Review: the opposite of diminishing returns

We, including me, sometimes talk about the diminishing returns in quality improvement when we go up the price ladder and hand over a substantial proportion of our annual income to the Hans Wilstorf foundation and receive in return a timepiece that is distinctly less impressive in its timekeeping capabilities than a Casio F91-W. By implication, these returns should amplify if we go down the price ladder to bargain basement supercheap watches. At least that's the theory. I was curious to find out.

My object of study was a Wokai, a qiang hei to be precise. Basic price was £2.21 (it has since dropped to £2.08), and shipping plus tax increased my expenditure to £3.57. The watch looked ok in the catalogue (see pic), and I was wondering how bad it would be in the metal.

In terms of looks, the first impression was fine. It was not as glossy as the rendering suggested, but as you can see in the first image it did not look half bad. Seeing the dial, you might even expect the watch to have loom. Well, you would be right, it has loom; it is very weak, I grant you that, but it is loom, Jimmy, even as we know it.

Other impressions, early or not, were less favourable.

I give you: the hands.
The watch arrived seemingly non-running, at least the second hand did not move. So I had to remove that isolating bit of plastic around the crown, right? No, there was no such thing. Engaging and disengaging the crown would set the seconds hand loose, and we were off and running. For a while anyway, but the seconds hand got stuck again, even though minute+hour kept advancing. Repeating the procedure seemed to do the trick and the seconds hand would not get stuck again.

I give you: the crown.
Apart from its unexpected feature as a live-giver to the seconds hand, its expected feature as a time setter came with an element of luck. Once you had set the time and pushed the crown back in it would jump about two minutes forward. Not consistently of course.
As a true quantum-mechanic device it would anticipate your desires and act like an incalcitrant little prick, so you had to try again.

I give you: the watchband.
Sometimes the words "genuine leather" on the watchband strike fear in the mind of a regular Ali customer, but no need for that here.
There is no pretence that this is any kind of leather, never mind genuine, it is just downright terrible. I had once a worse watchband from Ali - with a watch half the price of the Wokai a band was once delivered to me that in a previous century would have been handy to extort confessions from suspected witches. The Wokai's band fell a step short of this nadir, but I would not wear it for more than a few minutes.

I give you: time-keeping.
We have an unnamed (and loud) quartz movement. I noticed that after a day the watch had lost 4 minutes. For a pocket watch made by Peter Henlein in the early 16th century this would be impressively accurate, for a 21st century quartz not quite so much. I suspect this is related to the crown/hands problems, not primarily the movement. So, this may rectify over a few weeks, but for my upcoming xmas vacation I will deploy a less temperamental timekeeper.

Comparing the Wokai to some Ali watches I bought around the £10 mark, from Fngeen, Jenises, Skmei and Wwoor, the difference is stark. The opposite of diminishing returns is very true at this pricepoint.