Today, fans can feast their eyes on the brand’s newest iteration: the Armin Strom Edge Double Barrel watch in 18k rose gold.There’s always something to be said about a brand that truly masters their craft and Armin Strom continues to show off such prowess with each new model. It’s a tasteful execution of modern, industrial design blended with traditional finishing techniques that cover everything you’d expect from authentic high-end watchmaking.
Pulling off a tastefully skeletonized watch design can be tough, but it’s safe to say that Armin Strom does an excellent job. They retained everything that made the original Edge Double Barrel attractive and upped the ante with an opulent yet tasteful rose gold case. It seems that Mr. Edge, the collection’s futuristic mascot (seen above) created by Biel artist Herbert Kracke, has also received his own metallic upgrade for this specific release.
The dial is mostly black and grey, which delivers a pleasing contrast with the rose gold case. The inner chapter ring is also black with white indices and surrounds a set of highly legible, rose gold numerals. The rest of the dial features a deep skeletonized design that showcases an impressive set of double mainspring barrels and the brand’s ARM16 movement, which we’ll come back to shortly. The rose gold hands are prominent, lumed, and match the rest of the design perfectly. Additionally, the dial includes a subsidiary seconds dial that also serves as a power reserve indicator with a small touch of red to tie it all together.
It’s a big watch, measuring 46.8mm in diameter, with 50 meters of water resistance, and sporting a sapphire caseback and crystal with anti-reflective coating. A height of 13.2mm should make the Armin Strom Edge Double Barrel reasonably wearable with just enough depth to flaunt the dimensionality of the skeletonized design. Armin Strom pairs it all with a matching brown alligator strap equipped with an ardillon buckle in 18k rose gold and a brown rubber strap to cover nearly every occasion for the average wearer.
The movement is Armin Strom’s avant-garde, 34-jewel calibre ARM16 comprised of 194 parts. It’s manually wound, beats at 2.5Hz (18,000bph), and provides a substantial power reserve of eight days. A closer look reveals hand-beveled bridges that contrast with cross-grinding surface finishing, which adds to the Armin Strom Edge Double Barrel’s overall industrial appearance. The most satisfying element of this movement will result from manually winding it while viewing the double barrel system and inner workings from the dial side. It’s a movement the brand is proud of, and this design really helps to show it off.
While the Armin Strom Edge Double Barrel watch might be seen as somewhat of a polarizing design for some watch lovers, it offers a ton of value for collectors interested in sci-fi industrial design and high-end Swiss watchmaking. It pairs traditional watchmaking with modern design elements and results in a unique, high-quality experience for the wearer.
