If you're following my blog, then you'll realized that I like to write about famous dive watches (which are also beautiful and stylish btw). The Orient Ray II, Hamilton Khaki King Scuba and the Rolex Submariner and its alternatives are watches that I really love. In this post, I'm going to review the Seiko Sumo, a good looking dive watch from Seiko. But first, a bit of technical specs of the Seiko Sumo (taken from this Seiko Sumo review):
Well, do you agree that it looks great? Check out this review on Watchuseek.com for more pictures. While it has a traditional dive watch look, I like how it looks more tool-y rather than dressy. Everything about this watch is designed with functionality in mind. For instance, the big circular hour markers are such because it can house lots of lume on it to give a very nice glow in the dark lume performance. The white/greenish markers and hands also contrasts nicely with the dark dial watch face. There's no problem in telling time with this watch! Speaking of the bezel, it's definitely is a good one with satisfying clicks when rotating it. The font on the bezel is easy to read, without looking out of place with the large font. Not only that, the offset crown at 4 o'clock instead of the traditional 3 o'clock position gives better comfort for its users, especially if you are flexing your wrist a lot. What's interesting is the case design - and why the "Sumo" nickname was given to this watch. If you can look at the pictures of the watch from these sites here (1 & 2), you'll notice that the watch sides and lugs are NOT straight like normal watches. Instead, it has some killer curves with multiple facets that are finished intermittently by brushing and polishing. You'll see that it gives the impression that the watch body is bulging at its bottom. And what is it looks like? A sumo athlete of course LOL! Unfortunately it's a JDM (Japanese Domestic Model) watch that is meant for Japan's market only. So you'll need to go to Japan to buy it. Another alternative is to buy the watch from gray market online. I've found this site that is selling the Sumo for a nice discount. Hope this review helps you in knowing the Seiko Sumo. Let me know what you think of this watch. Cheers!
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I've written about dive watches before (the Orient Ray II and alternative dive watches to the Rolex Submariner), and suffice to say, dive watches are my favorite type of watch. The versatility of it (can be used for many occasions) and the great technical specification of its built (huge water resistance, magnetic resistance, etc.) make dive watch a good value for money watch. And no, I'm not the only one as there are others with the same thought =) In this blog post, I would like to write about the Hamilton Khaki King Scuba, a unique dive watch that's different than the others. If you're familiar with their famous Khaki King watch, then this is the dive watch version of it. And at a very affordable price (for a Swiss automatic that is), the Khaki King Scuba is one good value for money buy. In fact, it's listed as one of the 30 best automatic watch. So what's so different about the watch? For a start, Hamilton uses their popular Khaki King design on it. If you can notice the numeral hour markers, 24-hour small markers, full day display at the top and the date display at the bottom are all elements from their Khaki King watch (look at the watch on Hamiltonwatch.com). What I love most is how different and authentic it looks. It's very unique and not seen on any other watches out there. Though the dial looks a bit complex due to all those information on it, it looks very cool and something that I won't mind wearing for extended period of time. While I won't say it's a fully fledged dive watch as the complex dial can make it hard to tell time underwater, it's definitely designed with "desk divers" in mind. What are desk divers? It's a humorous term to call those that wear dive watches to their work. The dive watch will be exposed to little, if any, diving time at all. Thus, desk divers LOL! The Khaki King Scuba does have a functioning rotating bezel that can be used to check for elapsed time. And of course, there is lume painted on the watch though it won't glow as brightly as the painted area is not as big. Below is a summary of the Hamilton Khaki King Scuba specification (taken from automaticwatchesformen.com):
