This is an automatic, modestly priced dive watch.
I wanted a watch to take travelling which could take some abuse, be used for swimming and not be too expensive. Replacing batteries for something you only use a couple of weeks per year didn't seem like a good thing, so that it wouldn't need that was a requirement. High accuracy wasn't seen as very important, so a standard ETA 2824 movement was enough.
This an automatic watch with a date window and a unidirectional rotating bezel.
Well made and designed.
Flat, uncoated sapphire crystal is the best option for scratch resistance and legibility.
The dial is a very nice faintly greyish blue with all printed and fixed markings very well done. This also goes for the hands.
With one exception: The luminous material. For one thing, it's not tritium (although it's clearly a better material than that commonly used a decade ago), so soon before morning it's not easy to read the time. For another, it looks like it's not evenly applied, so to the naked eye it looks a bit darker in places, both in daylight and when it glows. Not to the degree it is much noticable unless you look for it, but it's there. Looking at it under 10x magnification you can see dark inclusions all over it.
The date window is at the 4 position instead of the 3. Looks much better that way.
My steel bracelet looks pretty nice, but there are two drawbacks
to it: It can't be bent to a small radius and with the extension
link installed you can only adjust size in a single 1/2 step without
removing/adding links (otherwise it looks like it could be done in
1/2, 1 and 1 1/2 steps).
Both of these factors make it less comfortable than it could have been without being more expensive to make.
When worn, if you press the dial and clasp together, the force isn't transmitted to my wrist, so it's not very conforming.
The black dial version comes with a rubber strap, which I usually don't like.
Averages over time to +12s/day for me.
But it's clearly not regulated in many different positions, since the time it gains by night is very depending on attitude, and it's more accurate when worn on the left wrist instead of the right.
So, worn on the left wrist and with care taken how it's placed at night (neither of which I want to bother with) my figures indicate it can be made do less than +8s/day.
The screw down crown doesn't feel very smooth when screwing it down and the steps for finding the right positions for winding/setting aren't quite crisp.
Very basic, but nice, box.
The manual is generic ("if your watch has a day window" and the like), which I actually like for a watch in this price range, as I don't want to pay extra for things which don't add to functionality.
I think the steel bracelet was a waste of money, as I'm never going to use it. (Therefore I could also have chosen the model with black dial.) It felt right over shorter times, but for more than a day it was no good, so instead I tried a rubber strap and finally settled on a woven nylon strap which turned out to be comfortable both in and out of water in a tropical climate as well as at home.
Document created 2001 Aug 09, last updated 2001 Oct 04 content reviewed 2003 Jan 08 by Urban