Stuff Geeks Want

You know when you see a watch that catches your eye? Well, the TX 600 Series Pilot Fly-Back Chronograph comes in seven different colors, but the black model just oozes cool with its German engineering and Italian design.

The watch has a matte black, a stainless steel case, and a micron thick layer of metal that protects its outer finish. At 44 millimeters wide, it features a black leather strap with buckle-down closure, Fly-Back Chronograph, tachymeter, two time zones, sapphire crystal, a quartz caliber movement with four independent motors and is water resistant up to 330 feet.

Buy for $575 from Amazon

Bell & Ross luxe-utilitarian timepieces are as hard as nails. Modeled after aircraft cockpit dials, the BR 01 92 Type Aviation Heritage is waterproof to 328 feet.

This is a beautiful, fashion watch and features a stylish 46mm carbon-coated stainless steel case, a black dial, index marks and a synthetic canvas strap.

The Aviation Heritage collection targets explorers and adventurers, which means if you’re outdoors or daring the extremes of nature, it’s a great choice. As one blogger wrote, “I wore this in many social and traveling situations and found that it drew eyes like a road flare.” Enough said.

Buy for $2,960 from Amazon

If you’re a serious runner, you know the pros and cons of the Nike+. The biggest problem with it is that you can’t monitor your performance in real time and adjust your speed and cadence on the road. The bottom line is that the Nike+ is great to evaluate your performance after a run.

So what the best device to help you while you’re on the road? Hands down it’s the Garmin Forerunner 405CX. The CX model is an upgrade to the 405 and honestly the only thing that’s changed is a firmware upgrade. Among it’s changes, it now calculates calories burned based on your heart rate instead of based on your distance (which the Nike+ does).

The 405CX weighs only 60 grams and lets you track speed, distance and location. It has this bezel based interface that lets you control it by tapping, holding or running a finger along the bezel (a lot like an iPod).

Once you’re home and cooled down, the 405CX uses ANT+ technology which sends workout data to a PC or Mac wirelessly so you don’t even need to take off the watch. And the 405CX offers a wealth of data. You can see current pace, average pace, total time, time left, distance left, heart rate zone, time of day, heart-rate, % or max heart rate, and many more.

Obsessed with running? This is the watch.

Buy for $370 from Amazon

The only thing less inspiring than the name of this product is its packaging. What you’re looking at is what you get: no name, no manual, no nothing except for some cheaply made Chinese tools (and a link to the Web site Watch Material for instructions).

Then again, what do you expect for 12 bucks?

But seeing as that’s as much as many jewelers charge for resizing a watch band or replacing a battery, if you can get a couple uses out of it you’re already coming out ahead. Of the dozen or so watches I own, this kit was all I needed for all but one of my watches.

And don’t forget to pick up some cheap batteries from BatteriesAndButter.com. They sell the same Energizer cells you can buy anywhere else, but at near-wholesale prices (especially if you’re buying 1,000 at a time!).

Buy Watch Tool Kit for $12 via Amazon

If you live in Britain (or in Texas), where the weather changes all the time, you might want to pick up the new Meteo from OregonScientific, masters of all weather forecasting geekery.

The watch features four easy to read icons (sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, and rainy) display the upcoming weather conditions in the next 12 to 24 hours, depending on your settings. It works by tracking the barometric pressure changes where you are, and using that to forecast the weather.

The profile is sleek, low-profile and features a reverse LCD display with a stopwatch function. It’s also weather resistant up to 30 meters

Imagine, you’re on vacation or at your apartment, laying out sunbathing at the pool and your watch alerts you that rain is moving your way… so you tell the fine looking ladies laying in the chairs next to you that it’s about to rain, and invite them inside to the bar for a drink. Then you wake up and realize you stayed up to late playing WoW, and it was all just a dream.

And the weather is always a good conversation stater if you can’t think of anything else to talk about… this watch could be your ticket to your next date.

Price £39.99, direct from OregonScientific.com. We’ll update this post when the watch is available from U.S. retailers.