Klokers has never used hands. Since 2015, the brand has read the time off three graduated discs stacked like the scales of a slide rule, and every watch it sold ran on quartz. The new KLOK-03 keeps the discs and changes the engine. A Miyota automatic turns them now, the first mechanical movement Klokers has shipped.
It’s on sale now from Klokers’ own store, at a launch price of $880 through December 20 against a regular price of $992. Orders placed before midday ship the same day, per the product page. Sales run through the maker’s store only, under its no-return policy.
Price: $880 $992 (save $112, 11% off)
Where to buy: Klokers
Klokers KLOK-03 01 Yellow Dot, ref KO301LEBK: 40mm polished 316L steel case, Miyota 82S0 automatic, sapphire crystal, 3 ATM, 20mm leather strap on quick-release bars.
Three discs, one reading line
Three discs sit stepped, one above the other, each at its own height so the scales clear each other as they turn. Hours ride the outer disc, minutes the middle one, and the small center disc counts the seconds. Nothing sweeps and nothing points. You read the time off the numbers crossing the vertical line at 6 o’clock, through the small magnifier window Klokers calls the loupe.
Slide rules are where the layout starts. Klokers built the first Klok-01 on the circular slide rule, invented in 1630, and the KLOK-03 dial still prints like an instrument: the scales carry their labels in French, German and English around the rings. It reads less like a watch face than like a gauge you happen to wear. Klokers says every watch it makes starts from an instrument of the past, and this one never hides it.
Reading it takes a day or two on the wrist before it goes quick. That’s the trade the whole watch makes. Its dial is the reason to buy one, and it’s also what slows your glance down.
A Miyota automatic behind a solid back
Miyota’s 82S0 does the turning, a Japanese automatic with a 42-hour power reserve. Klokers keeps it hidden. A solid caseback covers it, engraved with the words KLOK-03 Automatic and the brand’s ten-year line, 2016-2026 Watch Different. No display back, no rotor show. The discs are the show.
The case is 40mm of polished 316L stainless steel, slim in profile, with open wire lugs and a sapphire crystal that carries the Klokers logo engraved into the glass. Klokers says the round case fits all wrists, and at 40mm with those lugs it should wear smaller than the dial suggests. Water resistance is 3 ATM, enough for splashes and rain, not for the pool. A two-year warranty covers the watch.
Size-wise, the newcomer lands between its quartz siblings. The Klok-01 runs 44mm and the Klok-08 39mm, and both keep the clip-on key system and the quartz movements the brand has run for a decade. KLOK-03 is the break in the line: smaller than the flagship, mechanical, and built around standard watch hardware instead of the house system.
The strap system gives up the gimmick
Older Klokers models clipped the watch head on and off straps with a proprietary key system, and only Klokers straps need apply. The KLOK-03 drops it. Standard quick-release spring bars take over, a setup Klokers calls Presto, and any 20mm strap fits. One catch runs in the other direction: straps from the Klok-01 and Klok-08 don’t fit this case, so an existing Klokers strap drawer starts over.
Leather and two-tone, the stock strap runs black over red on the Yellow Dot, with stitching matched to the strap. The underside color peeks out at the lugs, red showing under the Yellow Dot’s black top. Each version gets its own pairing. Blue Note runs blue over black, and Orange Dot runs black over orange.
Six versions, one mechanism
Yellow Dot leads the line, the white dial and yellow center dot carried over from the original Klok-01, with a black loupe where the others run white. Blue Note turns the same layout blue, dial, dot and strap in one color family. Both are the safe picks, if safe is a word that applies to a watch with no hands.
Yuri puts a satellite view of Earth on its blue dial, and Klokers calls it the spaceship of the collection.
Desert Storm runs a beige dial on a beige strap. Yuri runs a white loupe over its Earth graphic. Orange Dot runs a black dial with its dot in orange, and Kaki K keeps the layout in khaki. Underneath the colors, all six are the same watch, same case, same movement, same price.
At $880 on launch pricing, the KLOK-03 sells design first and movement second. A conventional automatic from Seiko or Citizen at this money buys a longer spec sheet. None of them read like a slide rule, though, and that gap is the whole decision here.
Price: $880 $992 (save $112, 11% off)
Where to buy: Klokers
Buy it because the dial makes you stop and read it. Skip it if your watch has to give up the time in half a second.
