A digital watch for people who like watches precisely because they are not computers
H. Moser & Cie. has spent years stripping watchmaking back to its essentials. Now it has applied the same instinct to something altogether less familiar: the digital watch.
The Off-Grid is not quite a smartwatch, and certainly not a mechanical watch. Instead, it sits rather interestingly between the two, pairing conventional analogue hours and minutes with a digital module while deliberately leaving out the constant alerts, fitness metrics and notification churn associated with connected wearables.
Its 42.6mm steel case is 14.4mm thick, water-resistant to 12 ATM and comes in either blue or black PVD. The design has recognisable Streamliner cues, with an integrated rubber strap and a skeletonised dial framing a digital display at six o’clock.
At 12 sits a small domed fumé dial—Blackor or red depending on the version—with Moser’s logo picked out in transparent lacquer. Super-LumiNova ceramic indexes and filled hands keep the analogue side legible after dark.
Inside is the D10 calibre, developed with Swiss connected-watch specialist Sequent. The electronic movement runs at 32,768Hz, contains 186 components and is rated to ±0.3 seconds a day.
Battery life ranges from more than 12 months when simply displaying the time to more than three months when GMT, alarm and chronograph functions are used more heavily. Bluetooth 5.3 provides the necessary link to iOS and Android.
The feature set is unusually horological. There is GMT with country selection, a split-seconds chronograph reading to 1/100th of a second, perpetual calendar, perpetual moon phase, sunrise and sunset calculations, vibrating alarm and timer.
Press the dedicated button at nine o’clock and the watch enters “Off-Grid” travel mode, which also includes a 10-word dictionary covering 21 languages.
Two versions are offered, each limited to 1,000 pieces. More interesting than the specifications is the proposition: Moser has built a connected digital watch that knows when not to be connected.
