Hands on with the Technomarine Cruise Steel Camouflage

TechnoMarine is a well-known Geneva based brand whose focus is on casual watches and which is known for a particularly strong use of bold colours. In fact one of their selling points about the Cruise Collection is encouraging people to swap straps and cases to match their outfit.

The Cruise Steel Camouflage series is Technomarine’s crack at the eternally popular “fashion camo” look, featuring a vivid camouflage design on the dial matched by a coordinating strap and contrasted by either a black PVD coated or pink gold case. 

This blue (they call it turquoise) model is Ref.110071 and comes with a date window and  chronograph function. Its unidirectional rotating bezel is stainless steel with a blue aluminium insert. The crystal is anti-reflective sapphire.

Not unexpectedly, it is quartz powered, courtesy of a Swiss Ronda 5040D movement, and its water resistance is 20 ATM (200m).

On the left hand side there is an orange 30min counter sub dial and at '6', a black ten hour subdial which spins fast for 30 seconds as a tenth-of-a-second counter, after which it becomes the hour register. The chronograph pushers are decently sized and easy to use.

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Weighing in at a hefty 144g and 45mm in size (1.77 in thick), this is a big watch. The women’s Cruise Collection is 40mm, which is probably still a bit bigger than many women are comfortable about wearing, but in line with the boldness of Technomarine’s watches.

Of the colours available for the Cruise Camouflage, my choice would probably be for ‘Sand’ (the middle colour as shown below). I find the intensity of both the Turquoise and Purple models not to my personal likes, but I must also admit that the camouflage ‘look’ is probably not really something I tend to choose. 

The owner of this watch has a penchant for blue on his watches, and this is part of what appealed to him about the Camouflage, but even he tends to wear the black rather than the blue strap. It looks is considerably more low key and black is, of course, the most flexible of all colours. 

 

As you can see, the straps are fairly easy to change, but one small problem with them is that they are dust magnets, as you can see from the spots on the close-up of the buckle. 

Technomarine is very much a modern, fashion conscious and youthful brand, with engagement both across social media (they also have a youtube channel) and with its customers – owners can upload and share photos of themselves (and their watches) on the website and play with customisation options.

The owner of this watch has an immense enthusiasm for it; he sees it as a lot of fun. In the end, I think that this is what it all comes down to – wearing your watch and getting enjoyment out of it. 

[AP]