Unloved Solar - the North Edge Evoque

Some of you may recall me wearing this watch during the first week of Aurelian's one-watch-challenge. Comments such as "horological smudge" and "piece of coal on a strap" accompanied this particular beast. Admittedly, there were prettier watches in the running.

The Evoque is indeed a big beast: 47.5mm dial diameter is too big for most wrists, and my skinny 17cm wrist should be no exception. Surprisingly, that was not a big problem. The lack of a crown is part of the reason why. At 54mm lug-to-lug, instead of forming a big tent that could provide shelter for an ant colony during a thunderstorm, the nylon strap pulls instead the case down that even a single ant would complain about the lack of private space underneath it.

What has the watch overall to offer? It is a solar-powered quartz, with the kind of functions you may find on a typical digital Casio, e.g. basic chronograph features, 48 time zones, a timer, even a compass. In this regard, it seems to occupy a unique place in the market. I was specifically looking for the timer - and indeed this watch did time on more than one occasion my cooking (well, my ready-meals).

Negatives?

There are some small issues:

• like other multi-functional digital watches, you either make this your only watch and learn the operation of its special functions by heart, or you have to find a safe place to keep the instructions
• although the power reserve is impressive, for normal watch wearing, as soon as you indulge the watch's special features that squeak or use the backlighting, you can easily push the watch to safe mode, where e.g. a timer comes without a chime
• the timezones are more a nuisance than a feature; you have to identify them by a three-letter code, and if you miss yours on setting this up, you have to skip through all 48 of them

There is also a big issue: the dial. This is an orgy of grey and black, dominated by the solar cells. North Edge almost turned this into a feature for the background, but the hour and minute indicators hover above the ocean of grey only as an afterthought. The digital LCD display offers more grey on black and is only readable if favourable light and angle conditions are met. There are two shortish analogue hands, appearing black on grey, partially camouflaged by their skeletelisation. There is no seconds hand, but the minute hand moves ever so slightly every 10 seconds. The white tips of the hands keeps the time just about readable.

I paid £48 on AliExpress, though this seems to sell well, and its price has climbed since. Finding a solar watch with so many features is hard, and below £100 this is probably your only option.