Kairos Smartwatch Offers High Lux Answer To Apple Watch
I think I’ve found the award for weirdest smartwatch gimmick: the Kairos smartwatch was hiding in a corner of Mobile World Congress, and I’m flabbergasted.
Instead of just using a glowing OLED or LCD display, or simply embedding hidden components in a mechanical watch, the Kairos does both: a transparent OLED display — the first one I’ve seen in a functioning demo — hovers over the exposed guts of the watch. Bizarre, and sort of neat. For most people, completely pointless.
It’s not pointless at all. In fact, this seems to be the chosen path — at least in preliminary R&D — for many of the more expensive Swiss luxury outfits that actually feel compelled to take on Cupertino’s wearable. As an observer, it’s also the most compelling kind of competition I think Apple Watch is likely to have. Kairos itself is a crowdfunded startup, and they don’t have the chops to make waves in the luxury watchmaker world. That said, the Kairos Watch (which I pretty much thought was vaporware up until now) is a delightful proof of concept that might underscore the legitimacy of such digital overlays in premium mechanical watches. Yes, the transparent OLED it uses is a low-res, pixellated, square affair, but I can see real wristwatch enthusiasts and collectors picking this product over something like the newest Mondaine Helvetica.
[Image via CNET]