The one handed watch is a curious thing. On the face of it, it seems illogical. On a mechanical watch, stripping away a more precise minute hand in favor of a single hour hand negates one of the things enthusiasts covet most: precision. Or, at least, the relative precision. Things like COSC certification and the hard work and ingenuity that go into making mechanical movements become secondary when you pull back sufficiently far from an ability to clock the time to the exact second (indeed, the COSC will not certify any watch without a seconds hand).
But removing that hand is additive, as well. It forces the designer of a watch to think very critically about how that hand is going to tell the time, and the thing that actually defines one handed watches is not so much the fact that they only have a single hand, but the way in which that hand interacts with any timing markers on the dial. There are different approaches, of course. Avant-garde designs might strip out markers altogether, so that a dial’s texture or material can be the singular focus of a piece. This, to me, feels like the most jewelry oriented option possible. Another approach, and the one most often favored by Meistersinger, a brand known primarily for their one handed watches, is to focus like a laser on readability at a glance, designing markers and indices that are large enough and graduated to a degree that makes it relatively easy to get the precise time at a glance. I often think about the time I spent with the Bell Hora back in 2021, and how remarkably easy it became to tell the time, almost to the minute, with just a single hour hand. That’s thanks in large part to the integration of clever hand and dial design, which you simply can’t screw up if you’re in the business of making one handed watches.
The latest from Meistersinger is the Archao, which is a stripped down, graphics forward interpretation of the brand’s aesthetic. This watch is defined by high contrast hour and minute markers against simple, colored dials, which are available in a textured black as well as deep red or blue. Markers between each hour indicate 15 minute intervals, which is not the strongest option for total precision, but will certainly provide wearers with a good general idea of the time as hours pass. The single hand comes to a sharp point (again, table stakes for a one handed watch) that should make it relatively simple to determine where you are in that 15 minute period between markers.
These are larger watches that feel indebted to pilot style timepieces of the past, measuring 43mm in diameter in DLC coated stainless steel. They run on a Sellita SW200 caliber with 38 hours of power reserve, and are water resistant to 50 meters. Each is mounted to a saddle style leather strap that reinforces the pilot’s watch design inspiration. The Arabic numerals, indices at each hour, as well as the single hand, are all solid blocks of lume, in the style used by Tudor and others, so they should put on a pretty impressive light show when fully charged.
The Archao is available this month, and the retail price is set at 2,390 euros. Meistersinger
Zach Kazan
2026-02-17 14:00:00