On my last trip to the US, I picked up a watch. I literally did pick it up because I bought it on Amazon, shipped it to my hotel and during my (one night) stay, picked it up. I did this for a very easy to explain reason – it was cheaper to buy in the US! But what’s not that easy to explain is why I bought this watch in the first place.

From my last couple of watch blogs, you might have noticed that I was on a counterfeit & automatic run. When I’ve been bored, I’ve been browsing around forums and sites to see what cheap watches I can buy – I can’t justify spending $1000s on a nice watch when I’ll be bored of it in 2 months! I saw some decent automatics around the $70 range (I’ve been looking at the Russian Vostok Amphibians and again at the Chinese Eyki ones) when I realized I can get a solid, brand name Seiko for around the same price. Sure, it’s not a hallowed watch maker, but Seiko is a reputable brand. It’s no longer made in Japan, but at least it’s made in Malaysia (i.e., not China). Ok, this $80 watch isn’t a high end Seiko watch, but at least it has good reviews! It was even cheaper in the US, going for around $50 which explains why it was almost a no brainer for me to buy it.

It’s not a bad watch, but not also not a great one. I liked that it was a military style watch, but it’s not as clean or high contrast as one could be. I knew that it was a small dial (38mm), but it really feels small now that many watches have humongous dials. I don’t like the brushed metal on the case as it makes it look plastic and cheap. It’s only water resistent (you have to get the next model up for real water protection), but I’ve never had a cheap watch stop due to water absorption, so I’m not too worried about it. People say that this watch works as a every day beater and I would agree, except I don’t wear a watch every day and it’s a pain to adjust the time and day of the month since its an automatic. A quartz one would work better for that purpose.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: watches