Time100 Men's Navigator-Series Tourbillon-Style Mechanical Watch
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Steel
details
Time100 Men's Navigator-Series Tourbillon-Style Mechanical Watch is equipped with erosion-resisting stainless steel case, self wind movt, luminous watch hands and large easy read dial. It is a perfect mix of fashion and art.
Brand Name:
TIME100
Model Number:
W70035G
Case Material:
Stainless Steel
Dial Material:
Metal
Band Material:
Calfskin
Water Resistance:
50m
Band Length:
290mm
Band Width:
20x18mm
Case Diameter:
41.5x49mm
Case Thickness:
13mm
Movement Type:
Self-Wind Mechanical Movement
★5ATM Water Resistance, Calendar Displayed
★Different Colors Available
★Tourbillon-Style Design with Stainless Steel Case
★Movement Model: SEA-GULL TOURBILLON, Self Wind
★Luminous Watch Hands, Cool Large Watch Dial, Easy to Read
Five Stars
I absolutely love my watch!!! It is so amazing
my time keeper
everything I wanted, works as advertised. The best thing about this and why I wanted it was because it never needs a batttery!
it looked really nice! Bought it for my father
I bought this watch last week, when I got open the box, it looked really nice! Bought it for my father. The size of the band is perfect for him. And the band is adjustable. As awesome as this watch looked in the listing, it's way better in person.Winding the watch up is easy, and it counts time accurately so far. It is easy to read, the metal is high quality, and it is just beautiful overall. Great deal especially for the price. Will definitely recommend to my friends.
Loved it
Excellant
Nicely put together, everything works and keeps good time
Time100 is a small watchmaker, which is based in Hong Kong, I think.
The company hasn't really established a reputation, good or bad, with horology enthusiasts. As a brand it's pretty near the bottom of watch world's totem pole.
Still, I've not come across any thing distinctly negative on Time100, which puts them above some other asian brands, like "Reef Tiger" or "Thomas Earnshaw", which have discredited themselves by deceitful attempts to associate their companies with European heritage.
It's pretty tough, right now, to find a good place to buy a good quality, affordable Chineese Watch. One of the US Sea-Gull ADs used to offer Sea-Gull watches on Amazon, but they packed up and left Amazon about a year ago. Long Island watch recently began offering Sea-Gull models, quite a nice variety, in fact, but the pricing isn't very attractive, for me at any rate. LIW wants something like $299.00 for the least expensive Sea-Gull open heart with power reserve and ST-2505 automatic movement. Similar Sea-Gull models were available on Amazon for 189.00 a year ago, as I recall. Somewhere around $175.00 is the going rate for this kind of thing from sellers on Ebay.
So I've had any eye out for an alternative for quite a while now.
Now, off the bat, there is one pet peeve I have to get out of the way. I prefer to buy stuff from honest retailers, retailers who describe their products accurately and who offer "full disclosure" of things that might reasonably regarded as of interest to consumers. The Amazon listing for this watch describes it as a "Turbillion", which is completely false. In this case it's not quite as great a sin as it might be if the claim were actually more credible. I tend to think most people looking at this watch would realize that watches with Turbillion movements typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, and would be suspicious on that basis, do some research, and figure out that what the watch really has, which is visible through the open heart, is a rotating pendant. This little gizmo is often found on this type of Sea-Gull ST-25 based watch, as the pendant replaces a small seconds hand, which is not needed, because there's a big seconds hand. The rotating pendant is intended to provide additional animation to the dial, and it does so effectively. But the inner parts that provide the watches timing, the escapement wheel, pallet fork, and hair-spring, remain fixed in one position, and do not revolve in the way that Turbillion movements to (to offset the effect of gravity on accuracy, at least in theory).
Aside from this one little fib, I give Time100 credit for at least not trying to be anything other than what they are, and what they should be proud to be, a watch making company from Asia. Having bought the watch and having now had a chance to look it over, I can also validate what is said in the rest of the Amazon listing. It does have a Sea-Gull ST-2505, and working power reserve meter and retrograde date feature. The crystal really does appear to be "Hardlex", or something very similar, which is surprising because I thought this was proprietary to Seiko. I have a lot of Seiko watches, including one with a slightly curved dome and white face, just like this watch, and the glass material used looks identical, and both sound the same when plucked with a finger nail, both pass the water drop test I used to check whether a watch glass is similar is sapphire or a compound of similar density (which is true of Seiko Hardlex).
This test involves depositing a droplet of water on the glass. If it 'beads', i.e, remains a nice round droplet, it's not necessarily sapphire but it's probably NOT mineral crystal. On mineral crystal glass, the droplet becomes 'runny' and spreads out, losing it's nice round self-contained form.
I am also pleased to say, the ST-2505 keeps very good time. The movement is a little finicky, as they often tend to be. It's sensitive to being wound up to quickly or fully from a completely unwound state, and will run fast by about 15-20 sec/day unless you wind it slowly and only about 2/3 of way, letting the watch wind itself fully as you wear it. (Or by periodically and slowly winding it just a little bit at a time to top off the reserve, but only about once every couple hours, and only giving it 3-4 winds each time). When carefully wound like this, on a time-grapher I find it runs about 4-4.5 sec/day fast, with very little positional variation. Unfortunately the finikiness comes back if the watch winds down to far. Once the power reserve gets below about 22 hours, the watch starts to speed up, beating faster and faster till it just drops off and stops. Dealing with winding and keeping the power reserve up is not as hard as it might sound; if you just wind it up 2/3 of the way, then wear it, the automatic rotor seems to be exceptionally efficient and will keep the watch powered up well, unless of course you are extremely sedentary, suffering from catatonia or elephant's disease, perhaps.
All of this only applies if you get a watch that has these particular issues; Most of them have at least a little sensitivity to overwinding, but some are remarkably free from isochronism (altering rate as the mainspring winds down).
Time100 is not Seiko, or Citizen, or Casio, or Swatch. They are working up their designs by finding a generic case, a generic dial, generic handset, and then obtaining a movement and casing it, attaching the dial, and hands obtained from where-ever. Hopefully a small company like Time100 is diligent and looks around carefully to find nice parts to use in the watch. But your not going to get anything technically advanced, like "water resistance" or "shock protection" (The Sea-Gull movement does have a shock resistant design. But don't drop it from any significant height onto a hard surface. That will usually kill the watch. Don't let it anywhere near water, much less submerge it in water, as doing so will cause the watch to fill up with water, and surely kill the watch.
I think that Time100, taking into consideration the context in which they make this item, has done a very nice job. At least in my case, everything works! It keeps good time! And actually, the dial is very attractive. The gilloche pattern work is surprising, exceptionally good.
There a a couple things that could improve the design -
More distinctive markers and hands - the silver markers on the chapter ring are rather TOO generic looking, and though the silver blade style hands aren't bad, and reflect light in interesting ways, again, they are too plain looking to be in the same watch extravagantly elegant dial. ( The red second hand with lollipop is a delight, adding a great splash of vivid color that complements the red "running on empty" indicator at the bottom of the power reserve indicator. I don't so much like the blue second hand on the rose-gold model, which seems to clash with the rest of the color scheme. But RED is perfect here).
Better Lume -- The hands do have some lume, as advertised: applied to all 5 hands, at least in spots. After brightening it up with a high powered flashlight, the lume show is briefly very pretty, but then, fades quickly. The surface area where lume is applied is pretty slight, and whatever compound is used isn't especially impressive for staying power.
Improved chapter ring integration - The over-broad chapter ring obscures more of the gilloche pattern work on the dial than seems desirable, and has rather uninteresting second tick marks. It's an overlay/insert type set on top of the dial. It would be much nicer if the chapter ring were (vertically) thicker (and thinner horizontally) with a chamfured or curving decent to the plane of the dial. As it is, there is a rather unsightly seam around the circumference of the chapter ring, where it drops off to the dial. Extremely picky, I know, but when you see the watch you may also find the chapter ring's integration with the dial somewhat lacking.
On the positive side, the chapter ring has a 'sun-burst" finish, which contributes visual interest.
Better watch band - The "genuine leather" band... must be made from the same dead horsehide that I've encountered in quite a few black/grey/brown crap colored alligator pattern bands on cheap watches of late. It's stiff and stuffed with God only knows what to add substance. I appreciate the deployment clasp, though it's definitely also one of areas where Time100 economizes on this watch.
Final thoughts:
I am, on the whole, a pretty happy camper as far as my purchase here. The watch is a 'keeper'. It's nice to get a Sea-Gull premium movement like the ST-2505, and especially nice to get one in perfect working order, keeping excellent time.
I'm maybe just a teeny, weeny, tiny bit disappointed that not every element on the watch face is as nice as the dial. Yet the ensemble is very attractive, and from any distance the watch looks like a million bucks...
I would recommend this watch, highly. As long as you understand that it's made by a small company as essentially a generic assembly of parts, I think you'll be very pleased to own one. Time100 has been careful, giving much attention to detail, resulting in a time-piece of high quality. For the money, this watch is an extremely good value.