Nixon - The Small Lodown

It's a much more modern and feature rich LCD watch for me today.

This watch is The Small Lodown by the Nixon brand. It has the model number NIX003G and is still on sale for an rrp of $125. Like most (all?) Nixon watches, it has a tag line, and this one is "In the know". The Nixon brand make lifestyle accessories in all manner of designs to match their owners style. It is based in California where it started in 1998.

This model is an LCD watch which is aimed at users of the sea, such as surfers, boaters, and fishermen, and as such is 100m water resistant. To provide their needs, this watch has a Direct Tide feature and is programmed with the tide information for over 200 beaches for over 15 years. You just select the beach, and when you want to know, and it'll tell you the tides.

This is the purple model which has an inverse LCD display. The display is dot matrix and split into 2 main sections, the bottom for the time (or beach name, or modes), and the top is where the tide graph sits. The other modes are more standard, with the watch having dual time, alarm, chronograph, and timer.

Eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted from the photos that I have a problem with the LCD display as the top half doesn't show properly. This is because at some point in its history, the watch has had something spilt inside. LCD watches normally have a connector block which transmits the signals from the circuit board to the LCD panel. This is commonly a strip of rubber with very fine wires running through it to connect the terminals. The block is then clipped, glued, or just squashed into place to make the connection. The wires don't seem to match one-to-one on the circuit, but as long as some wires make all of the connections, then the display will work. I thought I'd let you know about this, as it is a common cause of an LCD display not working fully, and can sometimes be cured by adding pressure to this connection to make the wires connect - you need to watch out though, as the wires are fine and can easily become more damaged if you take it apart and treat the connection block incorrectly. When the spill happened on this watch, it coated (or corroded) the block and wires for the top half (-there are two separate blocks for this model) and stopped the part working. I've been unable to fix it yet, so the watch only shows the bottom part, but at least I still have the time!