Atelier – Chronograph Performance Analog

The performance shelf of the Store is a wall of neon and square type. This is a performance face drawn like a dress watch: twelve applied indices, a forty eight stroke minute track, and three counters read the way a chronograph is read. THREE COUNTERS, THREE FIGURES Nine o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock. Each one carries a figure at its centre and an arc around its rim, so you get the number and how far along you are in the same glance. By default: intensity minutes earned this week against your goal, your live heart rate, and the days of battery you have left. METAL FOR THE TIME, COLOUR FOR THE DATA One rule holds the whole drawing together. Indices, minute track, hands and name are metal. The three arcs are the only coloured things on the dial. That line between the two is what keeps a dense face from turning into a dashboard. INTENSITY MINUTES, NOT STEPS Steps reward a stride. Intensity minutes reward effort, which is why your watch counts them and why the World Health Organization sets a weekly figure rather than a daily one. An hour in the pool earns them; an hour of pacing a supermarket does not. The counter shows what you have earned this week and prints your goal underneath it. DAYS, NOT PERCENT The battery counter is in days of charge left. Nine days means nine days. A percentage makes you do the arithmetic yourself, and on a watch that runs for a fortnight the arithmetic is not obvious. ELEVEN READINGS, THREE POSITIONS Intensity minutes this week or today, heart rate, battery in days or in percent, steps, distance, calories, floors climbed, the date, or nothing at all to leave a counter empty. Any reading in any of the three positions. When your watch has nothing to give, a counter shows a dot rather than a zero. A zero reads like a measurement, and a counter stuck at zero looks like a fault in the face when it is only the watch being honest. Floors climbed need a barometric altimeter, which not every model has. ALWAYS ON, WITHOUT EATING YOUR SCREEN In always on mode the face drops to four quarter marks and two thin hands, and the whole skeleton shifts by a few pixels every minute on a forty nine minute cycle, so no pixel is lit far more often than its neighbour. It draws about one and a half percent of the panel, well inside what an always on display is allowed to light. NO PERMISSIONS None. The face asks nothing of your watch and nothing of your phone. Heart rate is read through the activity interface, which is free; nothing here needs a sensor history or a user profile. MAKE IT YOURS Four accent colours, four hand designs, the three counters, your maximum heart rate, your weekly goal, and the name under twelve which can be switched off. TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD CHANGE I read every review and I reply. If something bothers you, a colour, a proportion, an option you wish existed, say so and I will look at it.