Has Timex Lost Its Mind? The Timex Atelier Marine M1

Timex is one of the most well-known gateways into watchmaking. While some of their more upmarket models sell for a few hundred dollars, you can easily walk into a big box store and pick one up for far less than that, even under $50. So with this, you can imagine my surprise when I saw that there's a new initiative for Timex known as the Timex Atelier, an even further upmarket approach that shifts watch production to Switzerland, improves the materials in the process, and consequently raises the price to nearly $1,000 for the piece that we're gonna look at here today. Now, you might be thinking, what on earth is Timex doing? Well, I've been wearing one of these watches for some time, and I certainly have some thoughts. And before we look at the review of this Timex, we have 15 days of offers starting in November on teddybaldister.com. This is leading up to all of the holiday rush. Basically, what we're going to be doing every single day, there will be a new offer on our website that will just accumulate as we get to the peak holiday season. Things will be included will be gifts with purchases. We have watch pouches, straps, tote bags, water bottles. We'll also have additional swag from our brand, gift card offers, and a lot more. So if you're in the market for a watch, you wanna see what's coming out for the holiday season, check out the page down below. This will be updated every single day for 15 consecutive days. Also throughout the holiday season, this will be a great resource to see what's going on with different offers on our website. So Timex has roots dating back to the 19th century, established as the Waterbury Clock Company in the Connecticut city that shares its name, and later becoming known as the Waterbury Watch Company. At the start of the 20th century, the brand had connections to another important name at the time, Ingersoll, where the Waterbury Watch Company produced a famous piece that costs $1, known as the Yankee Watch. This was a massive hit, leading to millions of units being produced and setting the tone for the decades to come. By the mid 20th century, the Waterbury Watch Company had rebranded itself again as the United States Time Corporation. And so began one of the most successful advertising campaigns in watchmaking history. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking was the new slogan for the Timex brand, featuring television ads that showcase the watches in a series of torture tests. Timex watches were inexpensive, yet delivered a stellar product on a massive scale. By 1962, it was reported that one in three watches sold in the US was a Timex. The company had its ups and downs in the years since, with high points, including the Iron Man series of digital watches, the ever popular Quartz Weekender, and the 2017 rebirth of the mechanical Marlin that spoke directly to enthusiasts. But it wasn't until 2019 that the brand began to dabble in the higher price segments, with pieces like their American Document series and the launch of the $450 Giorgio Galli S1 Automatic. With Galli's direction, there were other models that followed, including titanium and forged carbon cases, as well as the first Swiss made watch by the brand in 40 years. But to understand this new atelier project, you have to get a sense of the man responsible for its design direction. A native of Italy, Giorgio Galli was surrounded by brilliant design, but he began his career in graphics and brand identity in the US, co-founding a computer graphics software company. He returned to Italy based in Milan in the early 1990s to become a consultant art director for the Swatch Lab, personally designing hundreds of watches for the brand. He founded his own studio in 1994, working in watch design, corporate identity, industrial and product design, working with clients like Gucci, the Movado Group, Seiko, Citizen, and Timex, and eventually sold his firm to the Timex Group in 2007. And with that move spawned the Timex Group World Design Center, and known today as the Giorgio Galli Design Lab. He describes the Timex Atelier style as neither nostalgic nor futuristic, but modern with hallmarks of the brand, including those skeletonized lugs and the distinctive rings that surround the dials and indices. Now that brings us though to this point, the official establishment of the Timex Atelier, their new division that keeps the focus on elevated design in Swiss construction. The two new models that you have, a Diver and a GMT, are branded as Timex Atelier for the first time, with Galli's name appearing on the case back, and the intention is to establish the Atelier as a brand onto itself. Now, for the sake of this review, I'm gonna spend most of my time talking about the dive watch, the Marine M1A. This is what I had on my wrist for the majority of the last week, and really is where I'm able to speak to more authority. That said, we are gonna sprinkle in some shots of the GMT-24M1A automatic, just to give you a sense of this new design direction. So the Marine M1A Diver is a fully capable utilitarian watch that retains all of Galli's artistic vision and signature