HYT SOONOW DROP THREE — The Most Vivid Of Them All

A splash of color for the skull

April 23, 2020

comments ...

HYT’s only model family that does not bear any chemical symbols, the SOONOW (as in Soon Now), is now a family of 5. Black and grey base tones with a touch of color, that’s what signifies the SOONOW collection typically. However, now there is a new addition, the most vibrant of them all — the HYT SOONOW DROP THREE.

With its exciting and audacious colors of orange, turquoise, and burgundy red, the SOONOW brings a fresh design outlook to the table. The very first SOONOW models were already extraordinary. HYT integrated its (genuinely) unique fluidic mechanism and convoluted, skull-shaped capillary into this model family. The SNOONOW DROP THREE goes one step further with its astonishing color scheme.

SOONOW DROP THREE

Orange and turquoise form a surprisingly well-balanced combination. While the rubber strap (with titanium folding buckle) is bright orange, the adonized titanium dial is turquoise with a purplish burgundy skull in the middle. Furthermore, the dial has 937 perforations all around the head. In contrast, these “holes” in the skull’s surface play host to 313 18-carat rose gold pins.

This is not the only place you find precious metal, though. Take a closer look at the teeth of the skull. Oddly enough, you’ll see 18-karat gold smiling back at you from there too. The craziness continues in the eye sockets. One functions as the power reserve indicator, while the other is the continuous seconds “sub-dial”. The orange outline around the eyes, nose, mouth, and under the capillary are Super-LumiNova filled and helps legibility in low-light conditions. The SOONOW DROP THREE has so many groovy details that it takes a long time to go through them all.

Details

While the dial is adonized titanium, the SOONOW DROP THREE’s case and crown is stainless steel with a satin finish. HYT watches are well-known for their size. This is also a big boy at 48mm with a height of 20+mm. Not a sleek design, but, at least it’s a light watch. The crystal covers a large portion of the watch dial not only from the top but from the sides too. As such, the SOONOW has a domed sapphire crystal, decorated with the HYT logo and engraved hour indication.

Just like the front, the case back is also sapphire crystal with the “one of five” designation to mark the fact that the watch has a super low limitation of only five pieces. In an industry where “limited editions” frequently run into the thousands, that’s pretty cool.

The SOONOW DROP THREE is water resistance up to 50m. Its movement is a mechanical, manual wind caliber. You have 35 jewels, a 65-hour power reserve, and hand-beveled bridges adorned with Cotés de Genéve.

Technicalities

To carry on with the SOONOW DROP THREE’s technical details, we need to mention HYT’s exclusive patented micro-fluidic module. This borosilicate glass capillary tube with a nano-coating interior has a shape of a skull-form. Multi-layer metal bellows are connected to the capillary in which you find two immiscible liquids, one transparent the other colored. HYT’s interface lies between the mechanical movement and the fluidic module. It transmits between the two by converting the rotations into linear motion using a cam-flow system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfiauD5ZTDA

If you don’t understand it, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. HYT’s system is complex and unique, and that’s why they have the edge over many other independent watch brands. Check out the above video from the brand’s official YouTube to see the fluidic module in action. If you wish to visit HYT’s site, please click here.