Some offer more precision that others, and some are easier to read, but all are definitely not your average analog or digital watch.

1. Fraction Clock

Granted, this is a simple digital watch so it’s not hard to see what time it is.

However, what this watch will do is to chime once in each one hour period — not necessarily on the hour but based on the associated fraction for that hour.

The minutes and seconds are calculated from the rounded decimal equivalents of each fraction.

So, where hour one is 1/1 or simply 1am/1pm, the seventh hour is 1/7 or 07:14:29.

Interesting that the sixth hour becomes 06:17:07 because there would be no such time as 06:16:67.

2. Rainbow watch

The inner circle, divided into four sections, denotes the hour.

Colours red through indigo (no violet) denote hours 1-6, 7-12, 13-18 or (without indigo) 19-23, with the colour appearing in the appropriate section – top right is the first six hours, bottom right is the next six hours, and so on.

The outer circle, divided into ten sections, denotes the minutes.

The ‘tens of minutes’ are denoted by colours — red = 0, orange = 1, yellow = 2, green = 3, blue = 4, indigo = 5 — while the units are represented by the position – zero at top right and then incrementing clockwise.

Times from 00:00 to 00:59 have no colour displayed in the inner circle.

3. Periodic Table Watch

This is a very simple clock to read. The white illuminated element denotes the hour while the yellow illuminated element denotes the minute.

If the hour and minute are the same, the element is divided equally. If one or other colour is not present, it denotes a zero.

The following times are shown for 00:20, 11:23, 15:15 and 23:00:

4. Letter Watch

Letters replace digits on this watch.

For the hours, the letters ‘a’ through ‘x’ represent digits 0 through 23.

For the tens of minutes, the space is a hyphen for zero, and then one of the five vowels for 1-5 — i.e. a = 1, e = 2, i = 3, o = 4, u = 5.

The units of minutes are represented by the letters ‘a’ through ‘z’, and change approximately every 23 seconds (23 x 26 = 598 seconds).

The following is what would be displayed for times 05:24:25, 12:09:01 and 22:57:59.

5. Planet Watch

The eight planets of the solar system are used to show the time.

The top row denotes the hours, with planets from left to right (distance from sun) representing the digits 1-8. Each planet can have up to three red dots beneath, representing an hour multiplied by either one, two or three.

The bottom row denotes the minutes: a new planet will appear, from left to right, every 7.5 minutes.

The faces below represent 08:19, 15:32 and 21:56.

What do you think? Would you wear a watch that told you the time like this?

I must admit I’m a watch geek (more on this later). I’m mostly fond of mechanical watches and chronographs. But here’s something that would surely fancy the mind of anyone interested in timepieces: a human powered clock.

Part of Marteen Baas’ Real Time project, the clock shows you a human hand erasing and redrawing the clock’s hands every minute. In the case of digital clocks, the person draws each digit as minutes and hours pass by.

I would surely want a clock as novel as having an actual human turning the hands every minute of the day. Forget manually winding your watch every morning. How about manually changing the minute minute hand every 60 seconds?

How long would you last if you were to draw and redraw a clock manually?

[via Make Magazine]

Yet here comes a definite imposter.

Take a look at the Iron Samurai red LED watch and you’ll see that it features standard digits.

OK, so the fact that the hour is displayed above, and not next to, the minutes might catch a few people out, but it’s not rocket science.

I suppose you could fool people into thinking you’re just wearing a chunky bracelet.

If you need something a little more complicated, but still red, check out the Alpha Centauri red LED watch instead.

Product page

For those who want something of that, but don’t want to pay top dollar (or yen) for the privilege, check out the Alpha Centauri all metal Red LED watch, available for under $20.

Tap the button at the bottom of the watch and the 124 red LEDs light up. You can glean the hour and minute from whichever of those dots are lit.

It’s definitely cool, taking up epic proportions of the wrist you’ve chosen to strap it around.

Product page

Only $18.

This one doesn’t even have a fancy name – it’s just a watch-style USB 4-port hub. Let’s face it (err, sorry) this gadget definitely does exactly what its product description says.

Oh, except it’s totally useless as a watch. Take a closer look at that picture and you’ll see the roman numerals I, II, III and IV simply mark out each USB port.

And the wording on the fake hands? It says “USB 2.0 HUB” and “HIGH SPEED”, which I would have thought was pretty self-explanatory, but there you go.

What does it do besides transporting your data around at up to 480Mbps speeds? It lights up in fluorescent blue when it’s plugged in, that’s what. Wow… you know for $14 you really want one so badly now, I can tell.

Now if they just did a FireWire one too…

USB Fever (via TechChee)

Though I don’t need half the functions on the cool watches I’m showing off here (it’s a simple left turn from my bedroom to my computer room, after all, so getting back must be a right turn…) there’s still something makes me want to wear them. Not both at the same time obviously…

Anyway, these beauties are from Casio. First up is the PRW-1500-1VER. Not a good name at all, but cut it some slack for the feature list is fairly impressive.

