Some
months back when my existing every day wear watch had got terribly
scratched in my workshop, I had to go out and buy a new one except; I
realized that buying an everyday wear watch wasn’t as easy as I expected
it to be.
I like my watch to be accurate and even
if it is for everyday wear, it needs to be good looking too. There’s
like a ton of watches out there that more or less meet the second
criteria but very few that meets the first. This is kind of strange if
you ask me. I mean, a watch should display the time and in my book, it
should do so with a degree of accuracy or else, it does not qualify to
be called a watch. Give or take 5 minutes a month is not accuracy. In 6
months the watch would be 30 minutes out. With that kind of time keeping
I’d be a laughing stock in the neighbourhood and miss the train every
time.
I always thought a quartz powered watch
was accurate that is, until I a watch retailer told me the accuracy of
quartz depends on the quartz within. The sub $100
Orient watches it seems are rarely accurate quartz or not.
A bit frustrated that my simple
two-criterion search was not yielding results, I went to my favourite
Orient watch dealer located mid-town. I already possess a couple of
Orient high-end watches that I keep for party wear or when I need to
impress someone. I thought maybe Orient had some ‘regular wear’ watches
and decided to revisit the Orient watch store.
Browsing through the collection of Orient
watches, I noticed some had an arresting red or yellow dial. These I
was told, were the
Orient Mako
and he removed a few from the display unit so I could get a better look
at them. While at it, he also brought out a black dial Rolex Oyster
Perpetual Submariner and kept it besides the
Orient Mako Automatic Mens Watch
– also with a black dial. I held my breath as I noticed the two were
almost identical. In fact one could have easily passed for the other.
The distinguishing feature was the price tag. The Orient Mako retails at
around $300 whereas the Rolex I was told, was like $5,000!!!!
I am not sure what precisely made the Rolex so expensive. I mean the
Orient Watch
Company of Japan is a stickler for quality and they even make their own
watch parts and assemble everything in-house. I know Orient has a
fetish for quality and when it comes to accuracy, I’d say 5 seconds per
month is pretty good.
Frankly, the Orient Mako Automatic is not
a diver’s watch. It is rated for 200 meter depths which by the way is
pretty deep. The
Orient Mako diver watch
however will easily stand its own against the sea surf, a dive into a
pool or even a high dive off a rock into a lake. That coupled with its
accuracy, obvious good looks and scratch resistant sapphire crystal was a
good enough ‘everyday’ wear watch for me.
The
Orient Mako Automatic
has a case diameter that is almost 4 cm across and large day-date
display. Accuracy, quality, looks – it was all there. What more could a
man ask?