Exploring the Gavox Aurora
The Gavox Aurora is a pilot design based multi function quartz watch, of which Gavox claims it to be ‘the world’s first watch that handles all geographical and political time zones’.
The Aurora keeps track of UTC and a local time with an offset by increments of 15 minutes. By this it’s able to handle non-standard time zones with a difference of 15, 30 or 45 minutes.
Gavox informed us that ‘as much as 20% of the world’s population lives in non-standard time zones’. Although I doubt the use of watches in this league in the countries involved.
On first sight the Gavox Aurora is a very attractive watch already. Clearly readable with the high contrast of a black dial, white and orange hands, and white large index markers and numerals. As said, very pilot design based.
However, what I liked most about the Gavox Aurora was the exploration of all functions and how to set them. This really is something you need to take your time for. I was happy to learn that Gavox offers an on-line Virtual Aurora demo which you can play with, and which offers an easy to follow manual how to set the watch. You’ll find it here: Virtual Aurora
What I didn’t find in the Virtual Aurora Demo was how to set the perpetual calendar. However later in their on-line shop I found an instruction manual in PDF format which had the right instructions for that.
After exploring and setting the watch it’s easy to switch between the seven functions; every push of the crown advances a function. Beginning at the first, ‘home’, one press will bring you to the indication of seconds, ‘sec’. Very attractively, the little hand at 9 o’clock switches from indicating the date, and starts retrograding up and down the seconds scale.
A second push will make the large minute and hour hand run to UTC, with the little hand at 9 o’clock indicating the time in 24-hour format. Third and fourth pushes will advance to the timer and chronograph functions.
The next function, ‘date’, needs good eyes to read. The minute hand of the watch advances to the month on the outer scale of the dial. For the first, second and third year the months are printed in grey (with January always in orange to mark the beginning of the year), and for leap years the months are printed in white. Specially the grey months are difficult to read.
In ‘date’ function the hour hand of the watch indicates the day of the week. The days are printed in grey as well, and written in full between the indexes from 10 to 5. Here as well, grey printing on a black dial isn’t the easiest readable option.
However, using grey for some of the printing on the dial of the watch is – according to the founder of Gavox – something done on purpose, as it will keep the dial from being too cluttered. By using grey for some of its text indicators, the watch stays elegant yet very functional.
The last but not least function is the indication of the moon phase. Coming from the ‘home’ functions this means six times pushing the crown. In this function the hands will indicate the regular home time, while the little hand at 9 o’clock retrogrades (only up here) from new moon to full moon half way to new moon on top of the scale.
All moon phases along the scale are again printed in difficult to read grey, with the exception of full moon printed in white. Unavoidable sometimes the moon phase will unfortunately be hidden behind the hour or minute hand.
With its 43 mm diameter and 22 mm wide strap, the watch has very balanced ratios. On my 18,5 mm wrist it fits very comfortable and isn’t considered too large or too small.
As mentioned before, the main functions of the watch are very well readable under all light conditions, and due to the use of Swiss Super LumiNova DGW9 in darkness as well. The battery of the Mecatron multi function quartz movement will last between 4 to 7 years, depending on the use of functions.
Flat inside anti-glared sapphire crystal has to be mentioned, as well as the 100 meter water resistance. I like the fact that, on purchase, one has 10 different leather and NATO-type straps to choose from. These straps are separately available as well.
The current price of the Gavox Aurora in stainless steel or black PVD is € 899,= (including European VAT, ex shipping costs) or € 949,= for the rose gold plated version. More information can be found through www.gavox.com and ordering can be done using their webshop.
