It’s Finally Here: Baltic Prismic

French watchmaking is fascinating to me, I just don’t know much about it ¹ and honestly I don’t think anyone else does either. Right now I am in college and currently undertaking a massive project trying to create a stereotype of French design and in particular French watchmaking. later this year I will be experiencing France for myself, but for now I think Baltic has just given me a huge breakthrough with this watch. I am henceforth declaring the Baltic Prismic the most French watch in their collection. When this watch was first released it was pretty obvious we were getting a new dress watch, but what style was it going to be ²? What colors were going to be chosen? And was I going to truly enjoy this new watch? Rest assured I will try on this watch ³, but for now I think the pictures, surprisingly, actually do this watch justice. Before we truly get started, this is not a review, I do not have the watch in hand, and all pictures come straight from Baltic’s website. Cheers!⁴

As of my last post, the dial was the biggest mystery ⁵, and I truly think it was worth the wait. This dial really shows the craftsmanship that Baltic currently has, especially for such a young brand, there is a wide variety of finishing that goes great with the case. Guilloche, grainy, brushed, and that’s just the solid color of the dial. Speaking of the color of the dial, Baltic gives us four options, and all four of them are beautiful. The purple ⁶ is my favorite but there is also a copper, a grey-ish blue, and a green. Honestly the green variation is the only one I’m not in love with, at least in the photos. To accent the color and multiple sections of the dial, there are also raised silver indices and borders separating certain sections of the watch. Honestly, I don’t want to explain all of the details on this watch because, it feels like a spoiler. If you look at the watch yourself, you can explore it with your own eyes ⁷, and that’s going to be much more fun. This watch is sold with three straps, the integrated mess strap, and two curved leather straps, one in tan/brown and the other in black.

Now is for the less fun part, this watch is far from perfect. I had some pretty high expectations, and they were almost fulfilled but the 30 meters of water resistance and the crown give me pause. While I wasn’t expecting anything more than 50 meters of water resistance, I was hoping for it. This is a dress watch first ⁸ and since I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary it’s far from a dealbreaker, but a girl can dream ⁹? The second “source of imperfection ¹⁰” is the crown, it’s not bad, but I would have preferred it to be a bit more of an onion style crown. Partially because I love onion crowns, but also I think the whole Art Deco vibe Baltic has going on for the dial would have been complimented well by a taller and rounder crown.

I do love this watch, and unless anyone releases anything cooler, this will be my first mechanical watch. While Baltic’s watches have been getting more and more impressive over the years, this one feels like it’s on a whole new level.

1. German design, however ↩︎
2. The sector dial was *almost* a given ↩︎
3. As well as their entire collection, I won’t limit myself ↩︎
4. Don’t worry, I’m not actually British ↩︎
5. The crown didn’t help much either ↩︎
6. Duh? ↩︎
7. Besides, I may buy this watch for my own review purposes. ↩︎
8. Points for a screw down caseback ↩︎
9. The bill comes due ↩︎
10. Too minor to be a problem ↩︎