Kyokusen Digital Watch – An Abstraction Too Far?

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We have long since been great admirers of all things Tokyo flash as you can always count on them to deliver the goods when it comes to breathtaking, innovative and decidedly modern styling, however, in this week where we find ourselves playing devil’s advocate in just about every post we cannot help but feel that their Kyokusen digital watch is perhaps loosing sight of usability merely for the sake of bold aesthetics.

Or, to put the above paragraph in a rather more succinct fashion, perhaps we just need to ask the following question: when does a digital watch (or any timepiece for that matter) cease being a timepiece per se and become something akin to an item of interactive jewellery that just happens to represent (rather more so than tell) the time?

Certainly it would be true to say that by far the majority of Tokyo Flash’s collection of watches serve to blur the boundaries between telling the time and representing the time (there is a distinct difference between the two) their Kyokusen watch, for us at least, perhaps pushes a little too far into the latter territory.

Yes the Kyokusen is innovative, and its undoubtedly a head turner, and, depending on your personal taste, it’s either as novel or as hopelessly overstated as we have come to expect from Tokyo Flash, but we cannot help but feel is that the level of abstraction offered pushes this watch just that little too far in the form vs function argument for its own good.

Where the Kyokusen watch fails, in our opinion, is that, in a bid to create a watch that is undoubtedly striking its usability has been demoted to the point where the fact that this device offers a representation of time is almost simply a by-product of what is, otherwise, just an animated (some would say especially gaudy) bracelet.

Perhaps the time (pun intended) has come to politely remind Tokyo Flash that, in order for a device to be a billed as being a watch, the level of de-coding required to glean the time needs to be kept within reasonable limits whilst being ever mindful of the very function that one assumes resulted in the device coming to pass in the first place.

We could go further. We could suggest that, in attempt to product another ‘watch’ that is at least as striking, if not more striking, than the other items in their extensive range Tokyo Flash have found themselves offering up a ‘watch’ that verges on parody.

Few would disagree that Tokyo Flash produces some of the coolest watches around.

Unfortunately, in our humble opinion, the Kyokusen – which retails for $120 – just doesn’t happen to be one of them.