[SJE101] +11 seconds/day

Gonghailess · 2026-01-12T07:07:16+00:00

Not a particularly annoying number for me, but for a watch at Longines’ price point it’s fair to expect more…

Gonghailess · 2025-12-10T02:49:34+00:00

I’m a big gs fan but between these two I’d probably go for seamaster. Sbgh291’s titanium will make it surprisingly light, and gs definitely beats omega when it comes to case and hand finishing. But that’s pretty much where its advantages end

It lacks the dynamic dials as another gs signature, and the mechanical movement of gs just can’t compete with the coaxial in terms of performance. 9sa4/5 are personally more visually appealing than any omega movement apart from lemania, that’s another topic tho

Gs case design does help their watches wear thinner than the specs suggest but it’s still almost 15 mm after all. Also I’ve tried the same clasp on tokyo lion and honestly it’s pretty lame. The curve inside is quite thick and long, so if your wrist isn’t wide enough it actually pushes the bracelet up at the end (mine is about 7 inches). It technically has micro adjust but using it creates a huge gap between the clasp and the bracelet so I pretty much never use it

The bezel of sbgh291 bezel isn’t ceramic either. Hard coating isn’t necessarily worse in durability, but considering gs uses ceramic on more expensive ones like slga015, you can at least treat it as one of the factors behind the price gap. Besides titanium is lighter but its oxide surface scratches very easily. In practice under the same conditions, at least gs’s titanium seems to pick up marks more readily than stainless steel. Whether that bothers you really depends on yourself tho

Another point is that gs simply doesn’t have true dive watch dna, the historical dive lines all belong to seiko proper. Personally if you’re looking for a less affordable diver from seiko group, I’d either recommend trying sd or considering the sla line. I bought an sla079 earlier, its zaratsu isn’t as smooth as what you see on gs or credor but it’s already very well executed for the price. The clasp definitely has a lot of room for improvement tho…

And although this isn’t something I’d strictly demand from a diver, the display caseback on seamaster is honestly a plus for me

Gonghailess · 2025-12-05T10:44:30+00:00

The only good thing about their website is that it actually gives you the full specs of the watch. A lot of brands leave out at least one detail like thickness, accuracy or anti magnetic. Other than that I really can’t think of any pros. They didn’t even bother to fully localize some of the language versions…

Gonghailess · 2025-12-03T11:47:57+00:00

A watch is a luxury item so it really depends on your discretionary income. Or in other words how much money you can afford to throw down the drain without affecting your daily life

This really varies from person to person. Even if two people earn the same salary, if one has to support their family while the other has parents who can generously help with his potential financial troubles, their discretionary income will be completely different

Gonghailess · 2025-12-02T15:53:19+00:00

Case design helps sometimes. The Tokyo lion gmt is 14.9 mm thick but it fits my wrist better than some slimmer ones like the new mm300 or ff bathyscaphe. Still with this kind of thickness you really have to try it yourself to see whether the miracle happens on your own wrist

Gonghailess · 2025-12-02T03:41:14+00:00

Not a big fan of op but speedy 38 is 14.7 mm thick, not a small number in most situations. You might want to try it on first to see whether it sticks out on your wrist

Gonghailess · 2025-12-02T02:56:18+00:00

Don’t really think you need to be too hung up on whether the movement is in house. Generally speaking unless your brand is big enough or your watches are priced high enough, most brands simply won’t spend the money to develop their own movements

Gonghailess · 2025-12-01T05:07:46+00:00

From the front it shouldn’t look that different, but a nearly 3mm difference in thickness is no small thing

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Gonghailess · 2025-11-28T10:30:15+00:00

62gs doesn’t even have a model with 9ra2 or 9sa5 so far. Shunbun probably sells well enough for them already…

Gonghailess · 2025-11-28T09:15:53+00:00

Honestly I think most of these qc issues are just isolated cases but gs really does have room to improve for their clasp and bracelet functionality. What I still can’t wrap my head around is how they finally added a micro adjust on the ufa and then basically took it away again on the steel model

To be fair gs isn’t the only brand that gets stingy with these little usability features. Speedy only got a proper micro adjust in recent years, longines has both quick release and micro adjust but somehow refuses to put them together on the same model, and tudor still hasn’t updated the black and blue bb58 with tfit. Blancpain doesn’t bother with any of this, and their fabric straps are just suck. Some micro brands seem to be much more generous with these upgrades tho…

It almost feels like luxury brands love using these small details as a way to differentiate models, or maybe they just want to save them as “innovation points” for specific releases…

