California Watch Co. PCH Driver Jump Hour Watch Review - Another Amida Digitrend Homage

I'm going to be honest here. I mean, this is a review; that's sort of the job. I picked this one up the same day I bought the Nubeo, because I was craving something fun to dig into. I've always wanted a proper Amida Digitrend homage, the vintage jump hour "instrument panel" watch from the 1970s that's become something of a cult classic among collectors chasing that oddball driving-watch era. Original Amidas are hard to find and carry the baggage of a nearly 50-year-old movement, and even the modern Amida re-release runs well over $3,000, so a homage felt like the right way in. Then I found this one sitting on the same site as the Nubeo, on sale for $88 against a $249 list price, and there was no version of that deal I was walking away from.

Case on the CA PCH Driver

This is a chunk of steel, and honestly, that's fine by me. The case is 43mm wide and 19mm thick, 316L stainless steel, and it wears better than those numbers suggest thanks to a shorter footprint front to back. It sits compact on the wrist even with all that thickness working against it, more like a chunky dashboard gauge strapped on than an oversized case fighting your wrist for space.

The overall shape and the way the crystal wraps around the dial are clearly built to mimic a vintage automotive dashboard cluster, and it nails that look. You can tell exactly what era and what kind of car this thing is supposed to live in the moment you glance at it.

Reading the CA PCH Driver

This isn't a traditional dial. The PCH uses a prism to bounce the hour and minute readouts off a flat surface up to a perpendicular viewing angle, essentially borrowing the same trick old driver's watches used so you could glance down without taking your hand fully off the wheel. It's a genuinely clever mechanism, and the jump hour function, where the hour digit snaps forward the instant the minute disc rolls from 59 to 00, is fun to watch happen in real time.

It is, admittedly, a bit hard to read at a glance. But once you put yourself in the actual use case, hand on the wheel, quick glance down at speed, the whole design clicks. I understand the vibes. This isn't meant to be read from across a room, it's meant to be read from a driver's seat. One gripe: the "CA" branding on the dial is a bit large for my taste. I get that brand presence matters, especially for a company still building recognition, but it's a bit much given how much real estate this small display already has to work with.

Movement & Features

Power comes from a jump hour quartz movement with an LED backlight, and the backlight is honestly one of the best parts of the whole package. It doesn't try to be bright and modern, it mimics the dim amber glow of old dashboard lighting almost perfectly. I could barely see the gauges in my old 1969 Firebird's dash at night, and this watch captures that exact same low-visibility charm on purpose. It shouldn't be a compliment, and yet here we are.

The backlight button is the only pusher on the case, which keeps things simple. Setting the time requires the two recessed pushers on the side, and you'll need a pin to actually adjust them, standard for this style of watch, but worth knowing going in if you've never dealt with a pin-set watch before. Water resistance sits at 3 ATM, so this is a daily-wear piece, not a swimmer.

Other Colorways

This is the Brushed Silver Forest Green colorway specifically, and California Watch Co. offers the PCH Driver across a genuinely wide range of finishes if green isn't your speed: All Black, Brushed Silver Black, Brushed Silver Navy, Brushed Black Gray, Brushed Gold Black, Brushed Gunmetal Black, Brushed Silver Sunset Orange, and Brushed Gunmetal Sunset Orange, among others. It's one of those watches where the case and mechanism stay constant, and the color story does all the personality work, so there's a real chance one of these speaks to you even if forest green doesn't.

Straps

This came on a forest green rubber strap, and honestly it suits it. However, since this has 22mm lugs and a solid chunk of stainless steel, the strap options are limitless. If you want a numbers-matching color, your best bet is StrapHabit's orange premium sailcloth or the orange locking keeper rubber if you want to keep it original to how you got it. The rubber has great texture which will complement the watch wonderfully, plus the locking keeper for when the road gets a bit crazy, right?

Interesting Observations

The PCH Driver isn't the only Amida Digitrend homage on the market, and if you go looking around (and on the StrapHabit site), you'll find the Break Watches driver that lines up almost spec for spec: same 43mm case width, same 22mm lug width, the same jump hour quartz movement driven by a micromotor gearbox, comparable thickness, and an identical control layout of a backlight button flanked by two pin-set pushers. The similarities go beyond coincidence territory. This has the hallmarks of a shared base case and movement module that different small brands are sourcing and dressing up with their own branding and dial finish, a pretty common practice among Digitrend homages at this price point.

Where things diverge is price and presentation of the Break Watches and PCH. Some of these alternatives run closer to $120 with no branding on the dial at all, just a bare "Quartz" label, while the PCH Driver lists at $249 with the CA logo front and center. If you can catch the PCH Driver on sale the way I did, the math works out fine either way, but it's worth knowing you're not necessarily paying for something wildly more exclusive than what else is out there chasing the same Amida homage. The CA branding and the exact dial finish are really what you're choosing between at that point, not fundamentally different hardware underneath. The PCH has CA branding, which I guess is what you're paying for.

Final Thoughts

This was a cheap, fun way into the Amida Digitrend homage world, and honestly, it does exactly that. It's quartz, it's not the sharpest backlight around, and reading it accurately takes some getting used to, but that's part of the charm of this whole category of watch. Even the original Amidas were reportedly dark and hard to read, so a slightly fussy display isn't a flaw so much as it's faithful to the source material. This watch is exactly what it's meant to be. Fun, and a little bit of a wink at watch history.

At $249 retail, and knowing now that at least one other brand is chasing the same Amida homage with what looks like the same core hardware for roughly half the price, I'd call this an "if the CA branding and dial finish speak to you specifically" purchase rather than a must-buy. At the $88 I actually paid, it's an easy recommendation for anyone curious about jump hour driving watches without wanting to gamble on a vintage piece or drop over $3,000 on the modern Amida reissue. I'm genuinely happy with this one. It's a bit hard to read, sure, but that's kind of the point, and it scratched an itch I've had for a while without breaking the bank to do it. Worth shopping around on price, though: some retailers have this on sale for as low as $159. For reference, here's how it stacks up against the Break Watches jump hour homage Nick reviewed for StrapHabit back in 2024.

Comparisons