Undone Watches Review: More Hype Than Quality?

One of the biggest reasons Undone Watches made a splash in the watch community upon their initial back in 2016 was because of their custom watches. You can choose a base design and then tweak certain aspects of it in order to create essentially your own catalog watch. Usually your custom design options are dial colors, dial text, case finish, straps, and potentially the option of an exhibition caseback.

Jump To:

Common Questions | Specs | Case | Caseback | Dial | Strap | Movement | Final Thoughts

Is it appropriate to call it a fully custom watch? No – but these are priced anywhere from $200 – $400. In this price point you’re not getting something fully custom. What you are getting is something personalized, which is how I approached my particular watch.

The experience of personalizing the watch is easy. As I was going through the process I wasn’t sure what to choose. Eventually I settled on making this a “TBWS Quartz Chronograph” – so I put the date Mike and I decided to start this horological journey together “9.6,2016” and I also had our logo printed in the back.

But personalizing a watch and actually getting to wear it are totally different things. So what was the Undone Watches Chronograph actually like in person?

Vintage Style 40mm Stainless Steel Case

The Undone Watches Urban case is very reminiscent of clean, vintage chronographs, which is really the point with these pieces. In doing so the watch offers the fun proposition of a vintage-inspired piece created with modern manufacturing practices. This vintage watch presentation is really supported by the case diameter at 40mm and a lug-to-lug width of approx. 47mm. Plus, the overall profile of the case is very radial in nature. The Undone Watches Urban Chronograph’s round shape is formed by the transition of the smooth fixed bezel and the hardened mineral crystal dome.

Plus, the caseback is a screw down type and features a rounded bevel transition on it outside perimeter. Both the fixed bezel and caseback are polished and both affix to the actual “body” of the case, which is brushed. It’s a nuance that creates a fun interplay between vintage features (rounded Chronograph cases) and modern flair (a mix of brushed and polished surfaces).

Mmmm – let’s talk about pushers, #watchfam. All I want to do is manipulate the chronograph buttons on this timepiece. Their clean but confident protrusion breaks up the potential monotony of the round case. At the end of the day the Undone Urban Chronograph’s pushers themselves are quite simple, but it’s how they impact your perspective of the entire watch that makes a difference. They’re begging to be pushed! The simple nature of the Undone Watches Urban’s pushers also adds to the utility-focused nature that most old school chronographs were designed to fulfill.

The lugs of the are far more angled in nature compared to the case’s body. Plus they feature a slight downwards slope to help the watch conform to the wearer’s wrist. The lugs are polished on all surfaces, but they’re also super small in terms of profile, which isn’t a bad thing in my opinion. The smaller lugs help bring balance to the polished surfaces – plus they also help keep the overall focus of your eye on the dial by not hogging the spotlight.

TBWS Personalized Caseback

This is one of the elements I was fretting about the most while I waited for the Undone Urban Chronograph to make its way to me. During the design process I opted for an extra fee to feature a custom caseback that brandished our beloved Two Broke watch Snobs logo. The exhibition caseback of the Undone Watches Chronograph can have a design or image of your choosing printed directly on the glass.

The final look is great and I don’t get the feeling that the printing will chip, fade, and peel away. I’ve worn the Undone Watches Urban Chronograph is some really hot & humid weather here in Florida and I’ve schvitzed something wicked all over the watch – no signs of the glass caseback printing going away.

Clean, Black Chronograph Dial

I chose the Navi dial version of the Undone Watches Urban Chronograph as my design template. But I was able to swap out a few key elements and put my own design choices into play. Overall, the quality is there – I can’t notice anything that stuck out to me as something that was a QC issue or anything like that. The dial presets templates that Undone Watches offers are all really balanced and super unique.

One of the biggest changes I made to the Undone Navi template was changing the color of the hands from gold to silver. The finished product is great and exactly what you’d expect – the hands are leaf shaped and features the type of straight surfaced roofing bevel that you’d see on a leaf (or sword). So what happens is that light tends to catch the hands in such a way that it makes the watch feel dynamic and fun. However this also makes the watch very illegible in certain lighting situations.

The chronograph seconds hand is one of the elements that I customized to evoke our TBWS branding. The hand is cool! It appears to be plastic (which is totally fine for a watch in this price range) and has a mate finish, which plays really well off the polished surfaces of the other hands. Also, the beloved date of TBWS’s inception was included on the dial “9.6.16” and the quality is great on that. It doesn’t look rushed or half-assed – it looks like time and care was put into the finishing details to create a really cool presentation.

20mm Quick Change Cordura Stap

The Undone Watches Urban Chronograph features 20mm quick-change straps. For my design I chose the Green Cordura strap. The quality is there – strap doesn’t feel too flimsy or too thick – good Goldilocks balance. For me the Undone Watches Cordura is a great choice because there is something about the material that really responds well to securely strapping the Undone Watch to your wrist. Plus, the underside of the Cordura material is sewn with leather.

So you can get the comfort of soft leather strap against your wrist with the killer texture of the canvas material on top. Also, the strap tapers a bit towards the ends which helps give it’s overall profile a nice dynamic curve/shape (as opposed to a static shape profile).

In my opinion normal wear will occur on the strap, but by no means will that wear occur prematurely as a result of poor QC or lacked crafting practices. The strap will last.

VK61A Meca-Quartz Movement

The Undone Watches Urban Chronograph features the Hattori VK61A. The Seiko-based meca-quartz movement has been hugely reliable and just a pleasure to actually use. Though powered by a quartz battery, the meca-quartz’s chrono complication is mechanical, which means that when you press the chronograph’s buttons you’ll get that satisfying click and resulting snap back of the chronograph hand on the reset.

Meca-Quartz VK61A Specs:

• Battery life: Three Years
• +/- per month: 20 seconds
• Date wheel (although not all dial templates will feature a date window)
• Chronograph Function: top pusher starts chronograph seconds hand while the bottom button resets the function (only possible after stopping the seconds by pressing the top button again)

Final Thoughts

The option of being able to personalize your watch puts you in control – you’re the one who is deciding certain key aesthetic features about the watch on your wrist as opposed to a brand telling you what you’re wearing. This experience essentially deprioritizes the brand itself in your watch buying experience.

However I can’t help but feel a bit of a disconnect when I do actually choose to focus on the brand itself. When you buy a watch you’re inevitably also “buying the brand” – something about the brand has played a part in how you see or have chosen to perceive the watch you’re getting.

The problem here is that when I actually focus on the brand and try to understand the role it may play in my watch purchasing decision, I want absolutely nothing to do with Undone Watches.

When the brand first came out they were focused on these personalized vintage style chronographs. Overtime they’ve expanded to include dive watches, additional chronograph styles, and collaboration pieces.

These collaborations span everything from Batman, Popeye, Astroboy, Back To The Future, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Jaws, Space Jam, Monopoly (the board game)… and there are a lot more. I may be nitpicking here but the level of collaborations dilutes the notion that the brand has enough merit to stand on its own. Instead, it needs to rely on gimmicks and random franchise collaborations to keep you interested.

Plus it gives me the sense that their brand identity is “whatever the hell people will buy!” I’m not ignorant in that ALL watch brands have that mentality as well, but many also have a guiding branded ethos that informs their decisions. I don’t get that sense here.

But is that a bad thing? That depends – some people want to feel like their purchasing a watch with a legacy ethos, others don’t really care and only look at the watch as an object. Me? I keep flip flopping, but right now I’m part of the latter camp and I’m just enjoying the watch on my wrist and not worrying too much about the brand.