Entry -Level Tritium Watch Review.

Ever since I was a kid back in the 80s, I've been obsessed with glow-in-the-dark everything. As I got into watches later in life, I was glad to learn of "lume" and backlit displays. Anything that made your watch legible in the dark.

My experiences with lume have been relatively positive. Sure. The first 15 or 30 minutes glowed exactly like I'd want, but most of my watches were illegible in hours, if even that. The one watch I could always count on was my Steeldive SD1970, a Chinese homage of the Seiko Willard. With that watch, I can go to sleep for 7 or 8 hours and my dark-adjusted eyes can still read the time pretty well, and my eyes aren't what they used to be.

But what if there were something better? More practical? Reading up on lume it seemed to me that Tritium was what I was looking for; it will glow almost as bright as traditional lume, day and night, with no need for the application of light to it, for over a decade before it decays and the brightness is lessened but not eliminated.

Looking at options in my price range (I really didn't want to spend more than $350-ish USD) my options were basically Luminox, or so I thought.

I caught a video from Jody over at Just One More Watch who mentioned a company you can frequently find on AliExpress- Yelang.

They had several models that featured tritium. I went with the V1213, or the Sea Overlord. Stainless steel, sapphire crystal, T100 tritium- All that with a Seiko solar powered anlog movement in a dive watch. It sounded too good to be true.

Well, a few weeks later which is relatively quick for aliexpress, my watch came in yesterday. After setting up the bracelet, day-date, and time, I immediately escaped to a windowless room to see what I could see.

Honestly, it was just what I was hoping for. All the glow, with none of the fade. Fantastic!

What about the rest of the watch, you say? Well, I think in general it's very nice.

The bracelet is thick and chunky with a firm clasp. I'm more of a strap kind of fellow to be quite honest, but for some reason despite using multiple tools I can't get this bracelet off. I will learn to live with it, but that is a bit frustrating. Perhaps I'm just being a bit gentle for fear of scratching it, and to be quite honest, I was doing all this resizing and set up nonsense during work hours so I wasn't quite as dedicated and free as I would have liked. Maybe I'll have better luck this weekend.

The dial is lovely. I'm rather new to the game if I'm being honest and this is my first textured dial. It looks quite nice and makes it feel very fancy, especially considering I paid less than $200 USD for this. I'm not a particularly fancy lad, however it seems like the quartz movement matches the marks fairly well.

The watch came out of the box ready to rock. No charging was necessary. Was keeping good time from the moment. I unboxed it. The box itself was nice looking if a little standard, but what do you expect? It came with a gift bag to put the box in as well which is a little strange but a nice touch. It came with a pin in collar tool which broke the first time I tried to use it. And it came with a rubber strap, ironically.

The only issue I've come across of note is the bezel. I believe it's aluminum, and while I am not as tenured as some watch people, I believe it has not what you call a coin edge, rather a scalloped edge? Rounder then I'm used to at the very least, and more difficult to grip. All together, the bezel seems flimsier than the Steeldive models I'm used to; SD1953 and SD1970. I'd say the bezel is more similar to my Invicta Pro Diver. Make of that what you will.

In summary however I'm very pleased. It's quite a bargain for less than $200 USD. You have the accuracy of quartz, never needing to replace a battery, lume that will keep on going and going, and good materials! And I must say I like the emerald green color and textured bezel.

If you're in the market for a diver with tritium, this watch may just meet your needs. They also make a diver chronograph, if that's more your speed.

It isn't perfect, and the bezel is disappointing, but I do recommend this for a solid all around budget diver, with a very unique night legibility solution.