Zeon Tech Solsuno NIL4972

It's time for a family Christmas meal today, so I chose something smart looking with Christmas lights!

This watch is also one which I got from an unusual source - I bought it from an auction TV channel in 2003. I hadn't seen the start of the auction, but caught how the watch looked and rang in a bid, and got it for around £60.

The Solsuno is an LED watch, but with a difference. It uses 138 LEDs to show the time, but no more than 3 LEDs are really required at any one time. It has individual LEDs for every second, minute, and hour, a marker for am/pm, and 5 for other indications (such as alarm). The LEDs are set in rings so they are where the hours, minutes, and seconds would be on a normal dial watch. The time is shown by pressing the top button which sets the seconds LEDs going until the correct second is shown, and the hour and minute then appears too. There is also a flashing mode where the time shows in a quick flash every second - this is the mode I normally use so I don't need to press the button every time I need the time.

The Solsuno watches came out in 2000, with the idea coming from Greenwich (the home of GMT). They were originally distributed by Zeon (who may have been the original manufacturer). Zeon watches are a British company who are one of the largest distributors of novelty watches, and have been featured on my blog many times before. The Solsuno watches are not done by Zeon anymore, so only the early ones were. Many different variations have been released over the years so the watches are quite common. A lot of discussion online has said that people think the watch is too large, even for medium sized wrists, but I have a small wrist and I think it looks fine!

Most of the Zeon models have a ZT or ZR model number, however this has the number NIL4972, but still says Zeon Tech on the back.