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Last year, when Ressence announced the Type 8, it was met with great excitement and surprise by their fans, including yours truly. A simpler and less expensive Ressence wasn’t something that seemed on the horizon. The watch was a stripped-down take on the seemingly magical Ressence display, reduced to hours and minutes. A lack of numerals, matched with an expansive, heavily domed dial, gave the Type 8 a different mood from Ressence’s other watches. Rather than leaning toward the technical, they felt meditative, which is perhaps to say, they felt less about the engineering and more about the resulting experience. I shared my thoughts in a review you can read here.
A year and a half or so later, Ressence has dropped one of the biggest surprises of 2024: a follow-up to the Type 8, which is logically called the Type 9. This wasn’t at a big event like Geneva Watch Days or Watches and Wonders but rather a random week in December, making it even more unexpected. Adding to the shock, it’s another departure from the Ressence norm, featuring their most compact case, and yet continuing the simpler hours and minutes only dial. However, where the Type 8 felt like a radical change, the Type 9 feels more like a spin-off. It’s not a new story but a subplot or side quest. Perhaps, even an alternate take on the Type 8.
