Seiko SUR457
This is always my immediate response to the “quartz is inferior” arguments. 40/20, sapphire, 100m, nearly sterile dial, blued hands - it’s almost perfect.
What’s your favorite quartz?
5 comments
Sort by
Jeremy
The old man from the Old Line State. I review watches on YouTube and post pictures on FB & IG. Mostly affordable ones.
Maryland
Member since
Last active: 1 day ago
Citizen aviator AW5000-16L
Since you asked, and you are showing a Seiko -
Not too many years ago, Seiko had a line that was sometimes referred to (by them?) as the Neo Classic Quartz line. I'm thinking this is any Seiko with an SGE prefix. They seemed to be fairly popular but I don't think they're being made any more. I have four of them. All except one have sapphire, and all have 100M WR and gorgeous dials. They all sold for about $100.
The SGEH49P2 looks like a bigger bolder SARB 033.
The SGEH93P1 resembles the SARB 035 but has a subtly textured silver dial.
The SGEG97P1 looks like a working man's Breguet.
The SGEH79P1 is not exactly a GS Snowflake, but it's not exactly not.
I see that your post has been up for eight months and has only three comments. Nobody seems the slightest bit interested in bread and butter quartz Seikos. I've never seen one mentioned on any watch show. They're still cranking out new ones all the time for around $150 and they're just beautiful. I just bought the new one that looks like an IWC Ingenieur. Black dial with industrial grid design, sapphire, sailcloth strap, all for $160. Nobody cares. But I'd put these watches up against anything.
Citizen aviator AW5000-16L
Nothing wrong here.
Since you asked, and you are showing a Seiko -
Not too many years ago, Seiko had a line that was sometimes referred to (by them?) as the Neo Classic Quartz line. I'm thinking this is any Seiko with an SGE prefix. They seemed to be fairly popular but I don't think they're being made any more. I have four of them. All except one have sapphire, and all have 100M WR and gorgeous dials. They all sold for about $100.
The SGEH49P2 looks like a bigger bolder SARB 033.
The SGEH93P1 resembles the SARB 035 but has a subtly textured silver dial.
The SGEG97P1 looks like a working man's Breguet.
The SGEH79P1 is not exactly a GS Snowflake, but it's not exactly not.
I see that your post has been up for eight months and has only three comments. Nobody seems the slightest bit interested in bread and butter quartz Seikos. I've never seen one mentioned on any watch show. They're still cranking out new ones all the time for around $150 and they're just beautiful. I just bought the new one that looks like an IWC Ingenieur. Black dial with industrial grid design, sapphire, sailcloth strap, all for $160. Nobody cares. But I'd put these watches up against anything.
That's a tremendous reply, thank you so much for sharing. Those are some gorgeous references there. The case on the SGEH49P2 in particular is just phenomenal. I'm going to have to go hunting in the SGE family soon.
I get that quartz is kinda sneered down on by most enthusiasts. I don't really agree but I get it. It carries that perception of "cheap" or "commodity" or just that it lacks that complex interaction found in a mechanical watch. I think it's undeserved - there are quartz movements that stand above what's inside a wal-mart watch in the same way that an ETA will stand above an Olevs from AliExpress.
I like quartz. I like mechanical too and appreciate the complexity and hand craftsmanship, but having said that, there is also something to be said for efficient mass production. As you stated, there are quartz movements that stand out. But consider even a typical mass produced quartz movement. The SGE Seikos are run by the 7N42 quartz movement. Crystals of quartz "grown" by Seiko are shaped into a tiny tuning fork enclosed in a metal "can" inside the watch. A voltage is applied to make the little fork oscillate at a precise frequency. Then motors and electronics and integrated circuits step it down to a precise one tick per second. The movement is only off by a few seconds a month. Its battery is the size of a small pea, costs about a dollar, is available everywhere online, and lasts about three years. Makes me wonder what some of these "enthusiasts" have done lately that's fantastic.
I'm not a complete stickler for quartz second hands hitting all the marks, but all four of my SGE Seikos do. What bothers me more is a jumpy or unsteady second hand. My Tissot Everytime has the worst second hand I've ever seen on a watch. It's so strange that I wrote a whole story about it called My Conversation with Mademoiselle Tissot which is still on my page here at WatchCrunch.
Maybe you would know this. Is there any reason there couldn't be a SOLAR three handed mecha-quartz movement? This would solve the two "problems" with quartz - battery change and the one-tick second hand.