Ciga Design U Series Blue Planet Gilding Version Watch Review

When hearing the words “Blue Planet” your mind will probably be transported to the soft tones of David Attenborough informing you of all thing’s ocean bound, but for the watch enthusiast it should take you to the Blue Planet series of watches from CIGA Design.

Currently celebrating their 7^th year anniversary for the Earth Day, Chinese watch manufacture CIGA Design, with the effort to redefine the aesthetics on your wrist with modern mechanical art. The brand is led by one Mr. Zhang Jianmin, one of the top 10 industrial designers in China, and has been awarded 16 international design awards since opening.

Blue Planet Design Philosophy

The design team is made up of eight top designers from eight different countries, and the work put out has garnered over 500,000 loyal fans worldwide.

The most recent watch to be released is the ‘Gilding Version’ of the CIGA Design Mechanical Watch Series U Blue Planet. The other version of this watch is the appropriately coloured blue version for Earthday. The Gilding Version comes as a black and gold variant, hence Gilding.

The face of this timepiece is a unique dial inspired by the very Blue Planet we live on. The dial is centred on the Indian Ocean and with a slight ‘dome’ mimicking the Earth, further enhanced by the slight curve created by the sapphire crystal used to complete the watch.

This new version has the sea in a deep shade of black, with the land mass of the Earth a striking 24K gold gilding. The dial also reproduces the scale of the planet, with scaled down continent-to-ocean ratio along with varying altitude of the terrain.  

Build and Specs

All versions of the Blue Planet watches are water-resistant to 30 metres, good enough for rain or wearing in the shower.

The watch won the Challenge Watch Prize of 2021, and comes with a refined ceramic case heated at 1500 degrees celsius making this a watch, that can bear the hardships of modern day use while providing a smooth and lightweight accessory to wear. Combine all of this with the eye-catching design and you get wristwatch for any and all occasions.

An impressive, innovative and unique aspect of the watch is the watches hand. CIGA Design has created a way of telling the time with just the one hand. The circumference of the watch has the hour hand static on the outside with a rotating minute dial, as time goes on and the watch turns the North point on the compass follows the minute dial indicating the exact time. This feature is called Asynchronous.

This is achieved by a patented automatic calibre integrated by 30 jewels, a power reserve of 40 hours and a movement frequency of 28800 times/hour.

Reputation and Accessories

This new gilded watch has already amassed a 100% five star rating after 10 reviews. There is only one drawback spotted in one of these five star reviews and that is that the watch doesn’t have a low light mode. So the dial will become harder to read at night, unlike a lot of high end watches that have this feature.

The watch comes with either a ceramic strap secured by a double-ear butterfly clasp, or a food-grade flourine rubber strap.

The Blue Planet edition won an award from the GPHG, making CIGA Design the first original watch brand in the past 21 years to win the award.

During their anniversary celebration for every watch sold they will donate 2% of the revenue to the Earth Day Organisation, to assist in their efforts to heal our world. CIGA Design also helps with this by making any packaging and leaflets only from recycled and recyclable materials.

For more information follow this link here or go and check out the previous review of the blue version of this Ciga Design Watch right here on WatchReviewBlog.