Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this Watch at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada for CDN$368 plus 13% tax. I noticed this on sale at another store for the lesser amount of CDN$338.00 - unfortunately only after I had made my purchase.
(The review was updated after approx 4 Months of use: Sunday March 13, 2011: The watch automatically advanced 1 hour this morning to start DST!)
PROS:
- Keeps highly accurate time to the seconds. I have compared it with computers that are freshly synchronized with time servers using NTP (Network Time Protocol) and it was found to keep exact time. I also compared it with CBC Radio time signal transmitted at 1:00pm. It was just amazing how the seconds hand points exactly at 12 O' clock position when the beginning of the long beep is heard from the radio. This accuracy, of course, depends on being in one of the 5 regions where it can receive a Time Calibration Signal.
- Synchronizes automatically with Atomic Time almost every night (I noticed it missed one night with a snowstorm) at Burlington, Ontario. Attempts to manually synchronize during the DAY never worked. Attempts at manual synchronization at NIGHT worked fine most of the time. Burlington, ON receives the time signal from the NIST transmitter at Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. The Distance from Burlington,ON to Fort Collins,CO is 2109 kilometers or 1311 miles or 1139 nautical miles according to [....].
- Perpetual Calendar feature is quite useful. For anyone unfamiliar with this feature: This feature helps show the correct date through out the year. It knows which months have 31 days, whether February will have 28 days or 29 days etc. Most watches will need their date to be adjusted manually a few times per year -- typically when the date transitions from a month with 30 days to the next or from February to March. With Perpetual Calendar feature the pain of resetting the date is eliminated.
(Be aware that if you are in a region without Time Signal reception, the Perpetual Calendar feature needs to be manually set. This is a one time procedure -- and this procedure tells the watch whether the current year is a leap year, if it is not, how many years have past since the last leap year, what is the current month etc. Once this is done, it will keep the correct date.(read the manual on how to do this.)
Things worth mentioning:
- The "World Time" claim does not mean it is DUAL TIME capable. The watch can only display the time at a single timezone at any given time. It just means IF your home time is set correctly, you can then follow a multi-step process to choose another city, after which the watch will display that new City's time. If you are about to get off from an airplane at another timezone, it will help you set the new time without asking strangers. (There is NO single push switching from this new timezone back to your home timezone. To get the original timezone back, you will have to repeat the city selection process and choose your home city).
If the new city you are in is in one of the 5 regions that is covered by an Atomic Time transmitter, the watch will self-adjust daily at 2:00AM and keep accurate time. Please note that it is the choice of the City that tells the watch which wavelength it should tune-in, in order to receive the local time signal. For example, if you travel from New York in the US to Tokyo,Japan, the watch will not receive the Japanese time signal until you manually set the city to Tokyo. Until then it will continue to try unsuccessfully to receive the US time signal.
To check which city's time is currently showing, you should pull the crown out and the "seconds" hand will move and point to the city name and remain frozen at that position. Pushing the crown back in will cause the seconds hand to resume showing the time with regular ticks. The lost time it spent pointing at the City Name is remembered and the seconds hand does a fast movement to catch up and reposition at the correct second.
It is also worth mentioning that the UTC offsets for each supported timezone is printed on its face. If you are inclined to do some mental arithmetic, you can quickly tell the time at any of those cities. You will need some geography and timezone offset (and DST) knowledge to derive times of cities that are not printed on the watch. (For example, Kathmandu, Nepal is not in the list and has an offset of UTC+5:45 and does not observe DST (as of 2010). New Delhi is in the list, which is UTC+5:30. New Delhi and Nepal are not too far apart geographically)
- When I got the watch from the store, it was showing the approximate local time, but its 'city' was incorrectly set to Buenos Aires, Argentina (UTC-3:00).The correct City setting for my location should have been 'New York'(UTC-5:00), whose timezone we share in Ontario, Canada. With the help of the manual and the salesperson, it was corrected while in the store itself. I can see how that might have come about: Someone set the City to Buenos Aires while fiddling with the watch,and then also set the time manually to our local time. When the watch is told that it is in Buenos Aires, it stops listening to the US NIST time signal, and therefore failed to correct itself to show exact local time. The watch resumed listening for Atomic Time Signal when I set the city back to 'New York'.
- Crown is not screw-down. I do not see any functionality being affected by the crown being so.
CONS:
- It has no light and despite the luminous markings, night visibility is poor. MY PARAMETERS FOR PURCHASE:
I was evaluating wrist watches with the assumption that I will use my iPhone for most other time functions such as stop watches, alarms and so on.
- Accurate Time + Atomic Time Reception (Every wrist watch drifts -- and only self adjusting atomic watches keep correct time because they correct themselves)
- Perpetual Calendar (to avoid manually changing date after those months without 31 days)
- Without need to replace battery (afraid that once opened Waterproofing will be affected)
- Must be Waterproof at least 200M to avoid fear of rain or other water contact
- Good Visibility at Night (I compromised here - this watch is not great in this aspect)
- Sapphire Crystal (with the belief that it resists scratches)
- Stainless steel (with the belief that stainless resists scratches better than titanium)
- No useless flight/fuel calculation nonsense on the dials
- No Altimeter/Thermometer/GPS and other sensors. If I need any of them I will buy them separately.
- Do I like the looks of it? I did not want a watch that screams "LOOK AT ME", but something that whispers it. ;-)
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