The Grey NATO – 323 – Doxa Revives the Sub GMT + Our Hopes For Rolex and Tudor at Watches & Wonders 2025

Published on Thu, 27 Mar 2025 06:00:00 -0400

Synopsis

In episode 323 of the Graynado podcast, hosts Jason Heaton and James Stacy discuss recent watch releases and upcoming industry events. They begin by covering the new Doxa Sub 250T GMT, released for the first time in 20 years, which comes in nine different colorways and features a 40mm case with GMT functionality. The hosts analyze its design, pricing, and how it fits into Doxa's current lineup.

The conversation then shifts to predictions and wishes for the upcoming Watches & Wonders Geneva show, focusing particularly on potential releases from Tudor and Rolex. For Tudor, they discuss the possibility of a new chronograph model and variations on existing lines. With Rolex, while acknowledging the difficulty in predicting their releases, they explore possibilities like new GMT variants and titanium models.

The episode concludes with final notes, including a recommendation for a documentary about Jasmine Paris, the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons, and James's review of his new Keychron mechanical keyboard, discussing how it has improved his daily typing experience and workflow.

Transcript

Speaker
Jason Heaton Hello and welcome to another episode of the Graynado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 323 and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you'd like to support the show and aren't already, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. My name is Jason Heaton, and I'm joined as ever by my friend and co-host, James Stacy. James, last week before you head into the breach, so to speak, over to Geneva.
James Stacy You know it, man. Yeah, we won't have an episode next week, obviously, just because we're at the show and we usually take that week off. So it'll be pretty busy. But we'll have we'll have our big follow up episode the week after, which I guess would be April the 10th. Yeah. Man, I'm feeling a little threadbare, if I'm honest. So if I sound a little scattered, you have my apologies. It's been an intense several months, but certainly the last couple weeks have been a lot.
Jason Heaton Yeah, right back from Paris and back over to the continent. Yeah, by comparison, I'm doing all right. I'm plugging along here. I think I talked last show about, um, taking some time off from running to heal kind of a stubborn, stubbornly sore piriformis, which is this obscure tiny little muscle in your butt. Um, and the week off did some good. I actually went running yesterday and it felt, felt pretty good. It's, it's a little tight again, but I'm just going to kind of take it easy. You know, that's, um, for, for those of you out there that are, runners or regular exercisers, you know, these, these kind of overuse injuries as they call them, um, could be, can be frustrating. And it's so hard to take time off, you know, when, when you have that sort of thing, but that's really what it takes. And so I'm going to do my best to try to do other stuff. I, you know, walking the dog twice a day gets me out, you know, to four or five miles anyway. So I don't really need to worry about, you know, um, getting my steps in, so to speak. But, uh, Yeah. Other than that, I've, you know, by very great contrast while you're in Geneva, I am planning a kind of an early April camping trip next weekend, the 4th, 4th, 5th, 6th. And, uh, so I've been getting the, the defender ready for that. I did an oil change over the weekend and solving some kind of weird little oil leak out of the filter housing. I've got some parts on order that I'll be. fiddling with in the next couple of days. But other than that, yeah, it's starting to feel like the season's coming. You know, the days are getting longer. It's a little bit warmer and I'm not unhappy about that.
James Stacy Yeah. I was joking to myself in the cab ride from the hotel in Paris back to the airport to fly home last week. I've entered that zone of the year where I'm checking the weather at my cottage every Thursday or Friday to see what it's going to be like. Yeah. uh even if i'm in paris when that's going on uh so yeah i'm i'm very excited to be done with watches and wonders i'm obviously pumped to see what watches come out and that kind of stuff uh but for the most part i'm excited to get to the other side of it because that's kind of when yeah that season sort of kicks off uh with with stuff like the cottage and the warmer weather and camping trips and that sort of stuff so i totally agree and that'll be a good one yeah But yeah, mentioning Paris. So yeah, in the previous episode, we couldn't talk about it because I hadn't done it yet and there was an embargo. I went to Paris with Richard Mill. I've never been on a trip with Richard Mill before, or as many of their own employees call it, Richard Mill, which just sounds so strange to me. But I don't know. I asked several people and nobody seemed to know if one was right or wrong. I'm going to stick with what I've been saying for years with Richard Mill, only because Richard Mill does sound just crazy to my ears. I don't know how I would get used to that. But yeah, went to Paris for that. It was the launch of their second ever collaboration with Ferrari, which to be fair, and I said this to Richard Mille, is a pitfall, like is a really tough needle to thread. Yeah. Because they've done it with the Charles Perregaux, they've done it with Panerai, they've done it with Hublot. They went crazy with Hublot, if you remember the MPO5, 50-day power reserves, that sort of thing. But honestly, I think that the MP05 was like 300 grand when it came out. Our watches were a lot less money 10 years ago, to be fair, especially really expensive watches. And that's the same in cars. The really expensive, really limited stuff has not been padded in any way. It's kind of been let loose. And that's what we saw with the Richard Mill stuff. So it's the 4301. It's a split-second tourbillon chronograph. It's as technical as you could go. I find it largely illegible, especially the chronograph element. But I mean, that's kind of like all Richard Mills. It follows that general aesthetic. But you are looking at, you know, the in excess of 1.2, $1.3 million for the titanium version, which is like, that number is so high, I have no frame of reference. Like a $300,000 Hublot Ferrari was already wild enough for me. But anything that's, I mean, anything six figure, I find crazy. It's still just a watch, right? But it's for a very select group of clients who I assume this is the amount of money that they want to spend on something that no one else can have. And it's 75 units a piece. It's huge, very thick, big, you know, mechanical forward sort of watch. But an exciting thing for sure and neat to see and always interesting to see how any brand sort of interfaces with Ferrari. Yeah. Because there's such a specific company. Yeah. But yeah, so I went and did that and sadly I got to Paris and immediately got hit with a pretty gnarly migraine. So I lost like a solid eight hours to that. And those of you in the audience who suffer from migraines, it's very rare for me, but it does seem to happen around the spring more commonly than the rest. Maybe I get a couple a year now, maybe less even. So this was a this is a bad one, you know, blurry vision that the whole thing couldn't check my phone wasn't sure if I was getting important messages, you know, just just trying to keep up with work and you can't because you can't look at a screen or whatever. So lost some time to that. And then the program kind of kicked off and it was it was kind of a day of a little bit of like touring and seeing some stuff in Paris that kind of connects Richard Mill with the French culture and that sort of thing. And then it was sort of an afternoon with the actual Ferrari launch, which was at the Palais de Tokyo. And they had a whole kind of setup where you got to go through like several modules. So like in the first room, you kind of learned about the case and the design of the case and how it connects with various elements of Ferrari's design language and was kind of co-designed by these two groups and then the next one you got to learn about the the three or four sort of essential mechanisms the split second the tourbillon the um winding system and and and that sort of thing and then uh as you get to the end we actually got to play