Review: Tissot T-Touch Expert

My Tissot T-Touch Expert and I in Kathmandu, Nepal.

This year, I have the great fortune of being sponsored by Tissot. They presented me with the über cool T-Touch Expert watch for this trip. This watch has had me excited ever since the first time I saw it last October. I knew that it would be the perfect timepiece for my trip across Tibet. I am back to report; I was not disappointed. In fact, the T-Touch Expert lived up to every one of my expectations.

As you may recall from an earlier post, the T-Touch is more than just a standard watch. It’s a watch with multiple functions that are accessible by touching the crystal of the watch face, thus the name. The functions include an altimeter, compass, thermometer, weather (barometric pressure), alarm, and chronograph, not to mention the normal everyday functions of a watch; date and time (dual time). The main functions I was interested in for this trip were the compass, the thermometer, and of course, the altimeter.

Some digital watches can be challenging to change the time zones and locate all the functions. The Tissot is remarkably easy in that regard. To change both the analog as well as digital time (These two facets of the watch are linked. As you change the digital time, the analog hands change as well.), you simply select the time function and hold the plus or minus button down for more than 2 seconds till the digital readout blinks and then the minute hand starts moving soon to be followed by the hour hand. Pretty simple and was not a problem to adjust to the different time zones we found ourselves in. To gain access to each function, you hold down the button at 3 o’clock and wait for the digital “T” to start blinking. Then simply touch the function listed under the crystal face. The hands of the watch rotate around to point to that function, and the digital display reads out the data pertaining to that function, Very cool! Watch the video above for a visual description.

The thermometer seemed to be accurate though like any thermometer on a watch, you need to remove the watch and allow it to adjust to the outside temperature to give an accurate reading. The only two times that I used a thermometer was in the tent at Everest Base Camp and walking outside at Base Camp around the glacial moraine. Honestly, I have no way to judge the accuracy of the thermometer, but I have no reason to doubt it’s accuracy either. I say, I have no way to judge the accuracy of the thermometer, but that’s not quite true. In the morning at base camp when I woke up the thermometer on my watch read -2°C in the tent. Mind you, I didn’t have another thermometer to compare it with, but that morning we did find that our water was frozen in our water bottles and cups. So, that would tend to bear out the temperature reading on the watch. While walking around the glacial moraine at Everest Base Camp, I clasped the watch on the outside of my down coat. Within about 10 min., it was reading 7°C. The only thing it didn’t take into consideration, and I don’t know of any watch that does this, was windchill. The wind was blowing fiercely there and I’m sure the chill factor was well below freezing.

The compass served useful on several occasions just as I had predicted. We were able to judge which way sunrise would be and set up in accordance. I didn’t use the compass as much as I thought I would. The fact was that there were limited places to shoot the Potala or Mount Everest and they were not determined by the direction of the sun, simply by what was available. But, the compass was accurate and served to give me the proper direction when I needed it. Don’t think the compass is just “bling” or toy factor. This is the real deal. You can reset the magnetic declination so your compass point to True North. Plus, you can put the compass in azimuth mode to indicate the heading that you need to turn to. In azimuth mode, the T-Touch sounds a beep and a visual signal when the 12/6 o’clock axis of the watch is aligned with the heading set. Like I said, this ain’t no toy!

Tissot T-Touch at the picturesque Rongbhu Monastery, Tibet, the highest monastery in the world at 5050+m.
Mt Everest can be seen in the background.

The altimeter seems to be spot on. But there was no lack of discussion about the accuracy of altimeters on this trip. In fact, altimeters seem to become a major discussion point among trip participants. There were at least three other watches with altimeters on the trip. There was one other Tissot T-Touch, a Sunnto, and a Casio. I think there were some unreasonable expectations placed on the altimeters due to and lack of understanding of how an altimeter works. I won’t go into depth here, but I do think it does need to be clarified. An altimeter works off of barometric pressure. An altimeter needs to be set to a specific altitude at any given time, and throughout the day, the pressure changes even if you stay stationary! Even cockpit altimeters inside of aircraft need to be reset at every airport to both the official altitude of the airport and the barometric pressure outside the plane.  For more on how an altimeter works, read this very insightful short analysis. Once we calibrated our altimeter to known values, then we had an accurate read of the altitude we were at at any given time throughout the day. Of course, just as this article in the link states, we had to recalibrate (or as Tissot calls it “presetting” the altimeter) several times throughout the trip. Sometimes even throughout the day due to the huge differences in weather. But this was no trouble as it is the same simple process as changing time zones, only it is done with the watch showing the altimeter in the display rather than the time.

The long and the short of it is, this watch is absolutely gorgeous. The titanium case and band make this watch weigh almost nothing. Seriously, almost nothing. The T-Touch weighs in at just 12.1gm as opposed to my Citizen Eco-drive Sky Hawk at 17.8gm! Yet, the Citizen is half the depth of the Tissot. On a side note: I want to minor on a major point for me. As I get older, I turn 53 this month, I find watch dials harder to read, especially digital ones. The T-Touch has a large digital screen with a large readout and a very bright backlit screen for night viewing. Just what I needed. The Sky Hawk on the other hand, was really frustrating how small the digital numbers were. It was impossible for me to read at times. You can see it clearly in the photo above. As I said, this is minor for most but a big deal for me.

The touch crystal makes this watch fun to use and a novelty. There was at least one person on this trip that wasted no time in purchasing this very watch after they returned back home. I am a watch freak. I love watches and this watch has easily taken its place as my favorite.

I think photographers will find this watch helpful. Indispensable? No. You can certainly take great pictures without having this watch on your wrist.  But here’s the deal, I know photographers – and they love gadgets – and this watch is the ultimate gadget for your wrist. I can’t recommend it enough!