Having teased us with a funky video and a shot of its backside, HYT have fully opened the kimono on their amazing liquid-filled H1 Hydro watch.
Let’s deal with the price first: $45,000 at the low end (titanium).
A lot of money, sure, but something of a bargain when you consider what’s gone into producing something like this.
The most unique feature – and one for which a number of patents have been filed – is the green liquid (fluorescein) indicator for the hours.
Think for a second how hard it must be to keep that absolutely under control as your wrist rolls and jiggles around whilst wearing the watch (wonder what happens when you give this a good shake?).
The two bellows you can see on the front, controlled by the mechanical movement, are responsible for managing the liquid level, and hence the hour indication.
The minutes are displayed in the center of the face with a more traditional dial, with the seconds being shown via a water turbine style dial.
On the right is a power reserve indicator for the mechanical movement: the reserve time being around the 65 hour mark.
In terms of the more prosaic watch features, this is a 48.8mm piece. Three case materials will be available - titanium, DLC black coated titanium, and 18k red gold.
Sapphire crystals on the front and back.
But that’s just detail – this is a watch with a _liquid_ display!
Love it – really interested to hear more hands-on experiences.
What do you think? Impressed?
Technical Details
Movement: mechanical hand-wound, exclusive HYT calibre, 28,800 vph, 4 Hz, 35 jewels, bridges hand-chamfered and adorned with Côtes de Genève, rhodiumed bellows, 65-hour power reserve
Functions: retrograde fluid hours, minutes, seconds
Case: titanium; diameter: 48.8 mm, thickness: 17.9 mm brushed, bead-blasted and satin-brushed finish rubber-clad screw-lock crown, titanium crown guard, screw-locked added lugs, metal dome at 06:00, cambered sapphire crystal with glareproofed interior, screw-down sapphire back
Dial: unstructured, silver-toned opaline fluid hours, luminescent hands and hour-markers regulator at 12:00, small seconds wheel at 09:30, power-reserve indicator at 02:30
Strap: hand-sewn leather-lined canvas, pin buckle
Other versions: black DLC-coated titanium case, black subdial 5N 18K red gold case, black subdial
