You've got to love a firm that looks at one of Apple's best-selling wearable device and says "you got the design wrong". And that's what luxury case maker Golden Concept seem to be saying with its new Crown Sport case, which costs more than an Apple Watch Ultra 2 and completely changes Apple's design too.
Designed for the Apple Watch Series 10, the new Crown Sport case is designed for "elegant, active individuals who embrace sophistication in every adventure". That's me! But it's also $899, and that means it's not me after all. However, if you can afford to drop Apple Watch Ultra money on a case for your Apple Watch Series 10, there's lots of interesting stuff going on here.
Golden Concept takes the crown (and moves it)
The most obvious thing you can see in this case is that there's no Digital Crown; instead, there's a centred crown with buttons above and below. That's because Golden Concept wanted a layout more in keeping with most luxury mechanical watches, so it's come up with a clever way to effectively move the digital crown and have a central one instead.
The case itself has a hinged bezel hatch for screw-free installation and comes with either a fluoroelastomer strap (the Crown Sport) or later this year, a stainless steel one (the Crown Classic). The Sport version has a classic butterfly clasp and comes in two colors, Rose Gold and Silver. Both have an RRP of $899 (so around £686 or AU$1,347 as ball-park figures) and are strictly limited editions: there will be just 999 Crown Sports made and sold worldwide, so if you get one you're in a pretty exclusive club.
I'm quite fascinated by Golden Concept because I'm very much not the target market: in addition to its luxury watch cases, the company also make some rather unusual iPhone ones, often involving precious metals and sometimes studded with diamonds too. If you like the sound of that, keep your eyes peeled for the next iteration of Golden Concept's Billionaire's Gadgets collection – that delivered iPhone, AirPods Max and Apple Watch Ultra cases with platinum plating and a combined total of 7,586 diamonds for just $250,000. I'll take two…
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