Alba Hyper-Tech Carbon Twin Sensor

As it's Easter Sunday, it's a tradition to go for a hike before sunrise and watch the sun come up from the top of a hill. For that purpose I decided to wear a watch designed for the hills.

The watch I chose today is by the Seiko brand Alba, and part of their Hyper-Tech (or Hypertech) range. The watch has many names printed on it: Carbon, Twin Sensor, and Alti-Thermo.  I think that Carbon refers to a particular line of Hyper-Tech watches, while the twin sensor and alti-thermo names refer to the fact that this watch has both barometer (altimeter) and thermometer sensors /functions. The design is big and chunky and has a look which is a little reminiscent of the G-Shocks, but with a non-symmetrical shape. There are many screws on the case, and the sensor is visible at the top of the watch. The strap is a rubbery plastic (which suffers from brittleness) with a ridged design and had the part number of PW031.

The LCD is split into two sections for the different features. The top display has a dot matrix array and a small area for digits, and is used for the day and date as well as the altitude graph or elevation change and hundredths of a second in stopwatch mode. The bottom part of the LCD has two lines which give the time (6 digits at the bottom) and height and atmospheric pressure above. At the right side of this section is a set of Arrows pointing up and down to indicate the change in atmospheric pressure and hence predict the weather (going up =sun, and going down =rain). The watch is controlled by 5 buttons for the modes, adjustment, start/stop and light (small bulb based). The mode button unusually pulls out to put the watch in time setting mode.

The watch is powered by a W754 module which has alarm (possibly time, altitude, and temperature), altimeter /barometer, and chronograph (with altitude recording).

This model is the W754-4A00 and came out in 1995. The catalogue number was ADQP001 and an original sales price of ¥14,000.