Ball, the American watchmaker, presents a bit of a different take on the chronograph watch. Looking at the dial of the Ball Engineer Master II Slide Chronograph watch, you can see the traditional three subdials for the seconds, minutes, and hour trackers of the chronograph complication. But what’s missing is the pusher(s) for the chronograph, instead there’s a neatly integrated slider with neutral, up, and down positions.
Using the slider to activated and reset the chronograph is pretty simple; pushing the slider up starts the chronograph, which returns to neutral position via a spring and pushing it up again stops the chronograph. To reset the three subdials, simply slide the pusher down and everything is zeroed out. The removal of the pushers gives the watch a cleaner look, and makes it less bulky, which it really needs.
The reason the watch needs to be less bulky, in my opinion, is its case size, measuring 47.5 mm wide and 15.5 mm wide. The case is made out stainless steel and looks pretty clean, but it does look a little awkward with the small-ish size of the bracelet; especially with the stainless steel bracelet, but it could be just the picture?
The watch comes with a black dial with the typical chronograph layout, and comes with 12 hour markers, four Arabic numerals for the 10, 20, 40, and 50 minutes positions, and a tachymeter scale. Since this is a Ball watch, it comes with 15 tritium tubes, to make the hour markers and hands glow in the dark. Tritium tubes don’t need external light to charge, unlike traditional lume.
The dial on the Ball Engineer Master II Slide Chronograph watch is covered with AR coated sapphire crystal and the watch comes with either a stainless steel bracelet or a black crocodile leather strap. The watch is powered by a Ball RR1402 caliber automatic movement and is water resistant to 50 meters.
No word on price on the Ball Engineer Master II Slide Chronograph watches, but we expect it to be around the $4,000 mark. Via: Ball