design touches. The stainless steel outer case keeps its skeletonized lug profile, adding delicate chamfers at their interior. In a similar fashion, the crown guards also get that skeletonized treatment, offering more visual interest while doing the job in protecting the signed screw-down crown with water resistance landing at 200 meters. The multi-part case is another distinctive Galli detail, and here, the mid case is black IP coated, providing some nice contrast to the brushed stainless outer. Dimensions are proportional for a 41 millimeter dive watch with a case height of 13 millimeters, and a lug-to-lug of just under 48 millimeters, making for a piece that wears similar to long-standing representatives of the genre. Say this one wears like a 40 on wrist. The domed 120 click bezel gets a ceramic insert with loom markings and a raised pip, and the slotted edge maintains sufficient enough grip, although not the easiest to get ahold of if it was wet, which, you know, this is the Diver after all, so something to mention. The sapphire crystal has a three-layer anti-reflective coating, and the view of the dial is clear and virtually distortion-free, a common unseen enemy of attainable crystals, so nicely done by Timex here as they have jumped up in price. They're also improving the material complexity in what is being presented. The lug width is a swap-friendly 20 millimeters, and the Marine M1A is available on a black MBR rubber strap with a textured outer surface, secured with a signed stainless steel deployant clasp. It's supple and flexible, offering plenty of leeway for adjustment, and also features quick-release spring bars. The bracelet option adds $100 to the cost, and is more derivative in its anterior sides inspiration, with a three-link design in a brushed finish, but there's a few other unique touches, including the recessed link sides, which visually echo the case cutouts, and one of the slickest bracelet sizing systems you'll probably ever see. By pulling out the outer side link marked by the arrow icons on the reverse side, you can then slide and turn the link, which will reveal the exposed bar. From here, an owner can simply slide off the link and make adjustments to either side of the bracelet as needed, with adding new links being as easy as reversing the steps to secure the bracelet back into place. Another thing I'll throw out there is if you're out and about, you don't need to worry about bringing a tool with you. You can just adjust this bracelet pretty seamlessly. It's not as easy as on-the-fly adjustment, but say your wrist is swelling up, you can mess around with it on the spot if needed. So this is a really ingenious idea, and something that I think really needs to be applauded from a design standpoint. So when it comes to the dial, the word that I'd bring forth here is clean, yet it still showcases a pretty high level of dimension and detail. The dial backdrop features a fired black enamel finish with a refined gloss texture. Surrounding the dial is a brushed ring, another Atelier signature, into which the hour indices are neatly set. Indices are applied in loom-filled with Superluminova, as are the modified Dauphine hour and minute hands, the Lollipop second hand, and the marked indications on the bezel, which shine quite exceptionally. Overall, the loom is good. There's a discreetly printed minute track chapter ring, and the dial text is likewise low-key with the Timex Atelier below 12, and automatic over the depth rating above six. Shifting to the movement, the Marine M1A is powered by an automatic Katina SA100. So unlike other third-party movements that I've experienced thousands of times, this is a caliber producer that I am not as familiar with, so I can't speak definitively to the long-term reliability, and I wanna mention that right up front. To give some sense to Katina, it's a Swiss brand that had a history of producing watches back to the 1940s, but based on some online digging, that business seems to have slowed with third-party calibers being the main focus nowadays. The company's site lists production facilities in Geneva. However, the digital presence of the organization is murky at best. These movements have been featured in other brands, such as Ferragamo Watches, a brand in which Gali has also worked with on the design side, which makes sense why he would likely tap these calibers to be inside these new Timex Atelier range. The SA100's aim is to serve as another equivalent to the ETA2824 or the SW200, despite being larger in diameter, running at four hertz or 28,800 vibrations per hour. The caliber hacks and hand winds and still has a second position for the date, despite the lack of its inclusion, so yes, it does have a ghost date. Further, these have a higher jewel count than other Swiss counterparts, with 29, has a Novodiac shock system, and delivers a 36-hour power reserve. Decoration is rather industrial, but it features striping on the Timex Atelier-branded rotor and machine perlage throughout on nearly every other visible surface of the movement. In terms of the stated tolerances for accuracy, I saw a couple quotes online about what these will typically