Fnord.

(As I noted in the previous post, this watch was generously provided by Bjorn Kartomten of Yes Watch, so any editorial impartiality is out the proverbial window. Take internally with self-dosed salt. Mileage may vary.)

We take them for granted now, but until about 1675 watches had one hand, not two. (Heck, in France one-handers dominated until 1725.) If you think about it for a minute, two hands are hard to understand… remember how hard it was to learn to tell time? Two different scales on the same dial, base 60 with base 12/24, and it repeats twice per day!

Check this out. The picture is from MeisterSinger (linked to source page), more on them below:

It’s a bit imprecise to read, but do-able. Here’s a modern version, based on the ETA/Unitas 6497/8:

As you can see, reading time to +- 5 minutes is quite easy. It makes for a very clear and clean face, too. Which leads us to todays’ review, the Yes Inca:

OK, actually that’s just the piano-lacquer box it come in. Gorgeous, eh?

Hmm, looks like a watch…

Leather strap and pin vise to the left…

Rubber strap and springbar tool to the right…

taaa-daa! The actual watch. Here’s another closeup of the face:

Here’s the PR picture from the Yes site:

It’s a unique combination: one-handed analog plus multifunction digital. You can turn the digital display off, and have something like the MeisterSinger, but I forgot the take a picture of that. Oops. Here’s one from Yes that shows this mode:

The Yes watches are available in two model lines, either digital-only (Tati) or analog-digital. There are three different analog digital models (Zulu, Inca and Kundalini) that differ mainly in the bezel design. There’s also the same watch in steel under the Cozmo name. Each is available in titanium, dual-tone and black plated. The Inca has an Oyster-style 3-link bracelet, so I chose this model, in black just because I liked how it looked. 

If you look from the right side, you can see that the analog movement is sandwiched on top of the digital, which offsets the crown from the buttons:

The left side has a subdued etched logo between the other two buttons:

As you saw above, the watch comes unusually equipped with bracelet (solid titanium), leather strap and rubber strap. Even more impressive is that they bundle the tools required to size the bracelet and change straps. Kudos, and I wish more companies did this.

The watch is a complete re-think of timekeeping, and really doesn’t resemble other watches in use or style. This is both good and bad, as I find myself struggling to adapt sometimes. For example, most watches have a button to cycle through all the modes, another for setting, and usually an up/down pair. The Yes does it differently; there is a mode button on the lower left, but alarm mode is on the upper left! And so forth. Not bad, just different.

Another thing that made me think was that the stopwatch and countdown timer count in seconds, not fractions. I’m so used to 1/100ths stopwatches that I had to stop and consider that I really don’t need fractions for what I do. Cooking, parking meters and the like all do just fine, and I think this is part of the Yes mission to redefine our relationship with timekeeping. Why stress the hundredths, after all?

The face of the Yes displays things that you won’t see on other watches. The big arc on the lower half is daylight, where black segments represent nighttime and vice-versa. You tell the watch roughly where you are (nearest city from a list of 500 or so) and it calculates sunrise and sunset. Also visible at the 6 o’clock position is the moon phase, in my picture it’s completely waned:

Around the outside of the LCD is more bit of information, the times of moon rise and moon set. These all work because the dial and analog hand are 24-hour, so you can see above that sunrise is around 6:15 and sunset 7:30. Moonrise 10pm, set 7AM. Cool, eh? It even has alerts for solstices!

After having it a few weeks, I find that I like to use it with the digital display of hours/minutes/seconds turned off. This way, you have something much more simple, the approximate time plus where you are in the day. It’s hard to explain, but the single analog hand traveling over the night/day display tells you ‘where you are in the day’ in a very interesting way. I think its because it uses the spatial and not the numeric portion of the brain. 

There if you need them are a complete complement of digital watch features: Alarm, stopwatch, countdown timer, perpetual calendar, second time zone, backlight, long-term timer, etc. I love the combination of having them available when needed (especially cooking, for which the countdown timer is essential) but invisible until invoked, like a personal wrist genie.

In terms of looks and comfort, the watch excels. As others noted, it has kind of a sexy Jules Verne look to it, with rounded buttons and a domed crown. It’s a unique style, and in the black-plated metal quite unobtrusive. At 48mm its a large watch, but quite thin and light weight due to titanium again. (I love that stuff for watches. Light, non-corroding, durable). I have no problems with dress shirts, it slides easily under a cuff. The crystal is domed sapphire, scratch-proof, with interior anti-reflective coating.

If you’ve read much of this blog, you’ll know that I have a thing for analog-digital watches, and this one is amazing. Having to pause for a few seconds to read the time, and notice the phase of the moon, really does change my day. It’s easier to see that ‘lunch is soon’ or ‘about time for Anna’s bath’ rather than parsing ‘8:43′. The next time I fly, I’m going to take this one and see if the day/night and second timezone features help with jetlag, I suspect they will. Right now, I enjoy having Smolensk as my second timezone, so I can flip over and see the moonphase there.

Hopefully this excessively-long post gives you an idea of why this is a killer watch, and why I’m happy to work with Yes on their next model!

Update 4/23/08: More information and reviews can be found at

• WatchReport review of the Zulu (Same as the Inca, different bezel)
• WatchReport review of the Tati (reduced size, minus analog movement)
• ThinkGeek sells the Inca and has a nice review

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under Reviews and recommendations, Watches and timekeeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.