So what do you think about the Hamilton Khaki King Scuba? Is it a good one? Let me know what you think about it by commenting below. Ciao! I've been exposed to Orient (the Japanese watchmaker) for some time now. If you guys remember, I had written about the Orient Ray II which I believe is a really good value for money automatic watch - so much so it can give the famous Seiko SKX family (incidentally Orient is currently owned by Seiko) a run for their money. Founded in 1901 by Shogoro Yoshida in Tokyo, Japan, Orient had grown from a small watchmaking firm into one of the world's respected mechanical watchmaker. Though it was bought by Seiko in 2009, the watch still remain autonomous and, judging by the recent releases, in a better financial position to release lots of exciting new models. Like it's counterparts Seiko and Citizen, Orient typically manufacturers their movement in-house, though I'm sure some components was shared with Seiko after the buy-out in order to optimize cost. Inexpensive and fully packed with features, it's a wonder why the brand is not more well-known. For instance, the Ray and Mako watches are great timepieces that bring modern automatic movement with great quality and design at such an affordable price of less than $200. But that's not all Orient has to offer. There's also their more dressier watch that typically comes with retrograde subdial or power reserve or AM/PM indicator or even all of these! Check out these 3 great looking Orients that looks absolutely stunning for a fraction of the price a Swiss brand would charge =P 1- Orient Sun And Moon Version 2 (FET0T001W0) The Orient Sun and Moon is one hell of a watch. It's a sub-$500 (MSRP. You can get it for less than $300 on Amazon.com) and can easily bring the likes of Seiko, Tissot, Bulova, Hamilton etc. to shame with what they are offering on this watch. Just look at the watch. It's an automatic watch but the styling with the AM/PM indicator in the form of sun and moon and the day subdial make it to be a more expensive watch than what it is. For comparison, the other watchmakers will only give us a typical day/date watch for that kind of price LOL! 2- Orient Star Classic (SAF02003W0) Orient Star is Orient's higher quality watches with a more expensive pricing. And yes, it comes with higher grade movement and finishing. One such example is the Orient Star Classic with retrograde power reserve indicator. It's such a classic watch with beautiful blued hands that just pops up from the white dial. And the price? Only around $600-$700 MSRP and less than $400 on Amazon.com. Now that's really enticing right? 3- Orient Star Semi-Skeleton If you think a white dial is too boring, then the Semi-Skeleton blue with open dial is something you can consider. I mean, just look at that beauty! It also has the retrograde power reserve indicator (Orient really take a liking to these, not that I'm complaining or anything LOL!). The open dial showing the wheel balance is a sight on its own. Not to mention the clever use of yellow accent on the watch. Such a beauty. It can be had for around $700 to $800 MSRP but is usually less than $700 on Amazon.com. What do you think about these Orient watches? Grab your attention yet? Let me know what you think about these watches in the comment section below. Ciao!
One thing that people always confuse in watches is in winding: either automatic or manual. Let me get this straight: manual winding means we turn around the crown (or knob next to the case) to fill up its power reserve. Automatic winding is then easy to understand - the watch "automatically" fill up its power reserve whenever we are using it. There. It's quite simple right? Okay, once we've cleared it up it's time for a bit of digging into this matter. From the start, mechanical watch was all manual winding type. Then, watchmakers found out the way to make the watch automatically winding itself (or self-winding) around the 18th century. From then on, the quality of watches continue to increase year after year. In current time, almost all mechanical watches have automatic and manual winding capabilities. That was not the case previously as a watch could only have either one of it. But with current innovation in material and workmanship, it's feasible to incorporate both features into a normal watch case. One question that people will ask is why do we need to have manual winding in our watches? After all, automatic winding is much easier and don't require any extra effort in us (except we need to wear it enough which can be problematic for those with many watches.. LOL!). As this blog succinctly describe, manual winding a watch can do wonders to keep the accuracy of our watch in top notch condition. It will fill up the power reserve and keep the movement ticking at the best condition. So how do we manual wind our watch? It's quite simple actually (or you can read this article for the long version). First, hold the watch with both hands. It's important to NOT wind our watch while we are wearing it so that we don't accidentally use too much force and break the fragile crown stem. Then, slowly rotate the crown until you hear a faint gear screeching noise. The direction of rotation is depending on the type of movement your watch has. Keep track of how many rotation is it. You don't want to over-wind because some movement might not designed for excessive winding and can be broken due to it. So what's your winding experience? Do you like to wind your watch or you just prefer to use the automatic winding? I've always love a good dive watch. In my previous blog entry, I've written in length about it, the iconic Rolex Submariner and 3 good alternatives to that iconic dive watch. Here, I'd like to give a bit of introduction to another good value for money watch that I've found recently - the Orient Ray II. It has a versatile sports watch look, an in-house automatic movement and a great 200 m water resistance. How good value is it? Well, seeing that it's usually can be had for less than $200 on Amazon, I can say it's a really great value for money buy based on what's it has to offer! A bit of technical specification of the watch (taken from automaticwatchesformen.com):
