What do YOU make the time? (Junghans Watches)

Member Name: macutmore

Product:	Junghans Watches
Date:	26/04/01 (4767 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Total precision, no batteries

Disadvantages: It just tells the time and date!

Take a look in the high street and it’s fascinating, especially when it comes to admiring Jeweller’s windows and doing that tongue-dripping window-shopping! Now I must confess to being a bit of a ‘watch fanatic’ and I’ve certainly lost count of the watches I’ve had in my time. The batteries give up the ghost (even years seem such a short time here), the straps fall to bits or they just become plain old hat. Indeed it’s normally easier to replace a watch altogether in this ‘disposable’ age.

A few years ago though, I managed to fulfill one ambition- to get myself a decent watch!
My experience with watches however made me realise that you don’t necessarily get what you pay for, good looks, style, functionality, fashion, and all sorts of factors have to be taken into account- and these factors are very personal and individual!

Enter the Junghans Mega Solar range of watches- basically the most technologically advanced Wristwatches available! Forget Batteries, winding, noisy heavy kinetics and having to wear your watch to keep it going! The Junghans watch is solar powered- the complete face of the dial is an advanced Solar panel, sensitive enough not just to keep the watch going, but also to charge an internal capacitor capable of storing enough energy to run the watch for up to six months in total darkness! (Who said perpetual motion was impossible?).

The latest dials don’t even look like solar panels either. Junghans has found a way of disguising a solar panel to look exactly like a dial! Incidentally, this seems to really work, the watch just keeps going! I’ve always said that a timepiece is a timepiece and if it can tell the time then it serves at least fifty percent of it’s purpose. Some watches nowadays seem to do everything you can imagine, and by the look of the things you could be forgiven for believing that they are tuned to the world’s atomic clock! Well, wait for it- these watches ARE!

Every day my Junghans watch receives a time signal encoded from the world’s most accurate atomic clock and synchronises itself with the exact second and of course date (no more messing with leap years or 28 day months). This is continuous and automatic so you never need reset the watch at all, not even during summer and winter changeovers. For travellers, this signal (DCF-77) can be received throughout Europe and outside of this range the watch functions totally normally as a standard timepiece. You can pick up radio-controlled CLOCKS for a ‘tenner’ now, and they do work. Early versions were apparently troublesome and had problems actually updating to a signal reliably.

Sometimes the time shown would be wrong, (by hours), or actually getting a signal was a rare event. The power needed (to basically work as a radio), would drain any batteries, effectively defeating the object of precision.

All of these problems seem to have been ironed out now, and it is today that you can find many Radio-controlled watches in the high street- Casio have their waveceptor range which are very similar and much easier to find! I believe that there may have been patents or licensing involved in the manufacture of such a products, since up until recently only Junghans or Eurochron were the brands associated with this technology. I bought my Junghans Mega Solar Ceramic (model 018/1503) watch from Ernest Jones Jewellers in 1998. Unfortunately they are no longer available through Ernest Jones though. The watches are made in Germany and I would imagine they are more widespread over there (and probably cheaper too)!

There are some Junghans dealers in the U.K but they appear to be few and far between. If you want the Ultimate watch it will take a bit of finding I’m afraid! How much? I here you ask, for such a timepiece? Well, nowhere near the price of any other top brand watches really, certainly a few hundred pounds though. (Not much to pay for your pride and joy- or hers for that matter!) There is even a beautiful small ladies model in the range, and also many styles and variations (some cheaper), on the same technology, if you can find them.

The watch is housed in its' Ceramic case. This material is extremely hardwearing and heat resistant (It is apparently used on the re-entry shields of the Space Shuttle!). A mineral Crystal glass face can normally only be scratched by a diamond and the top of the range model even has a Ceramic bracelet. Although not as lightweight as titanium it is harder and totally allergy free. I believe that a metal case is out of the question due to reception of the radio signal, but I heard a rumour that Junghans have even found a way of incorporating the technology into a steel case!

The Junghans website www.junghans.de gives more detail about these exciting watches.
Now I have been spoilt I certainly would never buy a watch again that takes batteries, or required resetting (what a pain). My Junghans has NEVER let me down it is dependable, reliable, precise, stylish and a rare piece of kit. It’s even a conversation piece and it even tells the time!

I have totally resigned myself now to ONLY buy watches that require NO batteries, and NEVER need setting or adjusting.

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