Fossil Kinetic Watches: Never Change a Battery Again
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 06.19.06
Fossil has recently unveiled a couple of timepieces for anyone who'd rather not change a watch battery every again and prefers to power their watch themselves. The FS4171 (left) and FS4132 (right) are both juiced up by the magical power of movement and the FS4171 earns extra gadget points by having a dashing red rotor that you can "watch" as it powers your watch with each flail of your arm. At $95, they're much more affordable than this other kinetic watch we featured that came in at $2,200. Both offerings from Fossil come with an 11-year warranty, and sure beat having to hack your watch apart to replace the battery when it stops ticking. ::Fossil via ::The Green Guy
Seiko has made fairly affordable kinetic watches for years. They are a more traditional look than either the Fossil or digital watch featured here.
Also, Citizen's Eco-drive watch range runs off of solar and artificial light.
Nothing mentions if they're actual automatic-winding watches (unlikely) or kinetic quartz (most likely). If they're proper mechanical automatics, they'll need a tune-up every so often (every 5-10 years unless they're mistreated). If they're electro-kinetic, there is a little capacitator in there that will eventually wear out. I don't know the timescale of said wear-out but it won't last forever.
Seiko's automatics are fantastic bargains if you don't need quartz accuracy.
I need a watch with a good loud alarm, as I use that instead of a normal plug in alarm to save energy, reduce magnetic fields, as well as reducing clutter.
The current watch I have is not very loud. I have a Gaemboy DS Lite with an alarm, but this uses alot of energy which otherwise would be used to play games.
Is there an alarm on this watch? A good one?
I had a Seiko kinetic watch a few years back. Sure, you don't need a battery, but the capacitor died in just a few years. Instead of just going to a watch store to replace it, you have to find a Seiko repair shop or mail it in. What a pain.
You might also like to have a look at these Solar powered watches - I bought one a couple of years ago and I've been very happy with it. I particularly like the fact that as the battery starts to need charging, it will switch to only updating the second hand every two seconds to save power and notify you of the fact (not that this has happened yet, even living in Scotland). The only thing that annoys me about it is that I wasn't aware of the fact that there was an option with no knobs at all when I bought it which is just far too "correct" to have missed out on - maybe when someone steals my current model...
Do you know Citizen Eco-Drives?
They may even rival kinetic watches as they're supposedly completely solar powered! With claims to last a lifetime, I hope you give some time to consider this titan eco-contender:
http://www.citizenwatch.com/index.asp