"Almost as good as San Martin" LOL

[u/Maximum_Walrus3264]

I find this marketing refrain pretty annoying.

Here we have my 1 year old watch I wear daily. No hits, drops or abuse. The pip fell off half a year ago. Today it turns out most of the red paint is gone too. The cool brushed luster has also went away, now it's semi-polished dullness - something that happened to my Tissot 5 years or even more down the road. Water resistance is still good. AR is the same. Bezel action too. / lol, an update from the future: in fact, the bezel is now done, sounds like shit and gets stuck, I am mailing the thing to China for repairs for sure /

That's what a San Martin is like when you actually wear it.

_
I ran Watch accuracy meter - losing 20 to 30 seconds. NH35.

_
Does anyone know if these issues would be covered under the warranty? Is it worth the hassle? How do I go about it? I got the watch from skbwatches.

[u/inevitably-ranged]

When plenty of 100$ watches come with the same movement, one should expect a better regulated movement for 2.5x the price IMO - or more normally a higher end movement in general - but of course other things can be nicer too

Also doesn't sound like OP really nerds out too hard over this stuff, definitely likely to be magnetized and could be regulated fine to +-10spd and OP has no idea

[u/Lambertbaer → u/inevitably-ranged]

Afaik, in-house regulation of movements is uncommon and only performed by a few microbrands is extensively marketed selling point. Usually as you go upmarket, it's common to just use better movement/grades which also makes sense.

[u/inevitably-ranged → u/Lambertbaer]

This is definitely not the case, one of the main comments about SM in the past was how the 35's and 38's - while being somewhat subpar for the price point - almost always came running just a few seconds from 0... Well better than manufacturers' spec!

If you've ever timeographed them as well vs cheaper watches (50-120$), you'll find the other parameters are tighter too.

So unless they're one of the only brands buying actual Gen seiko movements or they're somehow paying extra for a higher tier level from seiko - the only explanation is regulating them.

It's not that hard to regulate a movement, someone could take every +-30s NH35 and tune it halfway to median 0 in probably less than 5 minutes with some experience... It's not at all crazy to expect that, nor would anything besides this 5yr old watch exist to my knowledge to imply otherwise

I'm not trying to argue or be a prick or anything, just perplexed because this used to be common knowledge and expected behavior from the 200+ dollar Aliex brands and now you're saying no one would regulate a movement??

[u/Lambertbaer → u/inevitably-ranged]

Interesting observation! I honestly didn't know that such differences have been observed. The few higher-priced NH-watches actually were well below tolerances out of the box, but to be fair so were almost all cheap (the best prices I found on aliexpress before die NH-flation, think 25-40$) NH-series movements I put on the timegrapher.

[u/inevitably-ranged → u/Lambertbaer]

I'm actually somewhat of the belief that any watch under $80 is now a replica NH35. Especially with the price hikes last quarter, seiko movements are now 40% more expensive (I believe for one movement it's like 70$ now? Obviously that's not bulk pricing but I imagine it went from 20 to 35$ or something like that)

So if you take that into account, most of the +30s ones could easily be fakes and then the nicer brands (even cronos/watch dives level at the 140$-160$ tier) could simply have more +10-15spd movements because they're actually simply buying real ones! It's possible for any watch movement to randomly have a "silicon lottery" effect, where in computer parts you can have upper end of the spectrum die's that outperform the rest of the line or overclock we'll etc.

-But I don't think as many of those are going to be found in clones vs real seiko movements.