Swiss Legend Men's 18010A-11 Tungsten Collection Automatic Black Mother of Pearl Watch Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This watch is gorgeous and heavy, made of virtually scratchproof tungsten, with sapphire cyrstal in front and on the display case in back. These materials and the build quality of the watch itself are impeccable and not readily found in watches costing much less than $1,200.

What a bargain you say? Well, there are some problems. The black mother of pearl face makes the numbers kind of hard to read. The skinny featureless second hand has no pointer or different color marker on it, so tracking it around the watch face is tricky. Biggest problem though is the "Swiss Made" CL888 movement.

Under Swiss law, this movement is technically Swiss made as more than 50% of the total value of parts in the movement are of Swiss origin. Unfortunately, the clever manufacturer can get around this law by buying a cheap Chinese movement and adding a few high value Swiss parts to it to knock the movement over the 50% line. In this case, we have a Chinese Seagull ST16 movement with a few Swiss gold plated parts and with the 21 synthetic jewels in the movement coming from Switzerland. These parts add no real functional value to the movement versus a base Seagull ST16 made with Chinese rubies, but they do allow the company to call it a "Swiss movement."

I am no snob - Seagull does have a good rep, the best of the Chinese automatic watchmakers, and some of their recent movements like the ST18 & 21 really do challenge Swiss or Japanese movements for quality. However, the ST16 is one of their earlier, clunkier movements, and sadly my Swiss Legend is the poster boy for this period of lower competence. The second hand staggers around like a drunken zombie on the watch face, hesitating here, jerking there, moving very sporadically and unevenly.

The rest of the movement seems fine - it does "hack" (meaning you can stop the second hand) and can be handwound. Moreover, the watch does keep good time despite the second hand jerking around. So it is really just a question of aesthetics, but this is important for an expensive watch, and seeing the second hand twitch around like a compass needle at the North Pole ruins the effect of the costly and elegant case.

Swiss Legend probably builds very nice quartzes, and it is apparent what the problem is with this automatic. Mainly they wanted to build a "Swiss Made" automatic but did not want to pay ETA or Sellita to use a more reliable and expensive Swiss movement. Instead they used the deservedly obscure Claro CL 888, which does not appear to be the world's most polished movement. Even at that, it looks like quality control at Swiss Legend was either asleep when my watch went out the door or perhaps they don't know what an automatic movement is supposed to look like!
They should have just used a cheap though adequate Miyota like Invicta does for their lower end autos and trim the price a bit or should have paid more and gotten a Sellita or ETA.

Bottom line: watch is well made, looks nice, has some visibility issues with the face and second hand. The watch tells time acceptably well but the extreme ugliness of its movement's function in the process will repel most buyers.

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Product Description:
Featuring bold white Roman numeral indices on a purple-toned mother-of-pearl dial, the Swiss Legend Men's Tungsten Collection Automatic Black Mother of Pearl Watch provides a stylish, classic look for a day in the office or a hike in the woods. A polished tungsten bezel offers additional Arabic numeral indices, and the comfortable tungsten band is secured by a deployment clasp with push button. The watch's case is also made from polished tungsten. An antireflective sapphire window offers protection from scratches, and a convenient calendar window sits at the three o'clock position. This timepiece's Kinetic Swiss automatic movement and water resistance up to 330 feet (100 meters) ensure superior reliability.

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