What's Good About The Ray II? First of all, the Ray II is an updated version to the Ray I. It's very similar with the difference being the Ray I has a dedicated pusher to change it's date (which just shows the movement in it was not a modern one). In the Ray II, Orient uses their latest F6922 automatic movement which is comparable with other modern movement. Of course, there's also manual winding and hacking feature in it (the previous Ray I does not have those). Hacking means the second hand will totally stop when changing the time. Manual winding means the power reserve can be increased by rotating the crown (you can read this good article on why this is good for the movement accuracy). In terms of look, the Ray II looks absolutely gorgeous. There's also its brother, Mako II with almost the same design. In my opinion, the Ray II is sportier and more casual. But, I can always see myself using this watch to work. That's how versatile the watch is! As it's a dive watch, the standard repertoire of dive watch should be there. In the Ray II, the watch comes with unidirectional rotating bezel, screw down crown and a great 200 m water resistance. Swimming in the ocean? This is a watch that you can use as it's not too expensive LOL! Any Bad Things About The Ray II? Well, a watch at this kind of price certainly comes with some flaw here and there. Firstly, the lume on it is not really good and pales in comparison with Seiko or Swiss watches. Secondly, based on experience in internet forums, the spring bar and end link design of the bracelet is not robust. A sudden force on the bracelet/bar can knock it off. A way to go around this is by installing a new strap or bracelet such as the gorgeous hammer bracelet below: Check out this thread on watchuseek to know more about the stylish hammer bracelet. That's all folks. What do you think about the Ray II? Leave your comment below and let me know what you think. Ciao! What do you guys think about pilot watches? Well, for me it's cool as hell! Especially those Breitlings with complicatedly cool dial! But one thing for sure, it's quite hard to tell what exactly is a pilot watch. Unlike dive watches, pilot watches don't have a rigidly defined attribute that it must have. This is because dive watches have ISO 6425 as the standard to follow while there's no standard like that for pilot watches. Don't believe me? Check out this page on longislandwatches.com and see what they put under the tag "Pilot Watches". It's varied and while there are similarity between some models, all of them are different from each other on average. But one thing for sure, a pilot watch need to be legible to make it easy for the pilot to tell time. That means a subtle dress watch won't cut it as a pilot watch. Here, I'd like to point out certain design elements that have been earmarked as pilot watches over the years. 1- Open Dial with clear markers The simplest version of pilot watch is the open and easy to read dial. Sometimes, the second hand is brought down to the bottom inside a dedicated subdial to free up the main watch face. This makes it easier to tell time without disturbance from the ever moving second hand 2- Type B Pilot watch The Type B was made popular during WWII by aircraft pilots. It features a unique dial: the main markers are in minutes while the smaller markers are the hour markers. In a way, this setup makes it easier to tell time because the hour hand is shorter and overlap nicely with the small hour markers. A real classic I would say =) 3- Chronograph Function After the advent of chronograph (or stop watch function), it become a hot function to be included in a pilot watch. The rationale is very simple: so that pilots can track how long they have been flying. This is very important to gauge flight time, distance and oil consumption, especially during the times when aeronautical engineering and computers are not technologically advanced like today. 4- Slide Rule Bezel Last but not least, the grandest of all pilot watch. Slide rule bezel is a tool used to make quick calculations swiftly. It's made of two logarithmic scales where only one scale can be rotated. It's quite hard to imagine initially but there's a rule to follow that makes it simple to learn and understand. And don't you think that very busy dial looks absolutely cool?? Here is an excellent video showing how to use it: Hope you like this blog post about pilot watches and it's various designs. Do let me know what you think about pilot watches and is there any that I've missed here. Ciao! Among the different types of watches (there are at least 5 of them as what this guy said), I like the diver watch the most. It's discrete, stylish, and above all, the robust construction