Probably the least favorable part of the watch is trying to tell the time. Under all the cool stuff – namely the astronomical calendar hands – are not super easy to see hands for the hours and minutes. Having said that, I’ve seen worse, and reading the time isn’t terrible. This isn’t going to be your daily wear (or is it?). Actually, it would be interesting to wear this watch (or something like it) for a full year and see how it influences your life.
OK, so let’s discuss where the “Antikythera” part comes in. Aside from some similar calendar information, the Antikythera element is more thematic. It is possible however that there are elements from the original Tribute to Antikythera movement in the SunMoon. The large “constellation decorated” central hand serves two purposes. First, it has a window that shows the phase of the moon. Neat that the moon phase indicator moves around the dial (albeit very slowly). The hand itself takes a full year to travel around the entire dial. It is a sort of multipurpose calendar hand, which when used in tandem with the solar hand, offers some interesting calendar data.
The larger dial hand can be thought of as the “sky position” hand. The idea is to indicate how our perspective of the sky changes over the year. What is being tracked here is the zodiac periods. No, this isn’t the first watch to show what zodiac sign we are currently in, but it is the first to show how they relate to one another in terms of lengths. Hublot is quite proud of the fact that it shows the movement from one zodiac period to another, along with being able to reference their duration. That was actually quite interesting.
In addition to the large sky hand is a solar hand whose role it is to indicate earth’s relative position to the sun, which in our daily lives is referenced by months. Thus (assuming you have good eyes) you can use the sun hand to not only read the month, but also the date. Since both the sky and sun hand move together, it makes sense that the left crown on the watch controls everything. I felt that was a quite useful design feature of the Antikythera SunMoon timepiece.
Fascinating to look at, this “Neo Antikythera” watch is very impressive, but was pretty much overshadowed by the also for 2013 Hublot MP-05 La Ferrari timepiece the brand released in the same year. Since Hublot debuted its “Masterpiece” range a few years ago they haven’t ceased to inspire me and continue to produce some really impressive stuff. Lofty and a little bit “out there” the MP collection watches are exactly what you want as a supplement to more commercial luxury watch fare – and Hublot performs this role very well. Once again, the titanium Hublot Antikythera SunMoon MP-08 watch will be produced as a limited edition of just 20 pieces with a price of $272,000. hublot.com
