With Valentine’s Day coming up it is good for us to have a few decent watch options to buy for those watch loving ladies in our lives. If you don’t have any of those around you certainly haven’t been spreading your enthusiasm for timepieces effectively. I don’t review watches for women all that often because I am not a woman and cannot comment on them as such. Fortunately in this case I am merely reporting on a review by a woman owner of this precise watch. I’ll also add why in the abstract this piece is pretty nice in my opinion.
This W60 Coral (ref. W60-SMWM) is a lady diver-style piece with a lot of “design versatility.” With its combo of white ceramic, steel, and gold tones it is able to go with many different types of outfits and colors (or so I hear). While it is a sport watch at heart due to the polished sections and general “shininess”, it has a dressy personality. The design is good, but it is not exactly unique. What Christopher Ward has done is combine a few watches to create the Coral. One half of the Coral is a feminized version of their popular C60 Trident watch (that we reviewed here). The C60 is further based on the Bremont Supermarine (reviewed here). The other half of the W60 Coral’s design is a Chanel J12. Just looking at those watches together you can see where the W60’s slick design came from.
At 33mm wide the W60 is a great size for women, looking elegant and not too large or masculine. The case is steel and the bezel is a polished white ceramic insert with markings similar to that on the Chanel J12. The Coral is water resistant to 100 meters and has a sapphire crystal over the dial. Inside the watch is a Swiss Ronda quartz movement, which is probably better as women often prefer quartz over automatic watches due to their convenience. The unobtrusive date at 6 o’clock is nice as well.
One compliment the watch gets is that it is easy to read. That is certainly true. While I don’t make a habit of wearing smaller ladies watches, I hear that many of them are quite difficult to read at a glance. What Christopher Ward did here particularly well is offer larger hands and easy to spot indicators without making the Coral look like a tool watch. The hands are also lume coated which is nice.
With an elegant dive watch look and modern style, the W60 Coral is just the sort of watch guys like me like to get for women. It has many traits that men look for in timepieces but made specially for a woman with an unmistakable feminine touch. One issue however is with the bracelet – and perhaps this is unique to the model I am writing about. The bracelet is nice and without issue, but the end-pieces which connect it to the case have a tendency to flip around. That doesn’t mean the bracelet comes off, but rather that the end-piece can be loose. It quickly snaps back into place. This seems to have to do with the rather large tolerance between end-piece edge and the part of the case which is meant to secure it. A larger spring bar would probably help. Given that this is an early Coral piece it is possible that this has been remedied, but it is worth mentioning since that piece is supposed to securely stay in place.
As of right now Christopher Ward offers three versions of the Coral watch. There is a steel and black ceramic model, a steel and white ceramic model, and this steel, gold tone, and white ceramic model. Prices range from $685 – $750 (pictured version) and they can be purchased direct from Christopher Ward here.
Necessary Data
>Brand: Christopher Ward
>Model: W60 Coral
>Price: $750
>Would reviewer personally wear it: No, because it is a woman’s watch.
>Friend we’d recommend it to first: A woman wanting a versatile everyday watch from a brand not found in a department store.
>Best characteristic of watch: Nice look design amalgamated from existing popular pieces in a satisfying package.
>Worst characteristic of watch: Potential issue with bracelet end-piece being loose.
