Sinn 156Sinn 156It sometimes happens, for example at ferret agility competitions if I happen to have a watch with a chronograph function. I've never had one. I've ususally every other useful object with me, so I guess it's reasonable to expect I'd have that too, and sometimes I find myself in a situation where timing something better than just looking at the watch and remembering the time would be useful.
So this is my first chronograph watch. It's so good it'll likely be my last too. Main reason I choose this one is the layout: I'm not at all fond of small minute totalizers which go up to 30 minutes. Another important reason is that it's military qualified in Germany and thus is likely to usable at most conceivable outdoors occasions.
It's an automatic watch with small seconds, day and date,
a small 24 hour hand syncronized with the regular hour hand,
chronograph functions with a small 12 hour totalizer, large
second and minute (the one with the small arrow) hands making
one revolution in 60 seconds/minutes and a bidirectional
rotating timing bezel.
All of this is things I have a use for.
Very good dial with low reflectivity, clear hour and minute hands. The chronograph-related hands are red, which also makes for a very legible watch (why don't all companies do something similar?) with a logical layout.
I had some small doubts about the night time readability,
since chronograph watches cannot have very large hands as
it'd obscure some functions. There's no problem at all
with that. It's not outstanding, but it's a lot better
than just good enough. Seems a bit unusual though to
have the 12,3,6,9 positions as "dark holes" instead of
stronger markers.
This is a large and thick watch. And with the military leather strap
it's even larger, because the strap is flat but the watch
case itself is quite rounded, so for that reason I don't use
it.
I use a UK MoD nylon strap instead.
That way, the watch is comfortable to wear, but its thickness
makes it not quite suitable with all clothing as it doesn't
fit under every shirt sleeve.
It can be noted that the military strap I wanted doesn't cost more than a regular leather strap and the price of the bracelet (which I haven't tried on this model, but on others it's quite good and with screws instead of push pins but not very expensive anyway compared to other bracelets for watches in this price range) is the same if you include it with the watch or order it separately. Nor does it cost any extra to get the 156 with or without the text Military on the dial. I think I like that sort of pricing philosophy.
Sinn sells some models with COSC certificates, but not this one. In practice it's shown itself to be more accurate than the chronometer specification (which isn't necessarily the same thing as saying it'd pass the test), as the one I've used has never been off by more than 2 s/day, and that's irregardless of "night position", if it's been worn a lot and manually wound in the morning or left alone for a day and a night to run down. (Nor does the variation that's there seem to have any correlation with the above treatment.)
The only things about this watch which aren't near perfect from my point of view is the chrystal, which almost unaviodably becomes scratched when you use the watch, and its size which is near my limit for a practical watch.
I like the rest of the features. It's proven to work very well separating the time and chronograph features by colour. When I'm timing something I don't really notice the hour and minute hands and when I want to know what time it is the red hands are hardly noticable. Like it should be.
That it shows both date and day is a greater benefit than I thought it would be and sometimes I wear it just because of that, not because I need the chronograph. I do use the chronograph together with the rotating bezel a lot. In all, it's made me quite a bit less interested in chronograph watches without a minute hand like this (and I'm obviously not alone, since Sinn has come up with a new movement to replace the 5100 which is no longer made).
Most of the time I wear it on a Waterborne strap.
Fit and finish is very good.
One can question a few design decisions, for example the bezel is kept from rotation by friction alone. Very seldom do you bump it a bit, and for times less than 60 min it's not likely to happen. But the minute markings on the bezel are quite a bit more clearly marked than the ones on the dial, which are interspersed with tiny 1/4 s marks (which I'm not quite sure are really needed on pilot's watch), and it's on the bezel the minute numerals are which makes it easier to use it to read chronograph minutes and seconds, so I've actually once misread the chronograph minutes because the bezel was two minutes off. I don't think either the dial nor the bezel in themselves are a problem, but in combination it could be unless you keep it in mind.
In spite of the watch being 43 mm diameter, the lug width is 20 mm rather than 22 (which Sinn has used on slightly smaller watches). I guess this is partially to better fit the military strap which is 18 mm rather than 20. (Well, this one is 18.5-18.7, but I that's a variation from 18. Presumably other German military watches uses 18 mm and they want as few different bands in stock. I would.) By the way, the military strap isn't a single piece strap to fit watches with fixed lug bars, like they often used to be.
It comes in a rather plain black box, with an instruction sheath common to all Lemania 5100-based Sinn watches.
Diameter: 43 mm Lug width: 20 mm Thickness: 15.5 mm Mass: 0.070 kg without strap Acrylic crystal 100 m water resistance Movement: Based on Lemania 5100
Sinn's web site.
Document created 2001 Nov 01, last modified 2003 June 21 by Urban