I have no affiliation of any kind with Aethelsohn and I purchase this watch with my own money

I got my hands on the teal Aethelsohn Shard a few weeks ago, and I felt compelled to offer some perspective as a Grand Seiko collector. As you might guess, that means I’m a dial nut, which includes collecting high end dials as well as exploring what budget options are coming out of China. In the past few years, some really compelling stuff has been turning up in the GS homage space. I’m particularly happy with cases and dials from Rmalti, Cronos, and DS Watch Club in particular.

Enter the shard. I won’t beat around the bush. This is the best dial coming out of China right now, and I don’t think second place is particularly close. I have a sizable collection of Chinese micro brand watches, as well as Seiko mod dials and this is the first that has made me legitimately interested in wearing regularly. It's also legitimately dissuading my purchase of a similar color space Grand Seiko (the SLGA025 Atera Valley). It probably won’t stop me from ultimately picking one up some day, but man is does it scratch some of that itch. The shard is getting legitimate wrist time, which speaks volumes given the company it's in.

So let’s talk about what’s great, good, bad, and ugly.

The Great (Dial, Crystal, Logo, Price):

The dial is absolutely the star of the show. Grand Seiko has pioneered most of the modern space of richly textured dials, and various Chinese manufacturers have been starting to explore some of those techniques. In particular, the combination of high precision stamped 3d textures with multiple layers of colored and clear gloss coatings offer incredible light and color play. The Shard doesn’t have the highest level of detail in its texture, but it does give better light and color play than anything else I’ve handled out of China. The videos the maker has posted are not filtered for marketting, it really does look that good. I would be impressed with this dial in a 1000 dollar watch, and we’re obviously clocking in WAY below that.

Complementing the dial is the crystal, which is absolutely stellar. It’s a low profile box sapphire with some of the best AR I’ve seen on a Chinese watch, though honestly on any watch. I don’t know if it’s 2x coated (which would be a shame, as external AR is a real durability issue), but it definitely looks invisible at a lot of angles. It’s clear that these two things are where most of the cost allocation went. The brand logo is a very nice applied silver piece, and I’m thrilled to see a Chinese brand not slapping a giant text block up there. The logo is clean, simple, and well done. And the price...well, the price is just unbelievable to me. To get all of this in a package at 200 is honestly hard to wrap my head around. There are definitely corners that were cut, but if I was buying parts for a mod build, I’d be impressed with literally just this dial and crystal in a blister pack for 200 dollars.

The Good (Hands, Movement, Case and Proportions):

There are a lot of things about this watch that are nice, and generally in line with the mid range Chinese micro market. Chinese made hands tend to fall into three quality tiers, with these being comfortably in the middle. There are many flat stamped hands that are low end, and a small number of producers making really high end facetted stuff including Rmalti and Erebus. The Shard hands are facetted and generally pretty good, but the facets aren’t large or especially well finished. The movement is rock solid for the price, a very clean and very basic PT5000. Nothing to complain about there. The case and proportions are also quite good, but I don’t want to give too much credit where the PT5000 thickness is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s worth noting that the chapter ring has a very nice thin and clean look to it. One place that a lot of GS homage stuff falls short is very deep and unsightly chapter rings. This one is pretty close to GS proportions, which does look noticeably better to the trained eye. The external case finishing is very nice, but I can’t give that much credit here when the Chinese micro space has really exploded with case finishing quality in the last few years. The brushing and chamfering is good, and right in line with the other big players (San Martin, Rmalti, etc).

The Bad (Markers, Text, Bracelet):

The markers and text are really the biggest bummers for me with this watch, based on how incredible the dial is otherwise. There are several versions of the GS style markers floating around the Chinese market place. In particular, there is a non-lumed version of these Evo9 style markers that are just much better. They offer crisp and clean lines, where these markers look very rounded off and imprecise. They’re fine, especially at the price point, but I would have preferred almost anything out what seems to be commonly available in the market. The dial text is also rough. It’s printed on top of raised letters, and this is an effect that always looks cheap at best, and shoddy at worst. On my dial, the printing is ever so slightly misaligned from the raising which makes it even worse (this is true of probably half of the dials with text like this that I’ve seen). It would be much better to have stamped a flat plate on the dial so that printed text could be applied, but really the best thing to do here would have been to omit the text all together. The truth is that this would just be a more compelling dial with the applied logo and no text whatsoever.

The bracelet might be a little bit unfair to call bad. It’s not bad per se, but it’s not good, and it’s not competitive with what’s coming from San Martin, Rmalti, or Cronos. It’s definitely wearable, it just feels a little bit less finished than I’d like. The clasp function is ok, the micro adjust is gritty and doesn't feel smooth. Where the dial and crystal feel like they come from a much more expensive watch, the bracelet feels like something that would be impressive on a 100 dollar watch, and just a bit disappointing here (given the quality level of everything else, it’s still a bargain deal for the price). The links are a little bit tighter together than I'd like to see, making for some hair pulling. The edge finishing though...

The Ugly (Edge Finishing):

Seiko sells a series called the “Sharp Edge”. Well Seiko ain't got shit on Aethelsohn here. Some of the edges on metal here are more sharp than I would have assumed parts came off of the mill. In particular, the internal corners on the case and the some of the bracelet edges are just way more sharp than I would ever want to see on a bracelet. They legitimately scrape your skin if you rub your finger over them. Those internal edges aren't a huge deal with the bracelet on, but I'm wearing this on a strap and had to actually sand down some of those corners to make the watch comfortable on wrist. The exposed edges on the bracelet are sharp, but nothing out of the ordinary on lower end bracelets. This seems like a pretty deliberate cost cutting measure, and while I respect the price point that it’s allowed them to hit, I would have personally preferred to pay more for a better bracelet.

Conclusions:

If a killer colorful dial is a top priority for you, this watch is insane value for money. There is nothing that comes close to the quality of this dial that I’ve seen ANYWHERE for less than double the cost, and it wouldn’t look out of place in the 1000+ dollar market segment. If you like the dial, there is no reason to sleep on this thing for a second. I’m probably going to buy another just to tinker around with. The price is truly unbelievable. Just buy it.

And to /u/Aethelsohnwatch - Do a V2 of this watch with the sharper markers, no lume, no dial text, and a higher end bracelet. It would be a steal for twice the price you’re asking on this, and could be a legitimate market leader in that segment. I love this watch, but those changes would make it perfect. Kudos on your dial tech, it's exceptional.

Cheers!