First up, it’s made from Mineral Glass Hard glass which keeps it scratch free, is water resistant to 200 metres and temperature resistant to -10?C, features a solar rechargeable power cell, and has an electro-luminescent backlight with afterglow.

Other functions include barometer, compass, altimeter and thermometer. It can handle the time of 30 cities in 29 time zones, has numerous alarms and stopwatch functions, plus moon phase and tide graphs.

There’s a choice, though, because next up is the EQW-M1000. Yeah, the name’s only marginally better – actually, no, it’s just as bad – but it’s still a great watch.

It uses Casio’s Wave Captor technology – in other words, it updates itself up to six times a day for precise timekeeping. This one is a watch, pure and simple, without all the additional features of the PRW-15… the first watch, but it’s got a classy look.

More info on these from Casio

It was shown at Mobile World Congress a couple of months back and, apparently, there are plenty of people who want this blocky-looking gadget on their wrist. It’s certainly not the look I’d go for (I preferred Hyundai’s 2007 attempt, and it’s not even got the most cutting edge technology on board.

Sure, it’s got a touch display but there’s only room to squeeze in 132 x 176 resolution. It’s triband but no sniff of 3G, and simply WAP for browsing (though why you’d want to surf the Internet from your wrist is beyond me). It’ll come with a Bluetooth headset and can be used for email, music and video.

And the price? Around £200 SIM-free. Hyundai says that it’s already “selling well” in Europe and will arrive in Britain sometime this summer. Would you wear it?

I already had my rant about the LG wrist wratch phone, but this concept design of a wrist wratch Bluetooth phone (Try saying that 10 times without stuttering!), I must admit looks cool.

Designer Pedro Gomez calls it _technically_ a bracelet with watch and phone. When someone calls, the bracelet rings and/or vibrates. The entire face pops out as a wireless headset without sacrificing a screen since there’s a secondary LCD. Both LCDs are touch enabled.

The ON AIR Wrist Watch, designed by Turkey designer Iskender Asanaliev, only has one hand, the hour hand. Additionally the hour hand also indicates the minutes in numbers.

I love both concept and ultra-slick design of the watch.
Another novelty of the watch is how to set the time: push the button for 5 seconds and the LED will start flashing. Now you push upper and/or lower corner to set time.

Probably I am the only who thinks this way but the LG Wrist Watch Phone is totally retarded, although cool. Retarded because imagine being in a restaurant and speaking to your watch. WTF! Unless you’re Dick Tracey the watch/phone will make you look like a retard.

I had the awesomest watches, even a Swatch The Beep but I do not get the LG Wrist Watch Phone hype. Especially not if the rumored 1000GBP become reality.

If you want something really cool and *spy alike*, get this multimedia watch with MP3 player, camera, external amplifier, 1.8″ inch color screen and 4GB data storage.

Read more specs and get yours here.

Dubbed the Casio G-Shock MTG-1500, the wristwatch is no ordinary gadget. Coming from the tried and tested line of G-Shock watches, one can expect the usual toughness. Even my lately unusually clumsy partner can bang this watch on a daily basis – against metal, concrete, or marble – and it wouldn’t matter. That’s what G-Shock watches are known for.

Yet the things that make this watch more geeky than “jocky” (if there is even such a word) are these: one, it is solar powered and two, it can be set to atomic precision.

Casio is probably not the first watch maker to come up with a solar powered wrist watch but the MTG-1500 beats them all with up to 6 months of no charging needed; that is, if you fully charge the batteries. This would surely come in handy in case you find yourself buried in your basement (for what reason? You tell me!) for months.

On the atomic end, it is the ultimate gadget for people with a thing for precision. Although the MTG-1500 does not have a mini atomic reactor or whatnot inside of it, there is a receiver installed that will synchronize the watch to the nearest atomic timekeeping station, of which there are only 5 in the world.

How much will this set you back? A hefty $500, sad to say. If I had this extra cash, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it. After all, what other watch gives you the bragging rights to use “atomic” and “solar” in one go?

Swiss luxury watchmaker TISSOT has just shown off the SEA-Touch dive watch. It has many of the features a diver would need, including a diver’s log book for tracking previous dives, dive depth and speed displayed on its luminescent hands, thermometer and compass. There’s also an alarm, calendar, stopwatch and time zone function.

What’s cool, though, is that it’s touch operated. Yeah, I know companies will stick a touch screen on anything these days, but this is the first dive watch (which naturally has to be much tougher than an ordinary one to withstand the underwater pressure) I’ve seen to use the technology.

It’s not the cheapest dive watch on the block by any stretch of the imagination. It’ll happily grab £610 (about $860) from your wallet.

Based on the divers I know (unfortunately, I’m not one because I wimped out in the swimming pool the first time I went under) they’d probably rather buy a less expensive dive computer and spend the remaining cash on other gear, but I guess if you’ve got the money and like the style, Tissot will be happy to sell you the SEA-Touch.

Can’t find out to what depth you can take this watch down to, but at this price it had better be very deep.

TISSOT