By I will admit something before we get started talking about these new watches from Hercules: I was a bit skeptical when I discovered their tagline is “Luxury Alpinism.” I’m sorry, but this feels like marketing talk dreamt up by an A.I. that has had every Patagonia catalog ever created downloaded into it. Alpine climbing, a sport where participants regularly die, is far from luxurious, at least as I understand it. I don’t know, I just think things like sleeping in a real bed and not being uncomfortably freezing most of the time are prerequisites for a luxury experience. Oh yeah, and not dying. So I admit that my eyes might have rolled all the way back in my head when I opened up the Hercules press release, and I was prepared to dismiss them, but then I saw the watch and was actually quite charmed by it. I don’t know that it makes their motto any more sensible, but it’s an undeniably handsome and cool sports watch.