around with the watch for a couple of minutes and then they had like you know driving sims and other formula one sort of inspired or ferrari inspired stuff yeah um obviously ferrari didn't have a great weekend this weekend with both of their cars disqualified in china but still a huge thing for the brand. They just added Lewis Hamilton, so it's a big year. It makes sense for them to run it. I didn't even realize this, and some of the audience that's listening here will roll their eyes that I wasn't up on this, but I was asking because originally I thought this might be a Lewis Hamilton Ferrari watch, like not just a Ferrari product like the UP01 was or a Ferrari-derived product like the UP01. Yeah. which is from two years ago. And it turns out that where Charles Leclerc, the other driver, is a ReSharp Mill ambassador, Lewis Hamilton is not or isn't yet, I guess. I don't know if he will be. There's no word on that front. So he only wears the ReSharp Mill one if he's in his race outfit, like in certain scenarios. That could be interesting. That means there might be a Lewis Hamilton, you know, RM, you would assume 44 for his racing number or something like that, maybe coming in the future. But as far as this goes, like, I mean, it's 75 units a watch. I would struggle to consider this even loosely commercial product. I have to assume 80% of these have been sold. Financially, I don't, you know, it baffles the mind to spend that kind of money on a watch, I think. But, you know, it's exciting to be at a watch launch. I haven't been at one in a little while. And like I said, kind of my first trip with Richard Mill. And it was super nice, got to see a few of kind of the old buddies. Micah Spindle was there, Blake Bettner was there. We had a nice little time and then scooted back as quick as possible on Friday and just had sort of a weekend to, you know, rest up. And over the course of that weekend, myself and my daughter both seem to have, you know, gotten the norovirus. So had some... What's the, what's the nice way of putting it? Some catastrophic gastro experiences over the last little while. And, uh, and so, like I said, if I sound a little threadbare today, it's just between the travel, the jet lag, migraine, getting sick, and then the, the watches and wonders workload. I'm a little bit threadbare. So apologies. Yeah. It'll blame you. Yeah. Geez. Yeah, I was wondering if you'd see Lewis Hamilton over there at the at the event, but I guess he was busy You never know right with uh with that So, uh, we'll have to see how they're how they're able to parlay his existence with ferrari into other things Yeah, there's no like this is all conjecture to be clear. I don't know maybe folks listening do I don't um, maybe he had a longer Engagement with iwc than he did with mercedes. So like maybe he's still technically an iwc ambassador for a little while I don't really know how that kind of stuff works. I guarantee it's not It's not simple. It's probably complicated. Yeah So we'll see where they go with that. I would expect him to be with ferrari for some time So they probably don't feel like they absolutely have to Capitalize on that today, and it's probably more valuable Assuming he has a great season. Yeah So we'll see how that goes. We're only two races in so we've got a bunch more and like I said, they they did not do well Uh, this past week, the race went fine, but it turns out one car was underweight and one went through one was probably riding too low and went through its titanium block. So both disqualified pretty rare. I think the only time that's ever happened to Ferrari crazy. Uh, I am excited to have formula one back. It's nice to just kind of have that thing to look forward to on the weekend. And I love that looking forward to it is really, even if you watch quality, which we really enjoy, Sarah and I really like watching qualifying, even both of them, total, you're in for like four hours. And that's if it rains and there's crashes. Like it's not a huge time sink for your weekends. You can usually find some time to watch it, even if you have to avoid social media and watch it like Sunday evening or something like that. It's definitely a different sort of headspace than like White Lotus or something like that. Which I've been enjoying and I love seeing Walton Goggins wearing a Timex Q in the series, which is super. There's actually some great watches. You can tell that the folks on that show are having a good time with the watches.
Jason Heaton Well, speaking of watches, we've got a very watch-centric episode. And before we get into that, let's do a quick wrist check. I think we changed things up this week a little bit.
James Stacy Yeah, I'll go first. In honor of our main topic, which is, look, we love a Wednesday embargo. Yeah, right. Because it means that the show comes out on Thursday and it's actually fresh. So yesterday, Doxa announced for the first time in 20 years, they're releasing a new GMT. So it was 2006, I believe, when they launched the 750T as an LE of a thousand pieces. I could have that wrong, but I'm fairly certain that's correct. And now they're coming back with the 250T GMT, which is essentially a 200T, ever so slightly larger at 40 millimeters. and and has the GMT. So in honor of that, and we're going to talk a bunch more about it in just a moment. But in honor of that, I did take off my CWN1, very rare for me to do these days. And I threw on my DOCSIS sub 200 T diving star, which was announced last year, and I picked it up in the summer. And I'm looking forward to another summer with it for sure. Yeah, yeah, good summer watch.
Jason Heaton Yeah, bring it on.
James Stacy Oh, yeah.
Jason Heaton Well, yeah, I guess also in honor of today's episode, and we're going to touch a little bit on stuff we don't know about, but are hoping for or predicting, I guess, probably badly. I've got my Tudor Pelagos FXD on. It's not a big stretch to go from the CWN1 to this watch. I mean, let's face it, they're both titanium with these kind of fixed strap bars. But it's different enough. It's not automatic. It's got a bit more presence, a little more dramatic with the fully, you know, kind of hashed dive bezel. It's very bold watch, of course, and it's just fun to pull it out. I mean, you know, I do miss this one. And eventually, I will be wearing this thing for a month straight, if not longer, per our, you know, early 2025 tournament promise. But yeah, I pulled it out today kind of in honor of our predictions about Tudor and Rolex for Watches and Wonders and it's good to have it back on the wrist.
James Stacy Yeah, killer. A great watch for sure. I was kind of looking over a couple of the watches I used to wear pre-CWN1. I wore a lot and I was like, these are all pretty good. I had forgotten. I had forgotten for sure.
Jason Heaton Well, you know, and it's funny that that, um, I don't know if you get this way, but you know, you get a new watch or you're, you fall in love with a watch or, or kind of become resmitten with a watch, if that's even a word, but like you wear it and you think, ah, I'm just going to, this is all I'm wearing now. Like this, this is it. This is my watch. And then, I don't know call it the honeymoon period whatever things start to wane a little bit and you start to like you know pull something else out and put it on you're like yeah okay I can I can go back to this for a while and I think you know after boy it's been probably six weeks straight of wearing the CWN1 I'm starting to feel like okay I could venture out a little bit and wear something else and anyway maybe that starts today maybe not maybe I'll put the CWC back on but uh anyway that's
James Stacy That's risk check. Very good. Very good. Good stuff. All right, so let's get into the new. Let's start with the new doc. So we'll get to Rolex and Tudor and I don't know about predictions. I think it might be more like wishes. I think the predictions thing has largely been done to death. We didn't even run it this year on Hodinkee. Yeah. Moreover, I had the team like, you know, kind of look into what they what they wanted to predict. And by the time we got that list, it was like three of them had been predicted by somebody else. Oh, yeah. Or or they were predictions we had made two years ago. So we just kind of gave up on it. So we'll get to kind of our hopes or what we think might work. But I don't think it's a prediction at this point. It's just such a pie shoot, in my opinion.