material designed to be used for hundreds of meters below the sea meant the watch is a true badass. And what's better than a handsome watch that's also tough? And standing at the top is the Rolex Submariner, the undisputed king of dive watches. So much so that many brands tried to copy its design, in one capacity or another. But what's the origin of the dive watch? It would seem that the first attempt at making a dive watch was due to military reasons, specifically during the 1930s of the WWI era. Around that point of time, watches experienced a surge in demand due to sudden increase in military men. They required a timepiece for various reasons: coordinating attacks, executing of elaborate strategies, etc. The sun and moon can be used but nothing beats the accuracy of having the time told by a watch. It made warfare more efficient and can be the turning point of winning or losing the battle. Panerai and Rolex were the two frontier in making a watch with sufficient water resistance for troops. Over the decades, dive watch evolved from just a simple 30 m water resistance to a watch that can go up to 1000 m below water! Enough about history lessons. Now, let's go to the basic minimum requirement of a dive watch:
The 4 points listed above are some of the commonly known aspects but if you want to dig in detail, head over to this wiki page for a good summary of the ISO 6425, an international standard for diving watches, elaborates in detail on what constitutes an acceptable diving watch. The Rolex Submariner is a great watch. But it's also worth a great deal of money! Money which I've not been fortunate of having currently. From my investigation, I've found that there are some other dive watches that also has the similar characteristic as the Submariner but at a much lower price. These 3 are the watches that I think should be a good alternative to the Submariner. 1- The Submariner Copy: Invicta 8926 Is it a Rolex? No, it's an Invicta - a pseudo-Swiss watch company. Apart from the logo and wordings on the face, the watch can be easily mistaken for the Submariner! Well, at least it's not a Chinese copy LOL! If any of you are thinking of getting a replica Submariner, the Invicta is a good choice. Though don't be surprised that it will be nowhere the quality of the real thing. After all, it's only a $80-100 watch versus the thousands of dollars the price of the Rolex. 2- Seiko SKX007 - The Famous Seiko Dive Watch The SKX007 is Seiko's most popular dive watch model due to the unique aesthetic and the robustness of the watch. Some of these even went for more than 10 years without any service, and it works fine! That's how tough these 007s are! It's been on sale for more than 20 years so I'm not sure if it will continue on. But for the time being, the SKX007 can be had for around $200 a piece. Now that's a bargain! 3- Seiko Shogun The Seiko Shogun (or the SBDC029) is another great watch by Seiko. Unlike the SKX007 above, the Shogun conforms to typical dive watch look - though if you inspect in detail, there are some minute design elements that make it a unique watch on its own. A thing that makes the Shogun very interesting is the use of titanium for the case material making the watch very light and comfortable to be worn. Now, even the Rolex can't do that LOL! For a good looking watch with titanium case, the Shogun can be had for less than $1000 a piece. Introducing the newest addition to Hublot's family, the Big Bang Meca-10 Fairey Limited Edition.
Quite a mouthful to say right? Well, this newest Hublot watch is indeed striking.. Though at first glance I thought it's a Swatch with Star Wars design! For anyone knowing about Hublot, the brand really have a penchant for designing large, obnoxious, striking and yet highly successful watches. I really have no idea who buys these watches at the astronomical price Hublot is charging them, but the fact of the matter is, people did buy them. While from a glance it does not look so regal, upon closer inspection we can actually see the watch is actually quite a beauty. And that's from me that dislike most of Hublot's watches. For a start, they (or should I say Shepherd Fairey, the artist) went away from the usual boring monotonous colors of Hublots. Their Big Bang watch is, well, big with unappealing case design. So with an uninspiring one-color on them, it become double boring! But this watch is different as Fairey and Hublot uses a beautiful pattern (in gray and blue) over its case and dial. The texture is intricate and totally beautiful to look at! Never mind the fancy stuffs that Hublot put inside the watch such as Texalium carbon fiber case, in-house movement with 10 days power reserve (though no automatic winding!), one click strap change etc. - the main selling point of this watch is no doubt the gorgeous design! I'm still not a Hublot convert but this watch does make me think of the brand in a different light. For more pictures, read over this great review of the watch on ablogtowatch.com. Till next time guys! Hi Guys!
So excited to start my new blog here. Let's have a good time shall we. Cheers! |