED Wrist Watch

I’ve seen a lot of watches lately. Most of them have been of the smartwatch variety, promising to be unique in some way, but usually they are all relatively similar. That’s not to say they aren’t good, they just aren’t as unique as they claim to be. The smartwatch market is getting bigger and bigger, and making a value proposition that differentiates you from everyone else is getting more and more difficult.

So when I came across the Division Furtive Type 50 wrist watch recently, I was a bit perplexed, maybe even vexed. Maybe.

 

So what is this thing?

For one thing, it’s a very well designed watch. It is minimal, and classic looking. But, its insides don’t look anything like a classic watch, or a smartwatch, mainly because most of the inside of the watch is filled with a AAA battery.

The AAA battery and a small backup battery power several LED lights. The watch face stays static. The information regarding time comes from the flashing LED lights. There are no working buttons on the watch. To set the time, you set it on top of your smartphone, and a special app sends a beam of light to the watch, telling what time it is.

For a more in-depth description,

The watch responds to movement and time is only displayed when you twist your wrist in front of you.The hours are displayed on the top cursor and minutes on the bottom cursor. When minutes are not an even multiple of 5 minutes, the bottom cursor will pulse once or twice and right or left to display minutes precisely. One pulse left means that you need to subtract one minute, two pulses left means that you need to subtract two minutes, one pulse right means that you need to add one minute and two pulseright means that you need to add two minutes.

Currently at $295, the Division Furtive Type 50 is a bit pricey for what you get. Great design and build quality will only get you so far. It’s a clever idea, but in today’s market, it’s going to be difficult to find enough die-hard gimmick watch fans to support a business model.

Learn more about the Division Furtive Type 50 on their Kickstarter page.

via [TechCrunch]

Source [Kickstarter]