Jason Heaton Has anyone ever gotten a prediction right with Rolex and Tudor or Patek? You know, it's like you just I feel like. Oh, for sure. You think so? I mean, I'm trying to remember.
James Stacy Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Heaton I'd love to know the statistics on that, like what percentage. But anyway, it's always always fun.
James Stacy i want to get to what was the watch i hinted about a couple of weeks ago on the show and said that i don't need it but i do want it and i'm definitely interested to see it and i'll see it on friday so uh about nine days from now which i'm excited um that's the new doxa sub 250t gmt which like i said came out yesterday it is available in nine versions so the eight core classic colors which if you need them listed is sea rambler shark hunter professional caribbean white pearl Aquamarine, Diving Star, and Sea Emerald.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacy I think that's eight. And then the ninth one is actually, it's not only a different colorway, they're calling it the Shark Hunter Vintage. So it's kind of a browny-gray gradient dial, fully tan lume, and then a different GMT hand. So that's just to give you a quick rundown. You can basically get whatever color you want. What we're not seeing with this is the old school versus new school colors that we saw with the... I think it was 14 or 15 colors that came out for the 200T originally, where they had the standard colors, then they had the... I don't remember what the exact word was they used for it, but the new versions or the newer colors, which a lot of them were much shinier, maybe with a finishing on the dial rather than the matte. Obviously, I think it's safe to say that, Jason, you and I would lean towards the more old-school colorings. I haven't even warmed up to Sea Emerald, to be fair. I really do like the 3-Core and then White Pearl, Caribbean, and Diving Star. I think those six really do speak to me. But what we can do is quickly get through the specs here. So again, it's a 40 millimeter steel case. They're saying the thickness is 10.85 millimeters. Very good. Lug to lug is just 42.9. This is going to be an eminently wearable watch. It is a dive GMT. So the diving comes first where you have a standard no deco bezel from from the brand, very standard to all of the other subs that are quite common that we know. And then you have a 24-hour RIAT and a collar style. It's actually a Sellita SW330-2 GMT movement that gives you, you have this very large, it's very, very similar. The overall design language is very similar to the 750T GMT. where the second hour hand, the GMT hand, is essentially just a giant skeletonized, or not giant, it's essentially just a skeletonized version of the minute hand. It's a strange layout, to be fair. I thought it was strange in the years I was very obsessed with the 750, and the only reason I don't own a 750 is, one, they're a little bit hard to come by, and two, the few times that they have come up, the pricing is quite high and they're quite large. if they were smaller or more if it wasn't both of those things, because I just wouldn't wear it that often. Of course, at 40 millimeters, all of that kind of changes 250 meters of water resistance, and you have your choice of the beads of rice bracelet or the rubber strap. And again, they're sticking with the very sort of aggressive pricing on the difference between the two. where on a rubber it's $24.50 and on the strap it's $24.90. So these are $2,500 steel GMTs from Doxa. I think that feels pretty realistic in 2025. In 2019-2017 that might have felt a little spicy. to hit $2,500 instead of say $2,200 or $2,100, something like that. But with the 200T coming out at about $1,500, $1,600, I do think that a year later, this does kind of make sense. I think that if you don't want the GMT, don't spend the extra grand, obviously, just buy a 200T. It's such a good watch. And if you want the classic, spend a couple hundred bucks more and get your hands on a 300. But looking at these, Jason, I think that covers the specs for the most part. What speaks to you? What do you like about it?
Jason Heaton Yeah, I had a 750T GMT, the diving star version back in the day. You wore that on Alcatraz, right? Yeah, I wore it for the Alcatraz swim and kind of wish I still had that watch. It was a really cool watch. It was such a weird... layout it was such a specific watch it had the you know i hate to use the word dna but the doxa dna but then it had that second crown that rotated the 24-hour scale which was just um just so unique so weird for doxa it was the only time i've seen a doxa with a second crown and Yeah, I really like that watch, but I do remember it being very big and quite heavy. The thing I like about these is they're it's a more conventional GMT kind of layout and with the dive GMT in a great size and I like most of the colors that the thing that Um bothers me a little bit about this one and you and I talked about it offline earlier but um, and it was the same thing with the 750 that didn't seem to bother me then but now I can't get it out of my Out of my head when I look at it. It's that skeletonized giant Version of the minute hand for the gmt hand. I feel like it's it feels a bit off It feels like it could be confusing at a glance like you're looking at two minute hands yeah, whereas the the one that doesn't have that the only one that doesn't include that is this vintage shark hunter edition with the gradient dial which i think is that is my favorite of the bunch i think that's a beautiful watch okay and that uses this pointer with the red arrow i think that just it's much more like a gmt especially with the collar style or something like this you don't need at a very quick glance to like know what that second time zone is. You can, you can study it for two seconds if you need to. And I think to have a, a GMT hand that sort of is a little more subtle, um, and smaller and kind of blends in a little bit, especially on a dive watch where, you know, minutes are the primary thing you need. Um, in theory, I think that one just works the best in my mind. But other than that, the overall form factor is pretty awesome on this. I mean, the size is tremendous and all that. So that's my, my first take on it.
James Stacy I don't, I don't disagree. I would say of the nine, the, well, I guess in some ways I do disagree with this next statement. Of the nine, the vintage is my least favorite. Oh, wow. But not because, not because of the hour hand. I just don't like the brown and the tan loom.
Unknown Okay. Yeah.
