Analog watch - that does solar & atomic clock?

[Astro What]

Sign me up!
I've been wearing the same old Casio G-Shock solar/atomic clock sync watch for over 20 years. Still keeps excellent time, but is beginning to look beat up and the time is hard for me to see when I have my contacts in.
I've been jonesing for a new watch, but the requirements were that it had to be solar, had to have atomic clock sync and be an analog dial. I had quit looking because I could never find anything like that at a reasonable price.... but sadly, my son recently got a new watch in from Japan (only place they sold the one he wanted) and he made the fatal mistake of letting me know his met all those conditions.

So, off I go tippity-tapping on the keyboard to the store he got his from and found one I fell in love with.



Seiko Astron Nexter "Starry Sky" that is limited to production run of only 800 and is also limited to for retail sale in Japan only. Thank goodness for the internet!
Should be here in a few weeks if all goes well.

I used to prefer digital, but as I said, with my vision it's a lot easier to look down and see where the dial hands are instead of trying to read blurry numbers. If I need to find the month/date I can pull out my phone. I have gotten back to where I like a clean watch face.

It's amazing how watches have progressed from my first "real" Seiko when I graduated HS in '82.

 

[Retro]

That looks like a great find. Please let us have a mini review of it when it arrives. Would be nice to see the product box, too.

While I don't wear a watch and just use my iPhone as my clock, I do have various desk and room clocks and I too have a requirement for radio controlled or bust, so yes it's glorious to see them keep perfect time down to the millisecond and never have to manually change them when the clocks go backwards and forwards in this country every six months. It still fascinates me as if it's magic even though I understand exactly how they work.

My favourite purchase is the Acctim Coloma clock below. It's got 3" high orange digits that I can easily see from across the room even without my glasses, so is just perfect.

I bought mine in 2016, then had the foresight to buy another in 2021 as a spare in case of hardware failure and I'm glad that I did as the first one died a few months ago after disconnecting the power to have some electrical work done on the mains supply. When it turns on now, all the segments light up at first like they're supposed to, but then the display goes blank and stays blank. The second stage is supposed to show 12:00 after one second and then immediately start to auto set the time with a flashing dot to indicate that it's setting. Big shame that and at some point I'll open it up and check for dry joints in case there's a simple fix for it. I suspect that it's possible that a power spike took it out. It's easy to forget that all hardware has a certain lifetime so won't last forever.





I recently bought the Acctim 71833 Higton RC clock below. Notice that it has a second hand on it as it's a critical feature and was the only analog RC clock I could find with it. Why? Because yes, you guessed it, I bought two of them to put side by side to see them keep time with the second hands in perfect sync! Since when does one ever see this with analog clocks?! I absolutely love it and have been wanting to do this for decades, but could never find such clocks, only ever wall clocks. This one is about 3" in diameter and thankfully is silent as I don't like ticking clocks.

 

[Astro What]

I've got to get our wind-up wall clock fixed if it is reasonably priced. After 40 years, the springs have sprung. It's hard finding anyone now locally that still works on these type of clocks as it has a pendulum also. It was a Christmas gift from my oldest brother to us long ago. Other than sentimentality, it's not really worth the cost of repairing though as you can find them refurbished for around $275 and it would probably cost that to rebuild it.
And we've gone so long without the hour and 1/2 hour chimes that it would probably wake us up now.