Last week, Unimatic revealed a new collection called, rather bluntly, the Toolwatch. The new line offered four new watches, each meeting a stringent mil spec standard meant to propel the unique Unimatic design language into a new, very functional realm. There are plenty of familiar elements here, but the Toolwatch represents something new. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a fan of tool watches around here so, naturally, a new Unimatic literally called the Toolwatch, was something I had to get a closer look at. Just how does this sub $600 watch measure up? Well, despite a few niggles with the execution, there’s plenty to appreciate here, and most of all, this paints a bright picture of where the brand is heading.
Overall, this is a watch that makes a strong first impression. The Unimatic design language works well heading in this direction, and I’d take this watch as a step 1 in that process. Unimatic borrows from iconic toolwatch design tropes, and brings them into their own clean, geometric lines. The Toolwatch moves to a matte black dial with printed Arabic numerals marking each hour. This approach blends a few genres rather effectively, and I think it works aesthetically, however the proportion of the hour numerals, paired with the depth of the dial in the case (more on that later), make it a bit compromised in practice.
The case of the Ut1 measures 41.5mm in diameter, and 49mm from lug to lug. Total thickness is about 13.8mm, making this a robust but perfectly manageable case. It houses the brand’s TPU protection system which hosts the Rhonda quartz movement, providing much of the strength that has netted these watches MIL STD-810 approval. The design of the case will look very familiar as Unimatic, mirroring the U1 quite closely. I’d prefer a bit more curvature in the midcase to conform to the wrist, but there’s nothing too egregious happening here.
The size and thickness of the case aren’t much of a problem, but how they present the dial is where I run into some issues. The dial opening is about 29mm in diameter, which is on the small side for a watch of this size. That’s about the same as the 39mm Pelagos 39, and a good chunk smaller than the similarly sized FXD. This wouldn’t be as pronounced were the dial brought up closer to the underside of the crystal, but as it is, the sunken nature of the dial with the already slightly small markings, make for compromised legibility (especially compared to the two watches listed above).
As this is a quartz powered tool watch, perhaps an oil filled dial would have been a nice solution to bring it right to the surface. Fingers crossed we see steps taken to improve this in future additions to the collection.
This reference features the GMT and date complication, which are placed at the top and bottom of the dial respectively. Both tuck themselves into the rest of the design neatly, meaning they don’t interfere with the focal points of the hands and hour markers. The GMT aperture at the top of the dial acts as an AM/PM indication more than anything, and is effectively blocked from view by the hour and minute hands at the top of each hour, and at noon and midnight. It’s a good looking implementation, but not quite as effective as a fourth hand would have been. Further, had a 12 hour bezel been used that would have provided a quick and dirty way to track a second time zone. Alas, it’s a nice indication here and I’m glad to see it implemented.
All of this comes together with a good bit of character that I appreciate. Sure, there are some compromises, but that Unimatic personality is here through and through. At the end of the day, that’s why I like these watches. At under $600, it’s hard to complain. Conceptually, I’d like to see Unimatic push this collection a bit further, even if it pushes the price a bit higher, and either lean fully into the Toolwatch theme with no compromises, or into the form heavy design end with these. Trying to straddle both is where things can get a bit muddled.
I’ll have more on this one in due time, but until then I look forward to seeing how Unimatic plans to build on this collection. Unimatic