James Stacy I had this, not an argument. I had a heated discussion, a fun heated discussion with someone recently. I don't like brown. oh okay yeah i don't like brown cars i wear a lot of brown clothes to be fair like tan i like quite a bit yeah and there's a weird thing where like i don't really like this shark hunter vintage dial but i do like an iwc mojave i like that like palette of browns yeah yeah But then you see, what was the other one that came out that was a cool watch, but quite brown? Oh, the new LV Tambor, I guess, is the ceramic one. They did a brown one. And all of my colleagues went nuts over it when they were showing it off at LVMH Watch Week earlier this year. And I'm never going to be in the market for a Tambor. It's not really my style. But the brown was the part that bugged me the most. The other thing that the vintage version this shark hunter vintage doesn't get is probably my favorite thing which is the slightly contra the the slight added contrast of the two color riot yeah so it just has like it has it it goes from black to like a medium gray yeah i think it's the most obvious on the diving star the caribbean and the white pearl and probably the sea rambler where you get this inverted, you know, like on the SR, it goes from black on the top to orange on the bottom or black on the top to white on the bottom for the diving pearl. I think that's that's part of the thing that makes this watch feel just a little bit more complicated than the standard 200 T or whatever. and really speaks to me from a design. Like I think for me, the large skeletonized hour minute hand looking hour hand is much more effective in white than black. And that could just be my preference for the Caribbean. I don't know why, like on the Caribbean, the idea that the minute hand is orange and the GMT hand, which is the same size and shape, but is white, looks great. And I think it suddenly doesn't bother me. But then if you look at the pro, It's all black, the hands are black, and it does kind of... I just need to see them in person. Yeah. Yeah, I think, because it never really bothered me. Like, I noticed it on the 750 that instead of doing a skeletonized hour hand for the 24-hour, they do a skeletonized minute, and it's quirky and fun, and that's what DOCS is about to a certain extent. Yeah. I think what's interesting, if you really like DOCS, is that the GMT, whether it's the 750 or now the new 250, is you just get a little bit more complexity. The added hand, the Riat, slightly different marker sort of design there. And I think that it adds a little bit of visual interest to the watch that makes it feel special because the GMT is so rare from the brand. yeah yeah like i think in a photo think about the differences in a photo between a 200 a 300 t a 300 like most human beings would just go that's the same watch it's like that meme from the office you know they want you to tell the difference between these two images that's the same image right it only matters to us but i think that this this cuts a larger this this keeps the gmt weird yeah is is the best way i can say it and i like that a lot i can't stop looking at the caribbean this might be a problem because I do not need another dachshund. I don't need another dive watch, period. I don't know that I really need to live in a world where I have the 300 SR, which I don't want to get rid of, the Diving Star, which I adore, and the Caribbean. So I don't know if it means selling the Diving Star and picking up a Diving Star GMT, which is a good option. Yeah, yeah, but then the caribbean's still calling to me that blue orange man. Yeah, it's always really good Yeah, yeah, but you know, I guess the other thing to consider is I I have become Because I read the comments on hood and key and I would say 80 of the comments are about price And the folks on our slack are much more reasonable in that Typically something's only overpriced if that if it has no competition at its price point Oh, yeah, like if if it's priced itself above its natural competition, this is kind of like what tag heuer's done for the last couple years where you expect one price and then you see the price and you're like, huh, I'm not saying it's not worth it. I'm just saying, what else is being sold at that price point? And if it's a Grand Seiko, there's kind of a difference there, right? There are other GMTs at this price point. And because of the Miyota movement, which allows for a flyer functionality at a much lesser price point. We've seen Miyota powered flyer GMTs where you can adjust the hour hand forward or backwards by jumping, a little bit easier for traveling. We've seen these for less than $1,000. So this market is way more competitive than it was the last time Doxa made a GMT, significantly more. but at the same time this is a niche watch from what still is to a certain extent a niche brand and i think i think you have to you have to kind of factor for that as well and i think that them coming in still below the price point of a standard 300 Is remarkable. Mm-hmm. I don't think it's like an insane deal. I still think the 200 is a great deal at 1500 bucks Yeah, because if you look at what Seiko is doing for 1500, I like the docks away more. Yeah Yeah, it's more interesting has a better movement keeps better time more options for color all that kind of stuff But with this, I think you have less competition because this is the same functionality that Seiko will put in a $400 Seiko 5, which I've owned. It's a great little watch, for sure. But I'd much rather have one of these, which explains the sort of price difference. So I think I could see this being very popular to a certain subset of doxa nerd. I don't think this is suddenly going to be their number one watch.
Jason Heaton I have to give them credit because I used to wonder, you know, years ago, like, Unless they move out of the dive watch space, which they, you know, they kind of own, kind of, well, not own, but that it's such a calling card.
James Stacy It's the bedrock of their.
Jason Heaton Exactly. But Doxa has a much longer history than 1967 and the sub, you know, I mean, they go way back to driving watches and rally timers and, you know, pilots watches and stuff like that. And I've often wondered.
James Stacy Dress watch, deco dress watch. Yeah.
Jason Heaton And I've often wondered, like, are they going to venture into those spaces? I don't know if they're still doing that in the Asian market. I know that they were kind of. And I've often thought like, what can they possibly do this year that will differentiate, that will be the next thing? And, you know, this is a logical question, but I think it's a logical question. I think it's a logical question, but I think it's a logical question. I think it's a logical question. next entry, you know, they've done the, what was it, the Seagraph kind of spinoff. They've done the 600T case shape. Yeah, the Army. Yeah, the Army. They've done, so they, they keep- Some ceramics, some carbon. They keep spinning stuff off with materials and which, with, you know, case shapes and Um, things like that. And they'll just, they'll keep at it. And this, this feels like a fresh take, but not so dramatic. And I think that'll appeal to the docks of faithful and keep, keep people coming back because I, I've got this, I've got this vintage dial shark hunter up very big on my screen as we're talking and I'm looking at it and I'm like, boy, that's a nice, That's a nice watch. And I'll be curious to see, you know, your point about brown. It does look brown in the images, but they're calling it vintage black and whatever. And it has this sort of gradient look. Yeah. And maybe it's more black in person. I wonder if it's more of a gray sunburst.
James Stacy I'll be curious to see your photos when you get your hands on it.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacy Yeah. I mean, look, my, my stories on Hodinke now, uh, my intro to be clear, I'll do a hands on with these watches once I've seen them. And I think like a lot of it, I just said like, look, some of this I find kind of weird. I just can't, I just want to see it in person. Um, and, and I think that's the thing, you know, so of these nine, well, one, you're not a huge GMT guy to begin with. You've said that before. Yeah. Right. Uh, do you feel like this is something you would actually go spend 2,500 bucks on? No.
Jason Heaton Well, if I wasn't in the mode I'm in now, which I've been purging like crazy lately, I've sold off a bunch of vintage stuff lately. And then I had my eight watch purge last year. And I think, you know, currently I've got four doxes, I've got the three black lung versions, and then I've got my vintage T graph and That's plenty for me. I just don't need another one, especially a GMT. I think if I were to take a trip and reach for a Doxa, you know, to go to the Caribbean and go diving or something, I just pull one of my existing ones out and take it along. I don't need that extra hand. because it's just too similar to stuff I've already got.
James Stacy I mean, yeah, that's the position I'm in. So the other thing that hits me is I want one of these for sure, right? Just putting that out on the line. And this isn't going to be one of those episodes where I buy a watch on the air. Watch is not yet for sale. I mean, I could buy it on their website, but if I was going to buy one, I'd buy it from Roldorf like I did the Diving Star. Do you wait and see if they do a carbon?
