This is the new Tempest navigator’s watch from Rotate North, it was designed to be both tough and versatile while still being affordable to all sectors of the watch market – it has an MSRP of just $308 USD.
Rotate North is the only watchmaker I can think of based in North Ireland, the company is made up of a small but dedicated team who were recently recognised by Wired Magazine for building one of the world’s best budget dive watches.
The Rotate North Tempest is a utilitarian navigator’s watch designed to be worn every day, or just when you’re heading out into the wilderness and you need a tough watch that you know won’t let you down. It has a brushed 316L stainless steel case, a pressurized screw-down case back, and a screw-down crown giving it water-resistance down to 330 ft (100 metres or 10 ATM).
Inside the watch you’ll find a Ronda 715LI movement, a high-precision quartz movement with 5 jewels that offers a remarkable 10 years of battery life. The movement is protected by a shock-resistant Diashock system, it’s also designed to be highly serviceable for generations of active use.
On top the Tempest has a rotating 12-hour dive bezel, a sapphire crystal, and hands and markers coated with LumiNova for nighttime visibility. The face has a classic, minimalist design to ensure easy reading in all lighting conditions, it has a date window and hour, minute, and second hands.
The watch comes with a compound rubber strap that’s toughened to withstand active outdoor and ocean conditions while still being suitable for casual office use, and it’s made from sustainably-sourced rubber by a small family business in Northern Italy.
The movement and case are both built in Germany and then finished in the United Kingdom at Rotate North’s facilities to ensure quality control.
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
