Mr Jones Watches has made a small but fundamental change to the case of its most popular watches, including A Perfectly Useless Afternoon.
The new case design has smaller lugs, making the watch look smaller while the iconic dial is made more prominent.
I’ve loved my Perfectly Useless Afternoon by Mr Jones Watches since I bought it from the British brand’s London store a couple of years ago – but there’s always been a small problem with the case.
Admittedly, this only affects those of us with smaller wrists, and even then it’s far from a deal breaker. But it’s the size of the case lugs. They always protruded just a touch too far from the top and bottom of the case. This increased the ‘lug-to-lug’ measurement and made the 38mm case diameter seem larger than it really was.
Now though, there’s a fix. In early September, Mr Jones Watches announced a redesigned case with smaller, wider lugs. The case size is the same as before, and crucially, so are the lug bars so all existing straps still fit. But the shorter lugs mean the watch takes up slightly less space on your wrist.
The new design is being rolled out across Mr Jones’ most popular models, starting with A Perfectly Useless Afternoon, Beam Me Up!, and Ricochet. Keen to experience the update for myself, I asked to see the new Useless Afternoon and have spent some time comparing it with my own.
From memory, and without seeing the watches side-by-side, the difference is tiny. But line them up together and the compact new lugs are obvious. I always thought the old lugs extended just slightly too long, their length further exaggerated by the polished finish.
The result is a lug-to-lug measurement – the entire length of the watch from one lug bar to the other – of about 41mm, down from about 44mm on the old model. Three millimetres doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a roughly 20% reduction, and in watch design, such a change is a big deal.
Comfort is unchanged, since the old lug bars generally sat above one’s wrist anyway. But I like how the shorter lugs mean more of the strap is visible across the front of the wrist. They also mean less of your wrist is visible through the gaps between the lugs and case.
This gave the old model a skeletal, slightly fragile, look which I wasn’t a fan of, while the dial of the new model now looks slightly larger – and when the dials are as fun as Mr Jones’, that makes even the tiniest change worthwhile.
