SJX Watches
Seiko Looks to Sci-Fi for the Astron GPS
Advanced digital watches haven’t deterred leading Japanese brands from continuing to earnestly develop high-accuracy quartz watches in analog formats. Chief among them is Seiko, which has just unveiled two new limited editions of its satellite-linked Astron GPS Solar. While the SSJ037 appears to be a simple time-only watch and the SSH185 looks like a straightforward dual-time chronograph, each watch is solar-powered and includes an electronic perpetual calendar. Limited to 1,500 pieces for the SSJ037 and 1,200 pieces for the SSH185, the new collection is sci-fi inspired, featuring colours and textures common to fictional depictions of space stations. Initial thoughts There are a couple different approaches to making high-accuracy quartz watches. The first is pretty obvious, and involves developing ever-more precise quartz oscillators. Seiko has long been a champion of this school of thought, although Citizen has inched ahead in recent years. The other approach is to make a reasonably precise quartz movement that automatically syncs with an external signal, which might be a radio signal broadcast from any of the atomic reference clocks positioned around the world, a bluetooth signal from the user’s phone, or, in the case of the Astron, a satellite signal. Since the brand debuted this technology in 2012, Seiko has refined things making the watches sleeker and the interface more intuitive. As a result, the time-only SSJ037 is an ordinary 42 mm in diameter and 12 mm thick;...
