SPB093 - Arita Procelain dial - review

The background of me acquiring the watch can be found in my earlier post:

https://www.watchcrunch.com/weng_c/posts/first-watch-of-2024-2-289970

On to the review.

Let’s get the specs out of the way.

Case material: Stainless Steel

Case diameter: 40.8mm (measured)

Crystal: Double domed sapphire with AR coating on the underside at the front and flat sapphire at the back

Crystal/dial diameter(front): 34.8mm (measured)

Case thickness: 14.2mm (measured)

Lug to Lug: 48.6mm (measured)

Lug width: 20mm

Functions: Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Date and Power Reserve

Movement: Seiko 6R27, 27 jewels, 28,800 vibrations per hour

Strap: Brown Crocodile (real crocodile) with 3-fold stainless-steel deployant clasp

Water resistance: 10atm/100m

The specifications will make you think that this watch is huge and will sit big and tall on wrist, but it sits very well and proportionately on my 16.5cm/17cm (6.5inch/6.7inch) wrist.

It is by no means slim, but it’s not obstusive. It has nice presence on wrist. Having worn this for 5 whole days over the past 2 weeks, it has not gotten in the way. It’s a pretty versatile watch that you can easily dress up or down by changing the strap.

The movement keeps time very well (no timegrapher to measure though) and the complications add depth to the dial. I find myself enjoying the power reserve complication and find it more useful than I thought I would. The automatic movement winds pretty quickly, going from 20h to full after about 4h on wrist. That said, you can always add more juice by winding the crown. The crown is a signed push pull crown and winds easily with the right amount of resistance. The date is quick set and I won’t talk about setting the date and time (same as any typical 3 hand watch with a date complication). The finishing on the movement isn’t anything to write home about either. Just some Tokyo stripes and engraved guilded wordings on the rotor.

The crocodile leather strap is very good. Real crocodile leather and supple! Much better than the faux croc leather strap I got with the SPB047.

On to the main event. The face (dial and hands) of the watch. This is is where this watch holds its own.

Let’s start with the hands. There are 5 hands in total. All nicely blued so they look black with hints of blue when viewed straight on and royal blue when the light hits at an angle. The hour, minute, power reserve and date hands are leaf shaped and the seconds hand is needle shaped with a crescent counterbalance. The counterbalance lines up nicely with the middle of the date wheel when the seconds hand is at 12 o’clock. Nice touch Seiko!

Another nice bit of detail is that the seconds and minutes hands are bent to curve down to the dial! I was pleasantly surprised and had to look at it for quite a long while and compare with other watches to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Here’s a photo to have a look yourself.

On to the dial. This is a thing of beauty and is one for watch nerds to peer and scrutinise. The more you look the more you will appreciate it. The dial is milky white with a gloss that has a wet look at certain angles and along the edges of the recessed sections for the power reserve and the date. The complications on the dial make such a difference and gives the watch dial more character. Initially I was attracted to the simpler dials like the date only SPB095 or the no date SPB293 or SPB319, but it would be too similar to the enamel dialed SPB047 that I already have. That said, I find the SPB319 super beautiful. On wrist, the complications draw your attention to the dial and make you look closer. The recessed sections of the complications give the dial more depth and more surfaces for light to reflect off.

The minutes markings are printed Roman numerals. Again, I had initially wished it came with stick indices like the enamel dialed SPB161, but the Roman numerals fill up the space better and look better overall, especially with the red XII that gives the dial a nice pop of colour. The other numbers are supposed to be very dark blue but they look black to me. The print is such that the numbers aren’t completely flat on the dial and gives you something else to peer at and admire.

There is no lume at all on the dial.

This is a classy watch and one that watch nerds will especially love. The quality and details Seiko has put into this watch punches well above its weight.

Bonus: I’ve swapped the brown crocodile strap for a black leather strap (20-16) with blue stitching. And put on a vintage styled Seiko pin buckle. 🔥🔥🔥

I’m a sucker for having proper signed buckles on my watches.