Anthony Price
It's pretty tough, right now, to find a good place to buy a good quality, affordable Chinese Watch. A US-based Sea-Gull authorized dealer used to offer Sea-Gull watches on Amazon, but their listings disappeared about a year ago. Long Island watch recently began offering Sea-Gull watcges, quite a nice variety, in fact, but the pricing isn't 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.So I've had any eye out for an alternative for quite a while now. This Time100 was at the top of my list, and even though the company is unfamiliar to me, I decided to take a chance on it...Now, off the bat, there is one pet peeve I have to get out of the way. I prefer to buy 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 "Tourbillon-Style", watch, which is potentially deceptive.. This is not as great a sin as it might be if the claim were actually more credible. I think most people realize that watches with Tourbillon movements cost thousands or 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 they do in a true Tourbillon movement (to offset the effect of gravity on accuracy, at least in theory).Aside from this one little fib, I think the rest of the Amazon listing is quite accurate.. 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 to be the same, and performs similarly in some tests I use to check watch crystal quality. I think this crystal will have excellent scratch resistance, not quite as good as Sapphire, but much better than regular mineral crystal or acrylic. (It may shatter somewhat more easily than mineral crystal glass, however, which is true of Sapphire also).In my book, Seiko's hardlex crystal material is just about as good as sapphire. As I said, I've got a lot of Seiko watches, and not one of them has a single scratch.I am also find that the ST-2505 keeps very good time. The movement is a little finicky, as they 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 at first, then gradually settle down - in this case to 4-5 sec/day fast, with very little positional variation. This is A+ accuracy performance for an automatic watch.Time100 is not Seiko, or Citizen, or Casio, or Swatch. They are putting together their time-pieces by finding a generic case and dial components, then obtaining a movement and casing it. I doubt anything is manufactured "in-house". All one can ask of a small company like Time100 is that they search carefully to find nice parts to use in the watch. And I think TIme100 has done just that. Everything works! It keeps good time! The dial is very attractive. The gilloche pattern work is surprising, exceptionally good.The watch is 41mm wide, not including the crown. 41mm is a nice medium size, 1mm wider than the classic Rolex Submariner, 2mm thinner than a Seiko SKX007 - it's probably a tad smaller than the average watch (as recently watch diameters have gotten larger and larger),. It's an excellent choice if you have small wrists. It fits my 7 1/4" wrist perfectly. The case height is about 15.5 mm (thicker than average). For an automatic watch, it's not particularly heavy, yet has a good substantial feeling on the wrist.The lug width is 20mm, and there's plenty of room inside the lug spring bars to accommodate a variety of different strap types. The strap it comes with is pretty long, and should work for wrist sizes up to ~ 8 1/2", but gigantic persons might need to replace the strap. I have the deployment clasp locked into the 3rd from the inmost hole; the holes are about 1/4 inch apart, and there are another 6 holes on the other side.The case back states the watch has 5 ATM water resistance rating. There is a screw-down case back, but no screw-down crown. I think 5 ATM corresponds to a 50 Meter rating, which means it has modestly enhanced water resistance, above that of a watch which is rated merely 'water resistant'.There a a couple things that could improve the design -More distinctive markers and hands - the silver markers on the chapter ring are rather generic looking, and though the silver blade style hands aren't bad, and the polished silver finish is nice & shiny, I find the hands too modern looking to be in the same watch with the extravagantly baroque dial design. (Note: the red second hand with lollipop is delightful, much more 'right' for this watch, adding a great splash of vivid color that complements the red "running on empty" indicator at the bottom of the power reserve indicator).Better Lume -- The hands do have lume, as advertised: applied to all 5 hands, at least in spots. After brightening it up with a high powered flashlight, the lume is briefly very pretty, but then, fades quickly. The surface area where lume is applied is slight, and whatever compound is used isn't impressive for staying power.Improved chapter ring integration - The broad chapter ring obscures more of the gilloche pattern on the dial than seems desirable, and has rather uninteresting second tick marks. It's an insert set on top of the dial, which results in a seam that shows between the layers. It would be much nicer if dial was all one piece, with applied or printed numerals, rather than polished steel hour markers.Better watch band - The "genuine leather" band... is somewhat stiff and stuffed with God only knows what to add substance. I appreciate the deployment clasp, but it's not the highest quality.Smoother winding action - the crown has a lot of resistance when when winding, and as the mainspring tightens up, one has to apply quite a bit of force to continue winding. The feel while winding is coarse. I don't think you can really snap the mainspring, but it feels as though that could happen. Probably nothing can be done about this, as that's "just the way it is" with Sea-Gull movements.Final thoughts:I am happy with my purchase. It's nice to get a watch that contains the very fine Sea-Gull ST-2505, and especially nice to get one operating with such precision.I'm maybe just a teeny...weeny...tiny bit disappointed that not every element on the watch face is as nice as the beautiful dial...but 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 lots of attention to detail, resulting in a time-piece of high quality. For the money, this watch is an extremely good value.
