Ball Watches has made a tradition of offering its newest releases for pre-order at a lower price — basically the Kickstarter method without all the crowdfunding baggage. What this means is that you get an incredible amount of watch for the money if you’re willing to commit early, and Ball’s been on fire lately when it comes to offering super-functional, feature-packed tool watches. Their latest model, a mechanical chronograph with a world time function, further reinforces this.
The new (deep breath) Ball Engineer II Navigator World Time Chronograph is powered by a modified version of the ubiquitous Valjoux 7750, which in this guise packs a world time function that displays the current hour of the day for 24 of the world’s major time zones. This works via a rotating bezel with city names representing each zone, which the wearer twists to synch up with a 24-hour disc surrounding the main dial. As you’d expect, the complication-packed movement is chunky, and the Engineer’s case is a whopping 44mm in diameter and 16.2mm thick to accommodate it.
This being a Ball, there are few other notable features included. For one, the choice of lume is not the standard SuperLuminova but rather a series of tritium gas tubes, which consistently shine bright and give off a sharp, legible glow. The watch is also anti-magnetic to 4,800A/m, shock-resistant and water-resistant to 50 meters. All around, this is a pretty rugged watch, and if you order it at the pre-sale price you can get it starting at just $1,899 (a $1,200 discount from MSRP).
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