This snake-themed watch is designed to scare

The Apple Watch is good, but is it designed to inspire awe and fear? This watch was

ATOWAK COBRA watch
(Image credit: ATOWAK)

The best watches and best smartwatches are terrific timepieces, but very few of them are terrifying. Enter the ATOWAK COBRA, which the marketing bumph says was designed to "inspire awe as well as a little bit of fear". 

As you can see, it's not like traditional watches. Instead of a traditional watch face and hands it has a revolving satellite hour wheel with spinning minute hands, and the whole thing is encased in a snake-inspired body that's certainly very different from rival pieces.  

The original COBRA sold out in just three days, and there are now two new variants in Volcano Red (pictured above) and Royal Blue.

A smart watch, not a smartwatch

The COBRA is an unusual watch but ultimately it's still a watch, albeit one with a badged carbon fibre panel and a 316L steel casing; it's a traditional timepiece with a very non-traditional design. It comes with a leather and a stainless steel strap, and the crystal is made of tough sapphire to resist scratches and cracks. 

Even familiar pieces are in strange places here, so for example the crown is on the top – behind the "head" of the COBRA instead of located in the traditional way on the side of the watch. 

It's certainly unusual, and if it sells as quickly as the original it'll be pretty unique too. The RRP is $1,999 with worldwide free shipping and a two year warranty; the firm is currently running a 15% discount promotion for new customers. You can find out more on the ATOWAK website here.

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).