Review: Argon Spaceone

Watches can all look a little bit … normal. And normal is boring. What if watch manufacturers let their hair down a bit and channelled their inner Trekkie? You get the Argon Spaceone, a hyperwatch bargain.

Background

Back in 2009, horological nutjobs De Bethune launched an incredibly limited run collection called the Dream Watch. Where most manufacturers might use this terminology to imply that their watch was a thing of great desirability, De Bethune had other ideas. Yes, of course they wanted their watches to be desired, but primarily the Dream Watch collection was about making watches that were weird enough to have come from a dream.

You know sometimes you wake up and there’s the strange, nonsensical remnants of a night-time adventure, that only gets weirder the more you think about it? De Bethune bottled that up and turned it into a watch collection. These watches were not only works of unparalleled design, but innovation as well, test beds for future developments that would eventually filter through to the main collection.

A high point for the Dream Watch collection was the 2014 Dream Watch 5, a timepiece that combined both wildly expensive horology with the sci-fi stylings of the 1986 film “Flight of the Navigator”. Long, sleek and utterly bizarre, it set a benchmark for ultra-high-end watchmaking that hasn’t ever been met since. Sure, there are crazier-looking watches, but none that managed to combine simplicity with outrageousness in such a succinct way.

With its cockpit-mounted jump hour display, the Dream Watch 5, reaching $500,000 in price, adopted the dream name in a different, unexpected way, too. Being so expensive, it would remain a dream for virtually everyone who wished to have one.

That’s still the case, but now there’s another route. Enter Theo Auffret and Guillaume Laidet. Theo is a French, GPHG-shortlisted watchmaker whose incredible—and incredibly expensive—watches have waitlists longer than Rolex. And Guillaume is the genius who revived such brands as Nivada and Vulcain.

Between them, they identified a need, albeit an extremely niche one, to offer the very craziest of the crazy watchmaking at a much more affordable level. And so the brand Argon was born. Argon, a noble gas that is the third most abundant in the Earth’s atmosphere is used, alongside other things, in the production of titanium. That will be relevant soon.

Otherwise, it’s just a cool name given to a project that aims to blows minds across the galaxy. Every single watch produced by Argon will be released over a limited timeframe—and once it’s done, it’s done and onto the next one. The Spaceone is the first adventure, and it seeks to achieve the impossible: bringing the experience of a half-million-dollar watch for just $1,600. It’s a dream that could very easily become a nightmare.

Review

The inspiration for the Argon Spaceone is as clear as the view of a stars on top of a cloudless mountain. I don’t think Theo or Guillaume ever would—or could—deny the inspiration, and that’s really the point: giving us more ordinary folk a chance to get a taste of the extreme.

Immediately, the swooping, curvaceous shape of the Dream Watch 5 has been dulled to a flatter profile, and that makes sense from a number of different perspectives. First is that the curves of the Dream Watch 5 are going to be much more complex and expensive to machine and finish within Argon’s budget, and second is that the guys at Argon simply wanted to make the Spaceone wearable.

I know it doesn’t look particularly wearable, but it is. It may be 52 by 42mm, but at just 12.6mm thick and with a wrist-hugging profile, it actually wears surprisingly … normally. Which I really didn’t expect. You’ll also notice the rocket nozzle crown is now over on the left to make it more comfortable. Southpaws need not lament however, because instead of bearing the pain of wearing this thing backwards on the right wrist, there’s a destro left-handed version available too.

What’s especially cool is the effort that’s gone into mimicking the Dream Watch 5’s digital readout. The moon phase indicator is gone, but the hours, minutes and seconds can be read from disks housed in the front-mounted cockpit. Instead of affixing hands to the base, Swiss made Soprod P024, there’s brass discs for the hours and seconds, and a sapphire disk for the minutes. Since the minute hand sits atop the hand stack, it needs to be transparent not to obscure the hours.

Power reserve of the automatic movement is a passable 38 hours, and water-resistance an equally passable 50m, but really what kicks this watch up from cut-price copycat to cool as a cucumber is the way the hours are delivered. The guys could have left it running like the minutes and seconds, but instead a 9-part jump hour module was developed by Theo exclusively for this watch. That way the hour snaps nicely into place, giving the watch an unusual complication that feels appropriate for the way it looks. That means it’s not all mouth and no trousers.

What I really like about this project is that it carries all the hallmarks of passion. The jump hour module design is no secret, with images and a functional description available on the brand’s Kickstarter page. You get the impression that this was an idea started over a beer, that got out of hand and simply couldn’t be done any other way than perfect. We saw this with German Polosin’s Kopf Watch, a project that started life as a piece of fun and turned into an exercise in exacting detail.

That’s what you’re getting here. It may be a Kickstarter brand, but these guys seriously know what they’re doing, and judging by the three-quarter million pledge over the eighty thousand goal, that’s very much apparent. If it helps, the components are manufactured in Switzerland and assembled under the watchful eye of Theo in France.

But it gets better still, because not only is this watch available in stainless steel, either brushed or polished, but titanium and forged carbon fibre too for the ultimate in exotic. Unfortunately, the titanium and forged carbon are sold out for the standard right-hander, but as of writing this, there’s still some left in destro form. And the best bit? There’s a non-limited version in blued titanium, reminiscent of the most expensive Dream Watch 5 ever made.

I discovered this watch pretty late to the game—shout out to Marko at Swiss Watch Gang and his video that made me aware—so there’s not much time left. The Kickstarter ends on June 10th, 2023. And like I said—once it’s gone, it’s gone. Back to its home planet.

Whether you like the Argon Spaceone or not, its existence is surely something of a relief. Watches are not only becoming more derivative, but expensive, too. Yes, I know this is derivative in the most obvious way, but at least it’s not another black-dialled dive watch. And importantly, at least it’s not eye-wateringly expensive. It’s a rare chance to enjoy something wild without a wild cost associated with it, and it’s thanks to the reckless curiosity of Theo and Guillaume that this is even possible. I can’t wait to see what’s next.