Jason Heaton Well, I was just going to ask you that. I was going to ask, you know, for a very long time, you've been really keen on the carbon Doxa thinking. I always thought like this one day you're going to pull the trigger and it'll end up on your wrist. And does this supplant that in kind of the hierarchy of Doxa wishes and wants for your personal collection?
James Stacy Yeah, I mean, I would love to see and feel what 250T GMT Shark Hunter carbon is like. And it would be, I think it would have to be Shark Hunter or White Pearl. Yeah, yeah. I just think the black case really suits the monochromatic. I'd like the carbon Caribbean doesn't work for me. Yeah. So I would love to see what that looks like and what it feels like and what the price point ends up being because their pricing on carbon so far has been very realistic. Yeah. And yeah, so I don't know it's uh, it's an interesting watch and one that currently like this kind of happened last year when they Launched the 200 and it was just that was the watch.
Jason Heaton I wanted to see we were you know A million dollar this rolex that I just wanted to see doxa and uh, and now we've got it got this again So yeah your comment about kind of holding out or waiting to see if they'd make a carbon version of this makes me think like that's that's kind of a nice Strategy to keep yourself reined in on wanting a watch is to always keep hoping for one iteration away that doesn't exist yet to kind of keep yourself from pulling the trigger on something. And maybe that shows a maturity in our decade plus, you know, history of collecting and maybe we've... Or it's just what we learned from being fans of Tudor.
James Stacy Yeah, right. Yeah, maybe next year. Yeah, right, right. But yeah, look, I think that's the watch. By all means, I'll put my story in the show notes if you want to read more, and then I'll have a hands-on within a week or two of when this comes out. I think this is exciting. I think it's pretty close to being the right price, all things considered. It's such an expensive era for watches right now, and I think that's going to be the main struggle for watch brands this year, is that price sensitivity is just a lot higher than it's been since, say, 2016, 2017. And I think so many brands got used, not only just the popular brands, just brands in general, like producing high quality watch brands, got used to just being able to sell whatever they had, even if it wasn't A plus stuff. And that goes for any brand you can name, the popular ones included. We're selling everything because the demand was so high over the pandemic and then maybe for a year or two after. And I think that's fallen off a cliff. You know, word on the street, we've got, you know, Hodinkee now has our incredible business editor, Andy. Shout out Andy. And word on the street, you know, the numbers are down. Things are not looking good in China for watch brands. And that's a big market that Doxa pushed into. And look, if the U.S. is going to become the number one market for many brands, and let's say, hypothetically, including Doxa, this is the right type of product versus the 300 betas and the shinier, more wilder stuff. Stick to the core, make cool LEs. Think of what they did with Topper. That's a great example of how you speak to an audience, preach to the crowd, sell to the people who have their credit card waiting, already qualified, right? And I think bringing back the GMT shows some patience that they waited so long. Bringing it back in 40 millimeters shows that they're willing to listen to an audience that a lot of brands aren't. Anyways, man, talk about a derivation. Dox has a GMT back. I think that's the news. Do you want to buzz through our hopes and wishes, thoughts and prayers for Tudor and Rolex? I don't know. I don't think you and I have any specific opinions on Patek, which is the kind of... Okay, I'll give a little bit of preamble, and I understand that I am rambling in this episode, but just for those of you who don't follow Watches and Wonders that carefully, most brands be like, you know, 95, 98% of brands send out all of their stuff in advance. So like if you're on the press list, you get an embargo, the embargo lifts on April 1st in the morning in Geneva, but we've seen most of the watches that come out. The ones we don't know and don't see canonically Rolex, Tudor and Patek are the major ones. They're also the three brands and this could be connected to this strategy or could just be that this is because of that it's not causal. But those three are also three of the biggest brands you would write about. So yeah, we find out what those brands are launching 8.30am on April 1. and April Fool's jokes write themselves. Yeah, right. And so we don't really know what's coming from these brands. Even even some of these brands I have, you know, we have friends that work at and they can't say a word. Yeah. I mean, these are big, big high level secrets. And sure, some of it gets leaked every year. And if you're in deep enough on Instagram, or have a buddy who is I'm sure you saw some of the Rolex leaks. And maybe some of those are real. I don't know. But Jason, instead of going over leaks or predicting, what would you like to see? What do you think Rolex or Tudor should do? I don't think Patek's really within our realm. I would agree with many others who have said that Patek could really shake things up by making a very high-end, time-only watch, a modern 25, 26, something like that. But beyond that, let's start with Tudor. Let's keep it even closer to our core. What would you like to see or what do you think Tudor's ready to release?
Jason Heaton I think the Black Bays, they're bread and butter. I mean, it's such a popular watch and they've done so much with it and I just feel like maybe it's a year for... I'm looking elsewhere. Maybe it's time for a fresh chronograph. And I've seen kind of some rumors and hopes and predictions and things that the big block chronograph might be coming back. I'm not sure where that would fit in, but I feel like the Black Bay chrono is a watch that never quite ticked all the boxes for me in terms of a Tudor chronograph. I do like the Pelagos chronograph format, but I find that a bit specific and a bit odd. So I'd love to see just a classic like quote unquote Daytona style, you know, steel, handsome, you know, chronograph, whether it's, you know, 40 to 42 millimeters, um, maybe a, you know, Panda dial or something like that. I think that'd be, I think it'd be huge. I think it'd be huge for them. I think it would, it would sell well. I think it would, it would, blow up the watch internet if they did something like that, maybe a little splash of red text on the dial. I think, you know, kind of a classic kind of steel tech emitter bezel or something, or maybe it's a rotating 12-hour bezel. I mean, I think they could do something really, really cool. And the satisfying thing about Tudor, well, it's also maddening, but like, you go to watches and wonders or you see their releases. And as we've discussed, sometimes it's everything except the one thing you want or whatever, but at least it's always dynamic. It's new, it's fresh. Um, you know, the black Bay 54 was fun. Um, you know, a lot of the FXD spinoffs have been great. Um, Rolex, I've just, I just find perpetually or perennially disappointing when I go, like they, they just so rarely make me feel good when, when I see what's come out, I'm like, Oh, you know, it's just a little iteration of a date just or this or that. But Tudor always kind of swings for the fences and it's just fun to see. But I think the big block reissue would be a fun thing to see, as well as, I guess, like a white dial Black Bay Pro. I could see them doing something like that. Sure. But those are the two that come to mind immediately.
