Quick Review: CIGA Design Blue Planet Stainless Steel

My first review!

I‘ve never written a watch review before, but here goes!

This watch came into my attention thanks to a video from Watchfinder. Apparently it won a GPHG award in 2021 under the ‘Challenge Watch’ category. I became intrigued not only due to the unique mechanism of telling the time using only one marker, but that world disc in the middle of the dial is just looked so beautiful from the vidoes.

I finally pulled the trigger recently when in August 2022 CIGA Design celebrated their anniversary and was having a 20% (or was it 30%?) discount on all of their models, including this. While the titanium version is the one being heavily marketed, I opted for the stainless steel version.

After using it on and off for now close to a week, I decided that I’d like to give my review/thoughts about the watch in several standout aspects.

Visual Impact

With a diameter of 46 mm, it is definitely not a small watch. Your eyes will keep noticing that you have strapped a rather large, round thing on your wrist, and the fact I chose the stainless steel version also remind my left arm that something with a substantial heft is there. It is certainly not a bad thing, however.

The visual impact is not just about the size and heft, the big, convex ‘globe’ in the middle of the dial is a real standout feature. It’s gorgeous, with a lot of details that shows off the terrain of the land mass CIGA Design has chosen to be carved on this bulbous object. The part depicting the oceans are covered in beautiful blue colour, and the land mass are in silver color sometimes appearing a bit yellow-ish under certain lighting conditions. All in all, it’s a beatiful dial. Definitely an attention grabber and I already got a few comments from people who noticed it. This wach has great potential as a conversation piece.

Telling The Time

Talking about conversation piece, another aspect that people will most likely ask is how to tell the time on this watch, as there is no hands on it. This is another highlight of the watch: how it tells the time.

Actually, there IS a hand as the ‘globe’ serves as the hour ‘hand’. The globe rotates once every 12 hours. You’ll notice that there is a compass rose on it. The point on the compass that points outside is the hour ‘hand’. If you notice from the pictures, there are 2 layer of rings outside of the globe. The outer layer is the hour marker. So to know the hour, just look at the compass rose and see where it is pointing to on the hour marker ring.

What about the minute, you ask? Now, this is the unusual aspect of this piece as the hour hand (the compass) does double duty as pointer for the minute as well, where the inner ring serves as the minute marker. Unlike the hour marker on the outer ring, the inner ring actually rotates. However since there is no separate pointer for the minute, to show the correct time this ring needs to rotate a bit further. Traditionally, in an hour the minute hand would rotate 360 degrees. You would think that this would be the case for this minute ring, but because there’s no separate pointer for the minute and the pointer for the hour moves 30 degrees every hour, the ring has to rotate 390 degrees (360+30) in an hour to compensate for the shifting of the pointer. And this is the unique component in this piece.

In the example below, the time is 8:06.

Finally, it must be said that there is no seconds display, nor any indicator to tell the second. Not sure if it's a good idea, but what I can think of for this is probably to add a circular rotating element in the middle of the globe that can show the ticking of the seconds but perhaps it will ruin the overall look of the design.

Legibility

This is where this piece, in my opinion, shows its biggest drawback. You’d think that with the size, it’s easy to read the markers. But it’s not. It is probably because I have old man eyes now, but I believe CIGA Design could improve upon how the markers are designed.

First, it would probably be good if they can enlarge the numbers in the hour marker. They can completely remove the marker and replace it with bigger hour numbers.

Secondly, and the most important improvement in my opinion, is to either enlarge the minute numbers, and/or use a different, more visible color for the minute numbers. There is a small space between the inner minute ring and the globe, so they can take advantage of this extra space to enlarge the minute ring. I think this would take priority over the hour ring as the hour ring is static and most people who are used to reading watch layout would know what is where just by taking a quick glance.

Wearability

Yes, it’s 46 mm in diameter. So, yes it’s large. No two ways about it. However, the lug-to-lug is much shorter than the diameter and this fact helps a LOT in terms of wearability. Even with its significant size, I find this watch more wearable compared to my 44 mm Panerai.

Other Stuff

The rubber strap that comes with the watch is comfortable, but nothing to write home about. It does match the blue of the globe so that’s nice, but it does look rather cheap. Thankfully there’s a quick release lever so it’s easy to swap around with other strap (this seems to be a common feature nowadays with a lot of 3rd party straps).

I am thinking that this watch may also look good on a milanese strap so if I’m feeling like it I may get a milanese and provide an update to this review to show how it turns out!

Final Word

If you are willing to experiment, and you do have the spare cash, I’d recommend this watch. Don’t have too much high expectation on it, but you’ll be getting a unique watch that has high visual impact, relatively wearable, high potential as a conversation piece, and won’t break the bank.

More photos below:

Update (2022/09/14): added information regarding the seconds display (or lack thereof)