LANGDON WATCHES

With my days full of professional and parenting responsibilities seems like I'm always peeking at my wrist to keep track of the time and where I'm supposed to be. Yes clocks are now on all our phones but I still have a preference for traditional wrist watches. I've always had an appreciation of watches both as fashion accessories and mechanical tools.

With that in mind, I had my mind set on getting an automatic mechanical watch to wear. These watches don't use batteries but are instead are powered by a series of gears that are energized by the motion of your arm as you move about while wearing it. These are some of the most reliable watches you can get and also tend to be very expensive often with price tags over a thousand dollars. With young children at home, family expenses didn't make spending that much money on a wrist watch practical.

I'd put aside my desire to get one of these automatic mechanical watches until I came across a Kickstarter campaign that caught my attention. A start-up horologist out of Ontario, Canada was selling these watches to raise some capital to help get their business up and running. These watches had the look of more expensive brands that I'd been coveting but were priced at under $200. Liking their pitch and product, I took a chance and invested in my first Kickstarter.

My watch arrived this week and I'm very impressed! It keeps accurate time and the automatic mechanical operations have been working great. I wore the watch for a few hours before setting the time and self-winding mechanism started without a hitch winding up the gears powering it just by being worn during my normal daily activities. And the watch has been ticking steadily ever since!

Called the Parkdale Automatic, this watch has a classic, minimalist appearance complimented by a genuine brown leather strap. Instead of a seconds hand being tied in with the hour and minute hands, there is a separate track for that which makes the dial a bit less cluttered. This also has seconds stand out on their own instead of being looped in with the hours and minutes on the dial. This adds aesthetic detail as well as functionality to the watch. A nice touch in my opinion.

I have smaller sized wrists with my 5'5" frame and large watches can be overpoweringly to big for me to wear. The polished stainless steel case for this watch at 41 mm diameter is a perfect size for me. It fits great yet is large enough to also be comfortable for someone with a larger frame than mine.  I was wowed too by the fact that with all the mechanical operations going on inside the case it is only 11 mm tall. This is not a bulky watch making it look great on your wrist whether it is being worn out to work or play in.

The only thing I regret about this Kickstarter investment was that I didn't also buy their watch with a white dial too. If this watch continues to work as great as it has in the first week I've had it, I'm truly going to be thrilled. So I'm absolutely giving the Parkdale Automatic from Langdon Watches a Geek Daddy nod of approval!

If you would like to get one too, Langdon Watches is now taking orders on their website.