SVENN Walnut Wood and Gold Watch Review

Founded in 2017, SVENN is a direct-to-consumer company selling a relatively small selection of wood watches for men and women. I’ll be honest, I don’t know all that much about this company, except that four friends started it as their about page is sparsely populated with information. I don’t even know where they are located or where the watches ship from, but I’m guessing it’s not in North America, judging from the copy on their website.

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The current lineup of watches the company sells falls in the $99-129 range, making them quite affordable. Of course, how that compares to other wood watches, you can judge that for yourself. While their lineup may change from time to time, I was a bit surprised to find that their current lineup only consists of two models for men and women, each with a few wood type and dial colour options.

Packaging

Arriving in a nicely made canvas sack with a draw-string closure featuring the SVENN logo, the wooden watch I received was safely ensconced in a large wooden box. Featuring an unfinished but burnished look with the SVENN logo slightly engraved, I found the entire presentation of the watch to be, while a touch over-the-top, definitely in line with the “hey, we make watches out of wood” motif. I can certainly see someone making use of this large wooden box to either keep this watch in or for some other storage purpose if you like that sort of rustic wood look kicking around in your space.

Design

Made of 100% tempered Walnut wood, the Gold watch, named thusly for the colour of its dial and not the material it’s made of, is a medium-sized man’s watch with a case size of 41mm. For reference, Apple’s current lineup of Series 7 smart-watches retail in a 41mm and 45mm case size.

As far as the overall look and feel go, if you like the general design aesthetic of what a wood watch brings to the table, you’re definitely going to like the aesthetics of this wristwatch from SVENN. When considering this watch, another thing to keep in mind is that your watch may look slightly different from the one you see in photos because its body is made primarily from wood. This is, of course, because each piece of wood has a slightly different texture and grain.

I especially loved the colour of its dial. As you can see in some of the photos in this article, the colour of the dial is rather malleable depending on the lighting conditions. At times, the dial gives a distinctive golden appearance, while at other times, there is a nearly overwhelming sheen of luminescent green.

Nevertheless, the company has made some good choices with their dial design. Minimalist in its design, the dial features almost rose gold-coloured hour and minute hands. The smaller sub-dial features a contrasting background with concentric rings and functions as the seconds indicator. The overall look is minimalist in its design choices, and I have to commend the company for restraining itself to keep its logo small and restrained. My only design knock is that I would have removed entirely the small “SWISS MOVT” text located near the six-o’clock position as I found it unnecessary and simply detracting from the minimalist motif.

Build Quality

The overall build quality of the SVENN Gold watch is very good. Gaps where necessary are evenly distributed throughout, and there are no obvious flaws. But speaking of flaws, like a few other wood watches I’ve owned, this one did come with a small chip on the back of the case. No one will ever notice it while I’m wearing it, but nevertheless, this is par for the course when you make a watch out of slightly deformable material like wood.

The watch also features scratch-resistant sapphire glass and a Swiss Ronda 1060 movement on the inside. While Ronda, and in particular the 1060 isn’t the most beautiful movement you’ve ever seen, it’s quite reliable and should last the useable life of the watch itself.

Size and Feel

The overall size and feel of the SVENN watch are fairly good. As with most of its wooden competitors, this watch is incredibly light, coming in at a weight of only 62 grams. What that says about the watch’s internals and thickness of crystal glass, well, I’ll leave it up to you to speculate about.

The Strap

Nicely crafted and put together, the strap for this watch is made of the same wood that the case is. At 20mm in width, it’s a touch too narrow for my personal taste, but it actually matches the watch case’s overall size quite perfectly. The double-clasp mechanism used to secure the strap in place on your wrist seems to be a fairly high-quality stainless steel and has felt easy to snap on and off.

As previously mentioned, the links and gaps between each component of the strap appear to have excellent spacing and mobility and have yet to snag any hairs on my Sasquatch-like arm.

Other Things of Note

The watch arrived with a fairly nice bonus bracelet made of polished wooden beads. I’m not entirely sure if this is standard on all watch purchases with SVENN, but it was a nice surprise. One fairly disappointing thing was that the watch did not ship with any tools to add or remove links in the strap, nor did it come with any extra links. If your wrist is too small or too large, you might be left to your own devices here or have to contact the company to see if they’re willing to ship you some extra links.