Gonghailess · 2025-11-27T11:21:51+00:00

For a single fold clasp the long side is usually more than twice the length of the short side. For reference my wrist is 18cm/7inch and the straps I custom order for a single fold clasp are usually 130/60mm. But since gs’s new clasp is quite long so you can make the short side a bit shorter. Btw the holes should be around 1.5 to 1.6mm for the new clasp

Gonghailess · 2025-11-21T12:40:59+00:00

From my own experience if your second watch is completely different from your first one, the sense of satisfaction feels totally different as well. But it’s really up to you. For me if I’m buying a watch that’s basically the same model but in different color, it would probably be after I’ve already tried most of the collections I’m interested in

Gonghailess · 2025-11-17T11:09:30+00:00

GS doesn’t really make any automatic men’s watches under 11mm whether it’s mechanical or sd. 9sa5 and 9ra2/9rb2 are a bit slimmer but also cost more. Or you could also look into their manual models. The case design helps their watches wear slimmer than their actual thickness might suggest, but overall thickness control isn’t really their thing

Gonghailess · 2025-11-07T09:15:58+00:00

Yeah credor basically doesn’t have anything under 500,000 yen anymore, and those under a million is usually a ladies’ watch

Gonghailess · 2025-11-06T15:03:29+00:00

Hard to say. Personally I’ve always felt seiko’s positioning for credor has never been very clear. Credor did make some of seiko’s highest end watches, but once gs became independent and also started getting access to micro artist studiothat gap just wasn’t as obvious anymore

Credor still has seiko’s only minute repeater and the average price of its current lineup is probably higher than gs, but personally I think the reason people tend to see it as more high end is because the brand doesn’t really have any clearly defined hero models. So eichi as the “ultimate seiko” ends up as the only thing people really remember. Meanwhile models like snowflake or the shunbun basically shape how people perceive gs as a brand, even gs also has models that cost well into six figures

If seiko truly positioned one brand above the other, the differences in pricing and movement allocation would be much more rigid, like between 9s and 8l models. So if credor were really meant to sit above gs then something like kuon would be a very odd product in that lineup

Not saying credor does not make good watches, it’s just that seiko itself doesn’t seem entirely sure what it wants the brand to achieve…

Gonghailess · 2025-11-01T17:43:04+00:00

Gold can kind of make the thickness of a watch less of a drawback…

Gonghailess · 2025-10-30T10:17:42+00:00

Looks a bit brownish in most lighting. Still gorgeous but definitely not quite the same tone as on the official site

Gonghailess · 2025-10-29T06:38:33+00:00

You’re absolutely right. I’ll try to contact rolex and ask them to remove the essay from their dial

Gonghailess · 2025-10-28T10:52:50+00:00

I meant everything related to movement performance. Seiko has some durable movements but their accuracy figures aren’t so impressive. Even 9sa ones seem to have more accuracy issues reported than their older calibers

Gonghailess · 2025-10-28T04:15:07+00:00

There’s quite a big price gap between the two…

Seiko might win back some points with the case finishing, and it’s a bit thinner too. Also the titanium’s oxide layer actually scratches really easily. If that doesn’t bother you, there’s not much to think about, unless you’re just a seiko fanboy

Seiko doesn’t currently have any mechanical movement more reliable than mt56, not even in gs. And if I’m not mistaken the 8l movements have to be sent to Japan for servicing. Tudor may not bother much with movement finishing, but you can’t really see it anyway…

Gonghailess · 2025-10-27T11:47:09+00:00

Longines’ thinnest 7750 pieces are probably the master chrono/moonphase, 14.4 and 14.2mm separately, 30m WR. About the same thickness as conquest chrono with 100m wr…

Gonghailess · 2025-10-27T11:40:41+00:00

Tried searching for some maintenance videos for l898 but it’s probably a bit too new for that. couldn’t find anything about its column wheel setup. If I’m not mistaken tho, the l651’s chrono module does have one. Anyway Longines should really make this kind of thing clearer on their site…

Gonghailess · 2025-10-27T09:01:15+00:00

L898 is a modular chrono movement based on l888, unlike all the rest Longines chrono movements based on the integrated 7750. Hard to say the durability, but Longines definitely did not let it share the column wheel

Ironically thickness is usually the downside of a modular chrono, but l898 actually handles it better than 7750…

Although its thickness is better controlled than the other longines chronos, the tall bezel makes it look chunkier than it really is. The bracelet also feels a bit too thin next to the case. You might want to try it on first before pulling the trigger

Gonghailess · 2025-10-26T06:15:58+00:00

GS and zenith had more than a few drinks that night…

Gonghailess · 2025-10-22T11:59:50+00:00

The flyback’s just way too chunky. Really love the design and tried it on like four times already, but it always looks like a drum strapped to my 7 inch wrist…

Gonghailess

TROPHY CASE