Odyssey Monaco

There’s a lot to like about Odyssey watches, from the quirky corporate names they give each of their models like Executive, Status, Diplomat and International, to the random but very cool modules that appear in their watches.

I’ve always been a fan of digital hands watches. This Microma Swiss had a few very similar imitators, including one by Olympic and Trendtime. But I was really intrigued to see this Odyssey with the display flipped to have the icons on the right and analog LCD on the left.

It comes with all the features other than an hourly chime (or, at least, I haven’t been able to find where to set the hourly chime yet) – 12/24 hour time, day/date (which can be triggered by pressing a button or always visible instead of the seconds in the main display), daily alarm, chronograph, countdown timer and dual time. The alarm plays a set of tones, not quite a melody, but not the standard beep beep either.

The analog LCD is the best bit though which was designed to perfection in the Casio 103 module and Seiko G757 where every second has its own LCD alternative.

There was either a lack of space, lack of memory, or lack of technology when it came to the Odyssey though and instead of there being an LCD ‘hand’ every minute, it’s more like every few minutes. So the digital minutes and analog minutes aren’t always exactly in tune with each other but every couple of minutes they align. It’s nothing major and quite a unique solution to a potential problem.

This particular example looked a bit battered when I found it on eBay. There was a blue stain on the LCD itself which is always a concern (the Casio DB-1000 is notorious for this, if it happens it’s virtually non-removable) but amazingly in this case was only due to an incorrectly-sized battery pressing too hard on the LCD. A replacement battery of the right size (AG-8/381/SR1120SW) and the stain was gone.

The bezel area looked quite worn too but some Autosol, a toothbrush and plenty of polishing and the watch came up very nicely indeed. It’s always nice when you don’t have to do too much work to get it 100% operational and other than the battery, a clean, and realigning the alarm plate, this watch hasn’t missed a beat. Unfortunately the light doesn’t work (or needs looking at) but that’s a small price to pay for the functionality that does.

Odyssey watches don’t appear often enough on eBay (I bet there are plenty that show up in boot sales in the UK though, as Odyssey was the Dixons chain own-brand in the 1980s) so when they do, they never cease to amaze.

I missed another one that was on eBay at the same time (the International) but think I got the better watch of the two.