Review: Ball Engineer III Marvelight Caring Edition

Unless you don’t know anything about Ball or The Marvelight caring edition, I recommend you skip brand and model and go straight down to wearability. 
 

The Brand:

Following a head on train collision in Kipton, Ohio, which killed 8 people, local jeweler, Webster C Ball was commissioned to create the Rail Road Standard Time. Due to the extreme accuracy of his pocket watches, the term, “Get on the Ball” was born. 
 

Ball nearly disappeared as a brand in the 2nd half of the 20th century, and was reborn in Switzerland with a new focus on mechanical tool watches and with a unique design style. Ball is a leader in the use of Tritium as a source of illumination, incorporated into the aesthetic in a sometimes magnificent way, but sometimes quite tacky. No matter how you feel about their use of tritium, it gives a nearly one of a kind presentation. 

The Model:

The Engineer III line seeks to be a technological upgrade with enhanced sophistication over the popular Engineer lines (engineer II and M), mostly using tritium tubes as single indices throughout the collection. Most of the line is quite neutral in its presentation, featuring simple white tubes that radiate a soft green color in the dark. The Caring Edition, is something quite different, quite polarizing, in fact. The 12 indices show a rainbow of 6 colors, with corresponding indices on opposite sides of the dial. The white, red, green, blue, red, and yellow are somewhat muted in natural light only giving off a hint of the fireworks by outlining the tritium tubes in the color reference of the tritium glow. The minute markers correspond to the color way with a negative display that is imperceptible in full light. 
 

The dauphine hands are a high polish silver with their own tritium types to illuminate the night, and the counter-balance on the second hand is an extremely stylized RR, reflecting the history of Ball watches. All this illumination, color, and detail is set against a matte black dial with three lines of branding at the 12 o’clock and two lines of text at the 6 o’clock. The date is set at the traditional 3 o’clock position, with yet another controversial addition, the cyclops.

The case is reminiscent of a Rolex Oyster Perpetual in shape and finish. The rounded sides  move elegantly to the lugs for a strap monster width of 20mm. Just like the bracelet, the case is completely finished in 904L steel, giving it additional shine. The stew in place H links are satin finished with the protruding center links being  a high polish. Once again Ball made this bold design choice that isn’t part of their normal Engineer III Marvelight collection. The signed screw down crown and train engine in relief finish out the historical call back of the brand. 
 

The Wearability:

This watch wears well!  It is quite comfortable and well proportioned, if not a tad tall. The greater than 13 mm thickness of the watch isn’t noticeable thanks to the down sling lugs and rounded case architecture. The pull butterfly clasp is definitely a low water mark in the luxury department. It’s high quality, and easy to fit to the wrist with the additional half links, but the mechanism is of a much lower price point. The legibility of the watch is without fault with the dial, hands, and indices visible in all lighting conditions against the matte black dial and easily viewable through the AR coated sapphire crystal. Even the cyclops has its advantage here. The COSC ETA movement is run of the mill, but dead on accurate. The screw down crown aids in the 100m water resistance, while the anti-shock mechanism and 1000 gauss anti-magnetism make is a true go anywhere, do anything sports watch. 
 

The Owner:

Who is this watch for?  Well, it’s for me!  I am a Biochemist spending much of my day in analytical chemistry laboratories, surrounded by instruments and dangerous caustics and corrosives. Working in a laboratory, the first thought is always safety, calling back to the founding of Ball Watch. The anti-magnetism is important for working with the instrumentation and the COSC certification aligns with the constant instrument calibrations we must perform before testing. The 904L steel stops the watch from rusting and the screw down crown keeps the vapors out of the watches inner workings. The tritium is a cool chemistry vibe, and because I helped to develop the Covid vaccine, and the Caring edition was launched to give us hope during lockdowns, this was and is the perfect watch for me!