James Stacy Yeah, I wonder I wonder what they feel they've learned from the pro like if that's something they want to do more of Yeah, or if that's something that's gonna get absorbed elsewhere. Yeah Because you know, they kind of launched as a single model, but also in a new line and then nothing. Mm-hmm, right, right, right and I think the Pro is an interesting sort of thought exercise, where maybe it'll be orphaned and it just gets discontinued and goes away, that also kind of fits with the mold. But I have to agree really deeply with the idea of like a convention, a Daytona, a Rolex, a Rolex Daytona, but from Tudor, is the easiest way to put it. It's just perennially one of the most popular watches from the entire brand, from Rolex, is the Daytona. And I think, you know, They were a fortune to buy for a long time. I think they're still very difficult to buy. If you wanted to try and get one today, I don't know if that's the same in every market everywhere in the world. It's my understanding that the supply thing is changing month to month in the consumer's favor. The availability of these watches is getting better. At the same time, I just think, again, with this price sensitivity, even if you could go out and spend whatever a Daytona is now, $13,000 or something, maybe a little more into the 14s, what if you could get a Breitling-powered Tudor that looked good, didn't look too much like a Daytona? It'd be really fun, I think, if they did a 12.96 chronograph layout like they used to. Yeah. um just just give us a little bit of their own thing you know i've been i've been re-watching the uh mission impossible films and in ghost protocol he wears a heritage chrono you know the the recreation of the monte carlo sort of vibe and it just looks so good and you go like man you guys were really on to something with that But I think the era in which that vintage throwback, like to the Monte Carlo, I think we might've passed that era, or maybe Tudor has more accurately. They just seem to be doing a good job with like, sure, the 58 is vintage inspired, of course. But even the longer the 58 goes, you get into like the monochrome from last year, that's its nickname, the all black 41 millimeter steel black bay. And that feels quite modern in many ways, or current, maybe not modern, but current. if that makes sense. So yeah, I think a chronograph at a reasonable price point, at their price point, could really go really well.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Where do they fit that in? Which family would that be in? Like, do we, I mean, you know how they kind of, they like their silos. They like, you know, the Ranger family, the Pelagos family, the Black Bay family. They already have a Black Bay chronograph. So where does, where would like a big block, modern big block, where would that fit in, do you think?
James Stacy Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, you could still make it part of the Black Bay, depending on the case you gave it, I guess. But they have the Black Bay chrono, and I agree. Both the Black Bay chrono and the Pelagos chrono are cool, but they are a little bit more specific. I think they need something a little bit more general. Because that's what the Daytona excels at. It is just a chronograph.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacy You know, with a great history and a beautiful design, but they, you know, they have, they cut such a specific profile. You can really tell a Daytona or something trying to look like a Daytona. Yeah. And I think weirdly, I think the Ranger, a Ranger Chrono kind of work. Oh yeah, there you go. Because it's already in the right range of size, it has a fairly simple case to begin with. I don't think they would do that, that's an insane idea, but it wouldn't, it does kind of like, kind of work in my mind on that front. And then, you know, beyond the chrono, I think that, I still think that this could be the year for a P39 GMT. You know, it's been a couple years since the 39 came out, And we saw the 58 GMT come out last year. So we already know that that sizing isn't going to be an issue. I think if they, if they just want to knock things out of the park, like if they just want a really good year, uh, just, just make, take the, the monochrome from last year and apply every one of its design sensibilities to the 58 GMT. Yeah. Just make it black, make it simple. No guilt. Uh, like, you know, gold coloring, all that kind of stuff. I think they'd have an absolute winner on their hands from that as well. Yeah. And then I could think, I could see if they wanted to continue doing things like the Pro. You know, I think what didn't work for the Pro was it felt too close to a Black Bay in many ways. And maybe titanium would help, but that may make it too close to a Pelagos. I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah. So it is kind of a complicated, like any idea you come up with does have to kind of fit into a line. And like with a Chrono, could they just bring back the heritage tag? which is another heritage, Tudor heritage chrono. Maybe they bring back a big block. Maybe they, you know, who knows? I'm excited to see. I'm always excited for Tudor. Probably my favorite release of the year. So pretty pumped about that, but I agree. That feels like the low-hanging fruit for the brand is to just make a really conventional, highly appealing chronograph. And I do genuinely believe that Tudor has the same problem as everyone else in that they're going to have to be very careful about how they price everything. just because people are watching. And I think really core enthusiasts who might operate on a budget every day that goes by where every watch is either too expensive or feels too expensive and also can't be bought, if that's your scenario, I think that wears people down and they start to look into other options. they they leave the top 10 or top 20 brands that everybody might know that you can see at the mall or whatever and they move on to other other scenarios where they feel like they're getting value for their money and they're still getting that buzz from from the new watch is that you need kind of both all right so with with the kind of tutor chatter out of the way what about uh what about rolex i think this is almost impossible for me It is. And I, it feels like almost not throwaway.
Jason Heaton I mean, I don't want to minimize our efforts here, but I just feel like, you know, with Rolex, it's, it's just such a black box. And I just, I never know. I mean, I think again, looking at what the chatter, you know, people have been talking about, you know, a Coke GMT, the black and the red, I think that would look, that would look sharp. I think, um, yeah, I feel like, uh, they haven't explored and it's not, I think they're beautiful watches, but it's not in my wheelhouse at all, but like the 1908 collection is something that is probably ripe for some exploration. Maybe expand that a little bit. I could see them doing, you know, like an annual calendar or a chronograph or something that's a little bit classic, you know, kind of dipping back into kind of some of their archives, some of the beautiful, more complicated watches they made back in, you know, the thirties and forties, I suppose.
James Stacy I'd like to see that it wouldn't be personally interesting, but I think yeah fun to watch and fun It's fun to see I think you are kind of on to something with like an annual calendar for the 1908 because that you know That'd be Sky Dweller. Yeah. Yeah Movement. Mm-hmm and the idea of Adapting the Sky Dweller into a dress watch because the you know, so much of the Sky Dweller is controlled by the bezel Yeah That's kind of fascinating. I would be excited to see that. My guess is we'll see a lot more green, like Datejust and that sort of thing with like green dials and that sort of thing. The other thing you always kind of think about is like, what are they really quiet about? Because they're not quiet about Daytonas. They had a huge launch planned for the yellow gold Le Mans last year and then canceled that because it leaked. Oh, interesting. So then that watch kind of went out without the traditional fanfare. And yet, despite that, probably the hottest watch in existence right now, or in the top five, the yellow gold Daytona, Le Mans Daytona. Yeah, I think otherwise, like with quiet stuff, like why would you take time and money to invest into the Daytonas, right? They sell all of them. They've got plenty. They haven't done much with the EXP2 in a couple years, Air King, or EXP2 in several years, like a lot. Air King in a couple years. Milgauss, you know, went away, could come back. I would be thrilled to see a titanium Milgauss. We've predicted it before. So have many others. I think could be pretty cool.
