North Edge Hornet Sports Watch & Speed Tracker

Speed, laps and world time. No app, no charging.

You are two hours into a ride, or halfway through a night shift, and the watch on your wrist is asking to be charged. That is the deal with a smart watch: it does everything until the battery goes, and then it does nothing at all.

A watch that needs charging is a watch you take off. Take it off and it lives on the bench. The day you actually want a lap time, it is flat in a drawer at home. The failure is not the watch breaking — it is the watch not being there.

The North Edge Hornet goes the other way. It is a quartz analogue-digital sports watch running on one CR2016 coin cell, and the supplier states 8 to 12 months of standby off it. Nothing to charge, nothing to pair, nothing to update.

The speed function is the reason it exists. Set a distance, run the stopwatch over it, and the watch works out your speed and puts it on the small dial at the left. That is arithmetic, not satellites — there is no GPS in this watch, and this page does not pretend there is.

What It Does

• Speed from a distance: enter a distance, time the run on the stopwatch, and the watch calculates the speed onto the analogue sub-dial.
• Lap and split timing: stopwatch with lap and split capture for intervals, circuits and stage runs.
• Countdown timer: counts down to zero and sounds the buzzer.
• World time: 48 cities across 29 time zones, as stated by the supplier.
• Alarms and chime: five alarms plus an hourly chime.
• Backlight: LED illumination for the digital line after dark.
• Luminous hands: the analogue hands and markers glow once they have had some light on them.
• Full calendar: 12 or 24 hour, seconds, year, month and day, with a daylight saving adjustment.

Key Features

• Metal case: the supplier's panel lists the case as metal, with a stainless steel screw-back and metal pushers.
• Mineral hardened lens: the supplier's artwork calls it scratch resistant.
• Silicone strap: 24 mm wide with a metal clasp — a figure three separate NORTH EDGE sellers agree on.
• 50 m water rating: stated by the supplier as 50 m, which is 5 ATM. Read the Limits tab before it goes near water.
• Coin cell, not a charger: CR2016 at 3.0 V, with 8 to 12 months of standby stated.
• Case size: 48 mm on the supplier's diagram. Two other NORTH EDGE sellers list 47 mm, so call it 47 to 48 mm.
• Weight: 106 g on the silicone strap, stated by two sellers of the same model.
• Working range: the supplier's panel states -10°C to +60°C.
• Two colourways: Black and Yellow — and both ship on a black strap. The colour names the dial accent, not the band.

Limits

No heart rate, no pulse, no sleep tracking. The case back is a solid stainless steel cover with a logo etched into it. There is no optical sensor behind it, no window and no LEDs, and no NORTH EDGE source lists any of those functions. This page used to claim heart rate, sleep tracking and a pulsometer. It has none of them, and those claims have been removed.

No GPS. Speed comes from a distance you enter and a time you take. Enter the distance wrong and the speed is wrong in exactly the same proportion. Measure a known lap or a marked kilometre and it is honest; guess it and you are guessing.

No compass, altimeter, barometer or thermometer. The -10°C to +60°C figure on the supplier's panel is the range the watch is built to survive, not a temperature it will show you. The old copy read that spec as a thermometer. It is not one.

Nothing to pair. No Bluetooth, no app, no phone notifications, and no Android or iOS connection of any kind. It runs on a coin cell, which is the whole reason it lasts — but it also means there is no radio in it.

Water: 50 m is a rating, not permission to dive. The supplier's artwork badges this "Waterproof 50m". We will not use that word. 50 m is 5 ATM, which covers rain, washing up, a shower and swimming at the surface. It does not cover diving, and it never covers pressing the buttons while the watch is under water — that is how water gets past the seals on any watch with pushers. No test certificate was sighted for the rating and no standard is printed on the case.

No certification is claimed. There is no AS, AS/NZS, ISO or EN marking on this watch, none appears anywhere in the supplier's artwork, and none was sighted. If you need a watch tested to a standard, look for that standard printed on the case back.

It is a segment display. The digital line is an FSTN segment LCD — numbers and fixed labels only. There is no colour screen, no map and no menu.

Big on a small wrist. 47 to 48 mm across, 14 mm thick and 106 g. It sits high. If you wear a 38 mm dress watch, this will feel like a lot of watch.

Q & A

Does it track my heart rate or my sleep?

No. The case back is solid stainless steel with no optical sensor in it, and no NORTH EDGE listing for the Hornet mentions heart rate, pulse or sleep. This page said it did. That was wrong, and it has been taken off. If a heart-rate watch is what you are after, this is not the one — pick a wrist unit that genuinely carries the sensor.

How does it work out my speed without GPS?

You give it the distance, then time the run on the stopwatch. The watch divides one by the other and puts the answer on the small dial at the left, which carries OVER and UNDER sectors for anything off the scale. Over a marked lap or a measured kilometre it is accurate. Over a distance you eyeballed, it is only as good as the eyeball.

Can I swim in it?

The supplier rates it at 50 m, which is 5 ATM. Surface swimming sits inside that, along with rain, washing and a shower. Do not dive with it, and do not touch the pushers while it is in the water. No test certificate was sighted, so treat 50 m as the supplier's figure rather than a measured one.

Will the Yellow one come with a yellow strap?

No, and this catches people out. Both versions ship on a black silicone strap. The colour name refers to the dial: Yellow has a yellow chapter ring and sub-dial, Black is monochrome. The supplier's own colour panel actually labels the black one as grey.

What happens when the battery dies?

It takes a CR2016 coin cell and the supplier states 8 to 12 months of standby. Any watch shop will swap it in a few minutes. You can do it yourself, but the water resistance is only ever as good as the way the case back and its seal go on again — which is the argument for letting someone with the tools do it.

Is it a smart watch?

No. It is a quartz watch with a digital module. Nothing about it connects to a phone. That is a real limitation if you want notifications on your wrist, and it is the entire point if you are tired of charging things.

Specs