A. Favre & Fils Phoenix 10.1 Watch

by Ariel Adams (RSS feed)
Nov 26th 2010 at 12:01PM

The full name of this watch totally amuses me. So "luxury industry," so "horological." This isn't just the A.Favre & fils Phoenix 10.1 watch, oh no... it is the "A. Favre & Fils Phoenix 10.1 Quantieme à Grand Affichage Rotatif." Try saying that out loud without spitting all over the place. This is a nice watch, but the brand marketing is WAY too full of gimmicks. Another example aside from the pretentious sounding title? Well the brand goes to great length to indicate how the case was designed using principles from mathematical concepts such as the Golden Ratio and the Golden Number. Yes, I know that Pythagoras is getting a hard-on hearing about that, but it is just a nice standard looking case. I've seen a lot like it. When a new brand starts promoting such marginal concepts right off the bat, I start to get really suspicious that their products are more hype than heart.

If the "unique" interpretation of the big date complication doesn't excite you - don't worry. A Favre & Fils has a 10.2 version of the Phoenix watch sans any date at all. The date is comprised of two large discs, and reading the date involves looking at the line that has two figures in it. In the above example the date is the 17th. If the date was the 7th, then there would be a small red arrow next to the 7.

The simple case is attractive, 41mm wide in size, and available in 18k red or white gold. The movement has a lot of decorative effort put into it. It is manually wound with 84 hours of power reserve (looks to be via two barrels), and is visible through the watch case back. A. Favre & fils calls it their Calibre DB 1334/1 Henry. According the A. Favre & fils, the design of the movement was done to enhance reliability through the use of the least possible moving parts. Sounds good to me.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch reviews site aBlogtoRead.com.

Gallery: A. Favre & Fils Phoenix 10.1 Watch images