Stella Felix Swiss Made Automatic Watch Review - Unique Design

Stella WebShop

Packaging

The Stella Felix "Lucky Star" in Latin is a new watch company that emerged from New York with an interesting yet tastefully done automatic swiss made everyday watch. The watch arrived quite fast via UPS within a couple days and I was quite surprised by this one! The custom leather case is of good quality and features a leather holster as well as their custom caseback tool which is really heavy duty and can be actually considered a weapon! Anyways, it is well packaged and I do enjoy a nice leather case instead of the typical black lacqeur presentation box which usually goes straight to the closet..

Case

The Stella Felix features a very unique case design crafted of solid 316L solid stainless steel with mixtures of brushing and slight polishing such as the chamfers across the tops of the lugs and the sides of the brushed smooth bezel. The finishing is pretty good without any error and sharp surfaces. The 20MM lugs curve down slightly and really grasp the wrist nicely on the supplied band and even more impressive is the black pvd coated portion of the case for a nice contrast. The watch measures in at 40MM across by 13MM thick including the domed AR coated sapphire crystal. In terms of lug to lug we are looking at a very wearable and comfortable 46.8MM from my calipers. Nice details include the drilled lug holes which is a breeze for swapping out straps - especially in todays times' where many enthusiasts own a number of straps. One specification I really do appreciate is the screw down enamel crown/caseback which helps seal that 100M of water resistance. This makes the Felix a very capable watch as I am able to swim, shower, wash my hands, without worrying about water entering the case. Overall, it certainly is a very unique case design and something I have never come across in my time here at Watch Addiction, which says something about Stella - they want to be different..

Dial

The Dress Blues iteration which is one of several dial/strap combos they offer is probably the most appealing along with the 77 Blackout, atleast for me. The blue linen dial just screams "I like wearing Jeans and a T-Shirt.." It is a very versatile dial and one that can be matched with many types of attire, from the workplace to home on the weekends. It also screams vintage a little bit, which I do like. All of the numerals are applied and filled with SuperLuminova as well as the hands and indices with a mixture of C1 and C3. It is by no means a "Lume Monster", but this is not a dive watch and the lume is actually fairly decent for a casual timepiece. The arrow pointed red tipped seconds hand is quite unique and matches the pointer hour and swordlike minute hand very nicely. Honestly, nothing about this dial looks out of place and whoever designed it certainly did a very good job at matching all the elements together. Our date is featured in a circular window at the typical 3:00 with a black wheel, and kind of stays out of the way of things which allows for a more symmetrical dial. I, for one can definitely appreciate the work that went into creating this design - as it is 1:1 and 100% Stellas own.

Swiss Made Automatic Movement

The movement featured is a swiss automatic caliber which some may be familiar with produced by the Fossil group. The STP 1-11 26 jeweled 4 HZ caliber is a newer movement ( 2012+ )and essentially runs just like the ETA 2824. It features everything we want in a watch at this price such as hacking seconds, hand-wind, and a quickset date. They went a little above and beyond using a higher grade caliber which features blued screws, their own custom black rotor, and nice perlage detail on all of the main plates. In my few weeks with this example, it has gained around 4-5 seconds per day and winds quite smoothly as well. Some other brands which utilize this movement include Zodiac - a traditional diving watch manufacturer.

Leather Band

The full grain leather band is comfortable, and only required a few days or so to firmly grasp my wrist. It features a custom buckle which is brushed as well as quick release pins for swapability in seconds, which is becoming more and more common these days. Im not really one to fancy leather bands as I like to Swim
during the summer, so I did swap the band for a rubber quick release. However, the quality is definitely there as well as the styling, and looks like it belongs on a $1200 watch.

Conclusion and Thoughts

Furthermore, as a complete package I think they did a pretty good job for their first release into a market saturated with tons of watches from all over the world. They definitely do stand out with their design and that is somethjng certainly not easy to achieve. If you read about the two owners of Stella - you will realize they do have experience in the watchmaking industry, and development. I like the semi vintage New York feel of the Blue Jeans model, but also gravitate towards the matte black dial as it is a bit simpler to look at. ( Check the video where I display that model ). I do look forward to seeing what this brand has to offer us watch enthusiasts in the future, and I believe it can only get more interesting from here on...