Seiko M422-501A redemption is at hand
Just aquired a M422 at a nice price to help restore the unit I broke about 30 years ago and have held onto "just in case".
This model is such a throwback to an era when digital watches were not cheap and were made of steel and glass. That may be a surprise to a younger generation raised on F91W's.
While to M422 is only about 9mm thick, it still manages to house a sizeable CR2025 battery giving a claimed life of 10 years. Seiko did not brightly proclaim the battery life on the face somewhere but the "SPORTS 150" moniker proudly indicates the water resistance was rated at 150 metres, pretty good in its day for a non dive watch.
My "new" unit is still quite accurate after all these years, losing about 2-3 seconds a week. As the circuit board has a trimmer condenser installed the watch can be adjusted which I will do eventually with a bit of trial and error no doubt.
The bracelet is typical Seiko [sigh], not great but it does the job. It's a bit thin but not budget Casio thin. It took a while to clean all the detritis out of the numerous nooks and crannies and bend it back into reasonable shape but it came up nice. This bracelet is nowhere near as good as I remember my old Seiko Sports 100 Solar having, that was evident the first time I handled my 150 even with the limited watch knowledge I had back then. For the curious out there, the lugs are 20mm.
It has the typical digital functions, the bottom row is where the stuff like dual time and stopwatch are displayed in each mode leaving the upper 2/3 of the screen constant. The characters are a somewhat small but to its credit there is not a lot of unused space.
Illumination is nothing special. In fact, this Seiko's lighting is quite comparable to the Casio F91W's meagre glow. That is how things were back then and we put up with it.
Thankyou for reading this far. Happy vintage Seiko-ing.
So many watches, so little time.
Digital watches used to be expensive when they introduced. It was all very high-tech at the time and sold as such.
That is a great Seiko! I have four vintage Seiko digital watches myself.
Yes, older digital watches are great! I have a small collection of vintage digital watches; Seiko, Citizen, Bulova, Armitron, Timex, and Casio. Even Casio and Timex used steel cases in their initial digital watches. Here are a few of my vintage digital watches.
Digital watches used to be expensive when they introduced. It was all very high-tech at the time and sold as such.
Oh yes, the Quartz Revolution or as some call it the Quartz Crisis. I was there in the thick of it.
I would still be wearing my Sports 100 Solar if the Seiko authorised repair centre was able to get the parts required to fix the non-charging/not holding charge issue. I was offered a significant trade-in for the 100 and I chose the 150 as a replacement. I assume they wanted the 100 for the useful parts.
That is a great Seiko! I have four vintage Seiko digital watches myself.
Yes, older digital watches are great! I have a small collection of vintage digital watches; Seiko, Citizen, Bulova, Armitron, Timex, and Casio. Even Casio and Timex used steel cases in their initial digital watches. Here are a few of my vintage digital watches.
Nice variety of stuff there built to last. I remember my dad had LED watch when they came out. It was so cool.
However, in my case the M422 was not built to survive a drop of about 4 feet onto steel. I suspect it took a direct hit on one of the buttons and broke the board. Both lower buttons push in far too easily.😭 It was a hard lesson. Instead of later buying a G-Shock I learned to take better care of my stuff.