Hasta La Gadget!

Each year, the watch industry gathers in Basel to show off the latest models to a mix of retailers, media and moguls.

Think of it as the high-end European version of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Like CES, there are 100,000 people there, but the booths for brands like Rolex are three-story towers of polished wood and leather, and each meeting comes with an offer of an espresso and some chocolate. Plus, people are smoking — inside the convention hall.

The 2010 Basel Watch Fair offered up the usual mix of high-end luxury, technical prowess and the just plain weird. Of the hundreds of watches we saw at this year’s show, here are a few that caught our eye.

Above:

Bell & Ross showed off its Radar model, which uses three concentric circular dials to mark the hours, minutes and seconds.