One of the real highlights of being involved in our Windup events year to year is getting to know brand owners and founders, and periodically getting a little peek at what’s to come. More and more often, brands come to our events not just with watches in their current catalog, but with early samples of watches they’re planning for the future to show prospective customers, members of the media, and the Worn & Wound team. I won’t lie: it’s a nice perk of being on the inside. A few months ago during the Chicago show, the team at echo/neutra pulled some really exciting stuff out of a bag that was not quite ready for prying eyes. The new Averau42 collection, which at launch consists of a pair of watches combining titanium and ceramic construction, is an exciting next step for a brand that we’ve been interested in for some time.
The heart of these watches is what echo/neutra calls the TiFrame construction. This is an idea we’ve seen a handful of times from other brands, usually bigger brands, in the recent past. These watches are made with an internal titanium case, or frame, that protects the movement and offers tensile strength that ceramic and other alternative materials lack. The outer layer is black ceramic, which provides a virtually scratch proof surface and a moody aesthetic vibe for these watches that fits in nicely with the design codes the brand has established over the past several years. This type of construction, in addition to making the most of the strengths of titanium and ceramic while avoiding the weaknesses of each material, also allows for a lower and more accessible price point than a full ceramic watch.
There are two flavors of the Averau42 with the TiFrame being introduced simultaneously today. The first is the Automatic Chronograph, which measures 42mm in diameter, 14.6mm in height, and 51.5mm from lug to lug. It has a water resistance rating of 100 meters and runs on the automatic Sellita SW510B caliber with 56 hours of power reserve. The dial is black with high contrast white markings, and red accents on the running seconds and chronograph seconds hands. The retail price of the Automatic Chronograph is set at $1,970.
Also on offer is a stripped down three hander with a similar look and feel. The Automatic 3 Hands features the same 42mm diameter and 51.5mmm lug to lug measurement as its chrono counterpart, but comes in at a far more svelte 10.5mm in height thanks to the thin Sellita SW200 caliber inside. The dial, similarly, is a clean matte black with large lumed hour markers at the cardinal positions and white hashes and numerals elsewhere (along with the same red tipped seconds hand as the chronograph). The three hander comes in at a very compelling $970 retail price.
I feel like I finally “got” echo/neutra when I reviewed the Rivanera last year, and that’s still one of my favorite releases from a small brand that I’ve encountered in all the time I’ve been writing about watches in this category. The Averau42 finds echo/neutra in a different register, a less experimental one to be sure, but still reflects a great deal of focus in the design and purpose of the watch. For some it might be hard not to think of similar watches from large brands when they look at the watches in the Averau42 line (IWC watches in the Top Gun collection of course come immediately to mind) but I think that actually works in echo/neutra’s favor here considering the approachable entry price and their distinct personality, with those knurled crowns, modern typeface, and a clean consistent layout.
More information on the Averau42 collection can be found on the echo/neutra website here.
Zach Kazan
2025-09-12 16:00:00