Chronologia outdoor series watch review

While I wouldn’t consider myself a wristwatch fanatic, I do always find myself with a timepiece on my wrist. Generally, I can be found wearing my Moto 360, but on certain occasions I like to wear a more traditional watch.

Sometimes it is nice not having to worry about battery life. Plus, even the nicest smartwatches can’t compete with the style of a great wristwatch.

With that in mind, I eagerly volunteered to review the Chronologia Outdoor watch.

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The Chronologia Outdoor watch is made from carbon fiber and sapphire coated crystal.

This watch looks like your typical sport/outdoor watch.

The watch has a standard face with an hour, minute, and second hand. The face displays standard time in large font, with military time displayed below. It provides the numerical day of the week, but not the month. There is also a dive bezel surrounding the watchface.

The back of the watch is an attractive stainless steel.

The right side of the watch contains the watch dial. Pulling the dial out to the first position adjusts the date, while pulling it all the way out adjusts the time.

The watch is available in a range of colors.

Chronologia allowed me to choose the color I wanted. I looked over all the options and decided to go with the black and gray one. I didn’t want a watch that stood out too much and I thought the black and gray looked good without drawing too much attention.

Unfortunately, when I received the watch and put it on, I didn’t like the way it looked in person as much as I did online.

The picture on the website made it seem the bevel was gray while the the band was black; however, in person, both the band and the bevel are identical colors. I thought the watch was a bit dull looking.

Another problem I discovered was when I attempted to use the dive bezel.

The picture above is a screenshot taken directly from the overview page on Chronologia’s website. As you can see, it states the watch has a unidirectional, rotating bezel. In fact, the watch in the picture looks like the watch I was sent.

I spent about five minutes trying to rotate the bezel without success. I almost took a wrench to the watch to try and rotate the bezel, but decided to research Chronologia’s website a bit more.

I went to the specific page for the watch I was sent and found the bezel is listed as fixed under the watch’s feature list.

I’ll take some of the blame for this issue. I should have researched the watch a bit further earlier on, but still feel the Chronologia website is misleading.

Along with the above issues, I also found the watch very uncomfortable to wear. It’s very bulky and the dial is just too big. The watch dial would dig into the back of my wrist anytime I moved my hand a bit.

After wearing it for a few hours, I found that I had a red mark on my hand. The mark remained there for several hours.

The final issue – and perhaps the biggest for a watch – is its ability to keep time. I had to readjust the watch several times during the course of the day.

I later discovered that pushing on the dial stops the watch hands from moving. Basically, every time I moved my hand, my wrist pressed against the dial and stopped time.

While I’ve always dreamed of being a master of space and time, I’ve always hoped to do it in a Dr. Who/TARDIS sort of way, not a make me late to work because I didn’t realize my watch stopped sort of way.

The Chronologia watch does have one feature that sort of sets it apart from other watches, a feature Chronologia calls “Trigalight technology”. Chronologia says:

Trigalight watches use unique Tritium (H3 gas tubes) illumination technology, this unique process does not create additional drain on the watch batteries and does not require exposure to sunlight for recharging.

This feature is supposed to allow the watch to easily be read in the dark.

This is a screenshot taken from the example of the technology on Chronologia’s website.

This is a photo of the watch in the dark in the real world.

There isn’t a huge difference between the example photo and the actual photo, but it’s still lacking in my opinion. You will definitely be able to read the clock at night, but not with the same accuracy Chronologia’s website suggests. You will never be able to make out the numbers on the watch face like you can in the example from the website.

That’s really all there is to the watch. It doesn’t really have any great features and therein lies the problem; the watch sells for $235.00, but doesn’t do much.

For less than $200 you can choose from multiple Android Wear devices possessing dozens of useful features. Citizen watch sells a couple dozen sub $200 “Eco-Drive” watches that are powered by sunlight and never need to be charged.

Chronologia’s watches don’t seem to do much more than a $12 Casio from a big box store; there is just nothing that sets them apart. That alone makes Chronologia a watch to pass on.

Source: The sample for this review was provided by Chronologia. Please visit their site for more information.