Jason Heaton Well, remember that some early Milgausses had a rotating bezel. That could be kind of neat to see them bring that back. I'm talking the very early ones, but yeah, that'd be... Really early ones.
James Stacy Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that they've got a lot of options. It's one of those things where I try and engage my imagination and I just see a black hole. I just have no clue. I don't know what they're going to come out with. And at this point, given what I do for a living and that kind of thing, I'm connected to anyone who would know and would talk about it, and they're just really good at keeping secrets. My guess is right now, we're recording this on Tuesday, the 25th, I think we might see a leak before the 31st or the 1st. Usually that's how it works. There's some preliminary leaks and then some dealers see the watches and one of them actually leaks a photo of the slideshow, which is a real jerk move, if I'm honest, to try and take the sales out of the fun of all of this. But people were that interested, so I understand it, and that's how social media works and the rest of it. But yeah, I don't know with Rolex. I'm kind of at a loss, I think. I do agree that the GMT, like, why not just make more versions of it? You know, the black-green left-hander, all that kind of stuff. I think, you know, the yellow gold that came out a couple years ago is quite popular. I got to see one of those in Paris in person. It's a delight. Probably my favorite six-digit Rolex out there right now, but yeah, I would love to see yeah, maybe maybe exp2 would be exciting See what they see what they might want might want to do with that. Although I guess we're only a couple years away from a An anniversary for the exp2. So yeah, who knows man?
Jason Heaton Yeah, you have on you have on our little list here more titanium and I I you know, I can see them kind of moving in that direction, you know, like, uh, like with one of the dive watches, you know, they could, I mean, they've spun off, you know, the deep sea, sea dweller and sub like you, who knows? I mean, the titanium, like the, the bigger those dive watches get, the heavier they get, the less comfortable they get, like a titanium version of a deep sea or, or, you know, a titanium sea dweller or something like that could be a fun, a fun thing. And we know they're capable of it. So.
James Stacy Yeah, and the top spec of the Deepsea is RLX, is titanium. Yeah, true. And then we also have it in what I think is the most sleeper watch in their lineup, because you just never see them, which is the Yacht-Master in titanium. And to be clear, There's a lot of watches where I go, oh, this watch would be very, very popular if it was a couple millimeters smaller, but that watch would be insane if it was 40. Insane how popular I think it would be. Especially, I think, among a slightly different type of person than is buying a sub right now. yeah right yeah because otherwise you've like you either go tutor right or you go up to Blancpain right yeah i think that yacht master is a great looking watch i think it it's it's quite an interesting to take something as kind of flashy and shiny as a yacht master and then do it in titanium while i can't necessarily come up with i think this is what they're going to do I am excited. I'm excited to see what it is. It's one of the surprises of the year to see what comes out. I mean, nobody saw the Celebration Dial or the Jigsaw or that kind of stuff coming. And hopefully, I hope that they learned that they could have that kind of fun and still speak to the same type of people. Those aren't watches that I would want to buy necessarily, but I really like seeing them. They're just kind of fun. Yeah. And this isn't always fun. You know what I mean? Yeah. Sometimes it's pretty serious, like deep seas and that sort of thing.
Jason Heaton It's funny, you know, you mentioned that you mentioned the titanium Yachtmaster and I'm looking at it on the screen here and I'm like, this is about as sporty as Rolex has gotten. And I feel like it is it currently kind of is their sportiest watch. Like it's superseded the Sub in my mind. And you're right. It's such a sleeper. It's so intentional. The Sub has become such a cliche, such a dressy, such a just a every person's you know aspirational piece and and like this watch feels like okay if you want like a Rolex that you're actually going to wear and like scrape up and take sailing or even diving or whatever like this is it's cool it's got the maxi markers um you know titanium bracelet the the raised digits on the bezel like it's it's a really sporty, very Tudor-y kind of watch.
James Stacy Granted, it's almost $15,000, but still, it's... Hey, there's one on Chrono24 for $40,000, so if you can get it for $15,000, maybe go for it. I don't know. Yeah, right. The other thing to keep clear is I'm a bit of a fan of Yacht-Masters, the 37 with the gray dial or the electric blue with the red hand, the platinum bezel. If you want a dressy take on a Rolex sport watch, very cool. I think it's a cool thing. You know, imagine the titanium Yacht-Master at more like the sub-size with the Oysterflex rubber. Or on a NATO. Or on a NATO. Yeah, throw it on a NATO for sure. Yeah. Do more with the Yacht-Master. I'm not making suggestions to the biggest, most powerful, most successful brand in watches. they're going to do whatever they're going to do and I'm pretty sure they're going to be successful at most of that. But if they wanted to do something to speak to knuckleheads like Jason and I, and I'm sure many of you listening, I think more super sporty stuff like the Titanium Yacht-Master would be pretty exciting. There we go. I mean like it's the lowest hanging fruit to do a Titanium Daytona. yeah yeah you could charge they they could charge at retail like 25 grand for that nobody would care like i mean everybody would be upset about it but like yeah it would not change the number of watches they sold yeah yeah wow okay annual calendar uh 1908 and titanium from rolex yeah let's get our orders in get on the wait list for sure But yeah, let us know. Hit us up on the Slack. I'm sure we can start a little thread. By the time this comes out, there'll only be like four or five more days, so it could be a nice active thread on the Slack about what we think might be coming and what sort of predictions we like from the rest of the internet and that sort of thing. But that's sort of our low-key take on Watches and Wonders, and we'll do the rest when we do the Megasowed for the 10th. But why don't we jump into some final notes? Sure. Yeah, mine's a bit of a...
Jason Heaton um, follow on from something we've discussed in the past, you know, we talked about that documentary about the Barclay marathons that was out, you know, a few years ago and, and it's such a fascinating event. Um, go back and find that and watch that original documentary and just, it's, yeah, I'll put that in the show. It's just such a neat, neat thing. But, um, our buddy Phil filling time on Slack, um, posted this, uh, a link to a YouTube, um, based documentary. I think it's about 51 minutes long called the finisher. and it's a fresh documentary about jasmine paris who was the first woman to finish the barclay marathons last year so this is you know hot on the heels of her victory and it's it's about her her victory and her race and kind of all about her and i just uh i'm not going to belabor the point whatever you got to watch this she's a fascinating person very inspiring um you know based in scotland she's a mother she you know works a day job i believe she's like a teacher and she's just She's out there, you know, competing in these incredibly difficult events and a very humble person and very driven at the same time. And yeah, it was really good. It's called The Finisher. And yeah, check it out, Jasmine Paris.