run at. I saw minus five to 30 seconds a day, and then I also saw that some of these can be regulated, plus or minus 15 seconds a day. And given the lack of certainty around these movements, I did wanna cross-check them, so I took this watch, tested it across seven different positions on a timegrapher, and when doing so, the watch ran between plus four to plus 12 seconds a day. Those are the extremes. I think generally speaking, pretty good, but this is just anecdotal evidence here. To close this video out, I wanna discuss two points. You have the watch itself, but then you have to talk about the initiative as well, Timex Atelier. First, talking about the watch, I think overall, I am fairly impressed with what Timex is bringing forth here. My biggest question, obviously, is what is going to come with these movements? How reliable will they be over time? These are not as tested as something like the Sellita movements that are comparable, the ETA calibers out there, and even some other calibers like La Jouperie and other brands that are made available around this price range. So that is more of a long-term determination. But if you ask the question simply, is this watch a $1,000 watch, regardless of what the name says on the dial? Yes, you have a unique case architecture that looks absolutely of its price. The finishing on the dial, I think when you see this up close, it's gonna look pretty stellar. There's a lot of dimensionality here. High-gloss finish with the dial, the inset for the indices on that outer track. It looks quite nice. Then you have the bracelet adjustments, the side profile of the bracelet with these recessed areas. There's details here that are interesting. The movement, as I mentioned, is a question mark, but if it delivers everything that it says on paper, there's nothing to really be too upset about. Maybe somebody will mention the power reserve, and if you're a stickler for accuracy, maybe you'd like something that's a little bit tighter. But if that's the case, you probably have pretty high standards for a $1,000 watch. The reality is, this is a $1,000 watch, if you just look at what is being presented from a product standpoint. But then the question for many will be, do I wanna spend $1,000 on a Timex? Most people are not only thinking about the watch when they purchase something. They're thinking about the brand. You see this often. Somebody will see a watch from a brand that maybe gets a little bit higher in its price compared to some of the norm in which we commonly affiliate with that brand, and people freak out, not even keeping in mind that the watch might bring forth ideas, new concepts, better finishing across the board that allows it to be positioned at that tier. So the question for this piece ultimately comes down to a branding one. Even if they won't have the guts to say it out loud, this is what's going to happen. They will likely look at this watch, see $1,000, and think Timex. Does that align with my preconceived ideas about the brand? But I don't think that's the way that you should look at watch collecting, and you have to look at the product for what it is. I think it matches where it's priced and positioned, but this is going to be an uphill battle for those that maybe are familiar with Timex and just see this at face value and nothing more. In the short term, there'll be some questions, but long-term, I'm interested to see how this plays out for Timex. But all right, guys, that is my take here looking at this new Timex Atelier collection. And I'll ask you guys the question here because I think this is an interesting one. And be honest with me, because I don't think we're always fully honest about this. Do you buy a watch based off of the brand or do you buy it based off of the watch itself? From my vantage point and what I see on a day-to-day basis, people probably trend more towards brand and don't think about the nuance because there is a spectrum within each brand on complexity and ability. But what do you think? Is this a watch that would get your attention? Would you spend $1,000 for a Timex with this new rebranding and what they're doing here? I'll leave a comment down below. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe, hit the bell icon, really do appreciate that. Around 70% of the people that watch this channel are not subscribed, so if you can do me a favor and subscribe to the channel, really would appreciate that. I don't care as much about the subscriber numbers these days, but the YouTube overlords do. So if you could help us out, greatly appreciated. Also check out teddybaltesto.com, full authorized dealer of over 35 brands. Every purchase from our website comes with quick and fast fulfillment, dedicated customer support, a full factor warranty for all the products that we offer and how we're able to continue to do what we do here. Releasing content every single week on this channel is through selling watches. So if you are in the market for a watch, we'd absolutely love to have your business. Lots of keep doing what we're doing here. We love what we do. Guys, thank you again so much for watching. Be well and I'll see you all very soon.