Diesel MS9 Skeleton Automatic Review

First review here so I decided to write about a fashion watch I acquired early on in my watch-collecting journey, which has many pros and cons, but maintains a place as my first-ever automatic watch. Quick disclaimer, my photography is shocking here, taken in artificial light on my phone camera, I do want to get some better photography equipment soonish.

Diesel is a brand best associated with their overpriced denim, and like many fashion brands that venture into watches, their name is licensed to the Fossil Group. Most of their watches, are, to be frank, monstrous, clearly made for men with wrists too large for their own good, with such examples as their 51mm "Mega Chief" and 57mm (?!?!) "Mr. Daddy 2.0", many of their offerings would be better suited as wall-clocks, and their names were clearly generated by an AI recreating cheesy lines from bad 80s action films. Then there is the positively tiny 44mm MS9, with a fairly tight 49mm lug-to-lug measurement, making it very wearable compared to almost anything else they produce, although those with much smaller wrists may still struggle.

This watch was one I purchased for £80 (US$100) from a WatchShop outlet in the UK, on a very high discount, and while this model appears to be discontinued, the very similar DZ1966 has an MSRP of £269 (US$336). If you're already fed up with my ramblings I'll be blunt here, this watch is in no way worth nearly £300. This price puts them in direct competition with a host of far better quality quartz watches, and even some of the more expensive offerings from Seiko's Seiko 5 range if you're deadset on an automatic movement. But assuming you can get one of these for under about £150, or are deadset on the aesthetics, how is this watch?

There are some things I love about this watch, and others I absolutely hate, but we'll start positive, I think the skeletonised dial looks really really good. It also doesn't fall into the pitfalls of unreadability of some other skeleton watches, with the partially skeletonised hands clearly outlined with bold white trim, and black tips. The minute hand is both far longer and slimmer than the hour hand, ensuring no confusion between the two, and the second hand is a simple white stick. No lume here though, so don't expect any after-dark legibility. My one complaint regarding legibility is the nonsensical "multi-coloured" crystal, that reflects light like it's going out of style and can make it harder to read in some angles under direct artificial light (see below).

The movement is an unnamed Japanese movement, and neither Diesel nor any stockist appeared to want to name a movement in their listings, however, I think it is the Miyota 8N24, based on both appearance and the ~40-hour power reserve. While an incredibly attractive movement, with a simple but good-looking custom rotor, the one-directional spinning of the rotor combined with the light case results in a very fast and very loud rotor, and one that can be felt on the wrist and heard from an arm's length if subjected to anything more than the most gentle of motion.

The strap is perfectly passable, genuine leather, however, it does feel slightly plasticky at times and may require 'breaking in'. The clasp feels cheap, and is incredibly loose and rattly, while I can't complain for the price I paid, for £269 (or even the frequent discount prices ~£180), they could have done much better in this regard.

As many of you will have expected, this is an attractive and perfectly wearable watch that unfortunately falls into some basic fashion watch issues regarding pricing and overall quality. If you are desperate for a skeletonised automatic watch and get lucky as I was to find a new one for less than £100, I would 100% say this watch is worth it, but much more than that and I would begin to consider watches from several other brands, including Seiko's Seiko 5 range if you can look past their non-skeletonised nature in favour of far superior quality and much less prominent rotor noise.