James Stacy That's very cool. the title card on YouTube is enough to make me wanna watch it. It's so good. So this would be very cool. Thank you very much for that recommendation and a great final note for sure. Nothing quite like the Barkley. It's just kind of insane. All right, for mine this week and to close out the show, it's actually a keyboard, not a musical keyboard, one you type on to make words on screens. I've been going through, as I think I've talked about in the past, like several generations of upgrading my office because I now live where I'm sitting right now. And I got a proper chair, I got my walking pad, I got my standing desk, I got a truly ludicrous monitor, which I really like. But the one thing that was bugging me was I was using, and I'm largely happy with it, but there was a few problems. I had like a Logitech low profile, one of their MX keyboards. And it did a lot of things, but a few of the core things, it didn't do that well. It wasn't that pleasant to type on for very long. Actually, I would say I went as far as preferring the keyboard on my laptop if I needed to, say, write a thousand words really quickly. So I decided I would start digging into picking up something else. And I know on the Slack, and certainly Blake, if you're listening to this, Blake Bettner, Tantan Wang. These guys are like very deep into keyboards. And I wanted to avoid I asked Blake when we had him on just after deep track launch, like, what do you recommend? And he sent me like eight links. And it was like this board, this case, these key caps, these switches. Wow. And I was like, Nope, I'm not building one. Yeah, I'm going to start with a full build a pre build, whatever you want to call them. So I did a bunch of research. And if you've ever been on YouTube for keyboards, it's not that different than YouTube for flashlights or YouTube for most watches in that you you'll learn that a lot of them are very similar in terms of quality, and you just have to pick one eventually. Pick the one you like or whatever. So I did a bunch of research and ended up settling on one from Keychron, which is, what did Tantan describe that to me? Tantan said it was like essentially the Hamilton of mechanical keyboards. Like a really nice entry point that allows you to skip some of the very low end stuff, but really doesn't put you into this world where you're spending an egregious amount of money on keyboards. And if you read the previous issue of Hodinkee Magazine, we cover the egregious side with Ryan Norbauer, and we're talking about keyboards that cost more than a Grand Seiko.
Unknown Wow. Wow.
James Stacy and are very impressive things, I didn't want to go that far. I wanted a smaller, so no numpad, mechanical keyboard. I wanted a volume knob, and I wanted, I don't know what these keys are called. I call them extra keys, but you know, like home, page up, page down, just over on the right. And that's because with a giant monitor, two giant monitors is what I'm currently working with, I move my windows around a lot. to kind of change the layout based on what I'm working with. And I'm on a Mac and I'm using a mirror as an app to kind of delineate window sizing based on keyboard macros. So I can now, by using macros for all the keys, move windows around really quickly, like without resizing them, which is lovely. And so I bought the Lemokey P1 QMK by, so there's a US ANSI layout, but it's from Keychron, and it's like a solid metal keyboard. It's backlit. It's got a very simple layout. It has that volume knob and the three buttons, and I'm just thrilled with it. What color did you get? Oh, I got the black with the red, but the nice thing is all the keys are removable, so you can just buy other sets and click them on. So I'll probably do more of a TGN color way in the next little while. I'm thinking tan, blue and orange will kind of be the move, but I'm just trying to find a key set that I like, but we'll get there eventually. I don't need to do that right this minute. I've had it for maybe a month now, maybe a little less than that. And I knew I would talk about it at some point, but I wanted to have some time to put a few thousand words through it. And it's just delightful. It's so much nicer to type on. It has a little bit of feedback. I went with what's called a brown key set, so the Keychron Super Browns, which I believe are Keychron's version of MX Cherry Browns, which are kind of, I believe, sort of middle in the zone of the amount of force they take and the amount of noise they make. So in quiet elements, and I'll try and trim it out of the recording, but in quiet elements of the recording, you can hear this keyboard, and I'll lift it up and give you a little sound test here. That's a really nice sound. I like it, which is kind of part of the appeal of these things. But yeah, otherwise it's a keyboard. It was 150 bucks, I think I paid for it, 160 maybe. And it came in a week or so, and they sell a bunch of different color versions. I mean, to be clear, Keychron sells about 300 different keyboards from what I can tell, maybe more. Different layouts, different colors, different sizes, different this, different that. They've got a lot going on. And the mechanical keyboard world starts at like $20. and goes up to several thousand dollars. So, I mean, you can do whatever you want in the space. It's a bit like pens, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Where, like, they all write. These all type. Yeah. But it's a whole... every little element changes some aspect of the experience.
Jason Heaton Well, I have to say, this is... a lot of it's Greek to me, but I'm also not in the market for this sort of thing. But I will say that as you were discussing this, I thought to myself, what are the few things in our daily lives, you know, those of us that work the kinds of jobs we do, you know, writing, sitting at a desk, et cetera, that we interface with regularly, that as an upgrade could bring some newfound pleasure to that. And I think, yeah, I'm looking at my very dirty wireless Apple keyboard that's sitting in front of me and I'm like, This is kind of, it's boring. It works. And, and I, I'm not sure an upgrade would make a big difference in my life, but there are other aspects of my life that, you know, like a watch, I often say that, you know, watch is something you wear all the time. It might as well bring you some pleasure and you know, things like phones and keyboards and monitors and things are things you interface with on an almost daily basis. And it does make sense to kind of do something fun with it. And as you said, you spend a good amount of your time sitting there typing away on a keyboard. So, It's really cool. I love that you can swap the colors on these. The blue one really speaks to me. That's really neat.
James Stacy Yeah, the blue's cool. It was kind of difficult to pick one, to be honest, but I knew I wanted kind of the black base. And then the kit from Keychron comes with the cap puller, so you can pull the caps off very easily. I mean, when it comes, it's set up for Windows, and it takes about two seconds to pull the Windows caps and put in the Apple ones. And then they have a really simple web-based application that senses the keyboard and allows you to change any key structure. So macros take seconds. It was maybe the easiest I've ever had to build like keyboard macros and that sort of thing. It's got the backlight, which like I just leave it on white, but it can do like dancing colors and rainbows and all that kind of stuff. I'm a couple years too old to need everything on my desk to light up, but I do understand if that's your zone. yeah i'm happy with it feels like a nicely made product and i feel like i didn't i'm proud that i didn't go too far down this rabbit hole yeah yet yeah yeah but yeah that's it the lemo key p1 from keychron and a great documentary about the barkley races so it gives you some certainly something to watch and if you're interested in maybe trying out a a different sort of experience when you're typing this could be a good option for sure
Jason Heaton nice fun show yeah and uh yeah big week next week i'll be uh be watching with great interest yeah thank you so much for that i will do my best not to drop any balls along the way all right well thanks for listening uh as always if you want to subscribe to the show notes get into the comments for each episode or consider supporting the show directly maybe even grab a new tgn signed nato please visit TheGrenado.com.
James Stacy Music throughout is Siesta by Jazz Art via the free music archive. And we leave you with this quote from Victor Hugo who said, Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.