Seiko SNZG11J1
Anyone that knows something about wrist watches has probably heard about Seiko, originally all Made in Japan, nowadays a few models are made in Singapore, in this particular model I've went the extra $15 on the price tag to get the Made in Japan version, the suffix on the model tag "J1" indicates that, it's part of the Seiko 5 series, powered by a Seiko caliber 7s36, Japan made automatic movement, supports: date, day, hour, minute, second, 24 hour functions.
I was debating getting this or the SNZG15J1 model, both are pretty much the same with the only changes being in the bezel and strap colors, the G15 featured an all black strap and dials, while the G11 features a blue colors, personally I would prefer having the black dial and blue strap, but since my last watches were always either black or green I figured blue would be a nice change, also for some reason it reminds me of a certain Saber-wielding character, combining the blue dial, strap and stainless steel bezel. It also features luminous hands, they glow in the dark for a few hours, I haven't tested it myself, I did noticed they tend to glow brighter and for longer with natural sunlight, and even if it doesn't really seem to still be glowing if you are in the city or just in the dark environment that still has some light, they will keep glowing very weak but enough that you can read it if you are in a pitch dark environment, I tested this when going camping in the jungle and I could still check the time without the need of any light at 3:00am without any light besides the crescent moon.
The battery life on it is claimed to last about 40 hours if you swing it horizontally for 30 seconds, on the first months that I had it I was extra careful with it, since it was a very special gift given by a very dear and special person to me in very specific conditions, enough that I would wrap it to the cushion that comes in the box with it every night when I took it out to sleep, I've noticed laying either in the cushion or a totally flat surface the battery life will be longer, probably the pendulum swinging inside the engine can reach more momentum like that, if it's in a not flat surface it has the tendency to loose momentum and in some occasions I'd wake up at 8am and find out that the hands stopped at 2am and sometimes it wouldn't even move the date and weekday dial.
Speaking of which, it comes with the weekdays in Arabic, Japanese Kanji and English, when you turn the crown to adjust it you'll go through them, also since it's a completely analog watch, it has no day of telling when the month has 28, 29, 30 or 31 days, so you'll have to manually adjust it back to Day 01 when the month changes after the 30th if there is no 31st and the specific cases of leap years with the bissextile 29th in February, it's not a big deal for me but it can be a bit confusing sometimes when you forget it and you find yourself one day behind in the calendar or in February 31st.
It has scratch resistant Hardlex crystal, a few times I've hit it against a wall or something and worried about scratches just to check and nothing was on it, it's very durable and I can see this watch lasting quite a few decades, it's well worth the price of about $140USD that was paid for it in 2023, I can't see myself paying much more than this in a fancy wristwatch and this is about as high as I'd go but for the quality I can say it's well worth it.
Pros
- No batteries needed
- Water resistance of up to 330 feet/100 meters, scratch and impact resistance
- Luminous hands
- Very easy to read the date, weekday and numbers
- Excellent cost x benefit on this price range, you'll get the same quality as watches that cost twice it's price
- Manually adjusting dates on a few months
- For some people it can be a bit bulky and big (42 mm case size), not a problem for me honestly but I can see it being for some people
- Luminous hands could last a bit more or be stronger with tritium maybe, but it would certainly increase the cost
Luminous hands on maximum brightness on shadowy, low-light and pitch black environments:
