Posted by: b_andersen

I just finished wearing my new Seiko Mechanical model SARB031 (link) for 31 days straight without letting the mainspring wind down. I’m pleased to announce the watch performed to quartz movement specifications. It gained a mere +5 seconds in a month. That’s right, not +5 seconds in one day, but +5 seconds in one month. It’s another testament to the quality of Japan-made Seiko watches.

I didn’t handwind the watch, nor was it placed on a mechanical watch winder. I let the movement rotor do all the work. I wore the watch between 12–24 hours in a day, depending on my mood. When not worn, the watch was placed either dial up on a desk, or on the watch stand pictured above.

Here’s what the USA published “InSync Watches” magazine had to say about Seiko Time Corporation in an article for it’s August 2008 issue (page 76):

Seiko is a manufacturer in the true sense of the word. It designs, manufactures, finishes and assembles everything it makes, for low-end quartz watches to its premier collections, including mechanical watches … Seiko buys nothing from anyone else in the industry, relying on its own internal capabilities to produce everything.

You can tell something about a country and its culture by its popular buzz words. Right now in the USA, two buzz words/phrases often heard are “robustness” and “race to the bottom.”

In Japan, the Seiko Time Corp. builds robust, affordable, high-quality watches in its own country, employing its own citizens, including mechanical watches that sell for under $500 USD and keep time to +5 seconds a month — watches that are tops.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Seiko. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.