DUELLING PERSPECTIVES

WOW Singapore and Thailand editors discuss their views and tastes in ceramic and bronze watches

- RUCKDEE CHOTJINDA AND ASHOK SOMAN

Plenty of watch buyers go into stores with the aim of buying a steel sports watch, or a gold dress watch. Nothing controversial in that statement, even though we have not and are not backing it up with facts at all. It feels like it should make sense. Think of it another way: nobody goes looking for a plastic ticker, but they might go in with a very modest budget that makes the various versions of plastic viable options. Again, this is just a common sense approach that may have little to do with reality. For the purposes of this story, it does not matter.

What does matter is the divide between precious metals of all sorts, and various other types of metal and composites. This means steel and titanium, plus various sorts of exotic materials. In this very important way, watch buyers of the present age are fortunate to be presented with more choices than ever before. But, on the other hand, the numerous options out there can be overwhelming to the extent where one timepiece can come in too many tempting material iterations. Honestly, some brands have too many SKUs (you know who you are), and should take advantage of our shared current circumstances to maybe do some house cleaning.

When you descend from the lofty heights of the precious stuff, you tend to encounter a lot more than just options. One of the key things is price, and this is not that easy to explain in a rational way. For the purposes of this edition of WOW’s Editor versus Editor feature, we used that difficulty as a jumping-off point to discuss two key materials: bronze and ceramics. We have covered both extensively - high-tech ceramic most recently - and it raised some debate between the editors of WOW Singapore and WOW Thailand.