The Breitling Watch Blog

Ocean7 makes a very nice looking watch, and I greatly enjoyed the Ocean7 LM-6c I had while I owned it. Great hunky-chunky look, and fantastic curved crystal. Lume was not the greatest, but I’m not really picky about Lume. The skeleton hands look pretty awesome on it too.

I owned it for quite a while, and then decided to sell it recently. I found out that when I bought the watch, the price was $1599, and then now the watch sells for $899, direct from Ocean7. For a company to drop the price so much is pretty drastic, and not much of a service to their customers. But, if that’s how they want to do things, I guess that’s that.

The Ocean7 uses a Valjoux 7750 movement, likely not modifed at all. It is completely swiss made with your typical 316L stainless steel case and Sapphire Crystal. Water resistant to 500m. Its a big watch at 44mm, with 24mm Lug width and includes both the steel bracelet and the strap. Overall a very nice watch for a very reasonable price, especially since the price reduction.

Here’s my recently posted Video Review of my George J Von Burg Sport Chronograph. I reviewed the George J Von Burg here, and now I’ve posted the video review as well so you can see that. The watch uses the workhorse ETA/Valjoux 7750, and measures 40mm in diameter. Swiss Made by GJVB, a privately owned, family-business watchmaker.

We finally got them in.. the limited edition BreitlingSource Forum watch, a Customized Steinhart Nav B-Uhr with a unique dial, and a special engraving on the back of the watch. Check it out!

The proverbial wristshot. The 47mm sized case might be a bit large for my 6.75″ wrist, but this is the first Limited Edition Forum watch, put together by Altair from our forum, and Gunter from Steinhart watches in Germany. It came to my door this morning, Christmas Eve! What a nice surprise.

Notice the dark grey Lumed Arabics, combined with a grey dial, and beautiful scripted Limited Edition lettering on the front. Combination brushed and polished case. These details are often much more appreciated when you are designing the watch yourself.

A photo from the other side. For good measure.

The black riveted pilot strap is a nubuck/sueded finish, and complements the watch REALLY well. I think aside from possibly a Dark grey/Black nubuck Crocodile rivet strap, there wouldn’t be anything I prefer more with the possible exception of a Bracelet maybe.

The Diamon crown isn’t machined as well as an IWC Big Pilot.. but its not bad. I wouldn’t mind an Onion crown as an option however.. I like the big round onions too.

A nice shot of the ETA/Unitas 6497 movement, with Cote de Geneves striping and beveled gears. Its a step up from the base level Unitas Movements that I have owned before. It also has my name, and the Limited Edition of 15 number engraved on the back as well. Very nice!

Thanks to Altair and Gunter for putting this one together!

As some of you might have already known, I had purchased a U-Boat Flightdeck CAS 50mm watch, which many on the forum kept saying was “Cheaply made” and they felt that the metal was cheap and that the crystal was cheap. I had a totally different experience and felt that the case machining was on par with anything in the price range, and that the only part that was neglected was the finish of the movement. I’ll elaborate a bit more here.

There is a general shot of the U-Boat, atop the U-Boat box. As you can see, the lines on the bezel are crisp and sharp, an indication of high-end finishing techniques, usually executed partially by hand. The strap on the other hand, while made in Italy by hand, is ugly. The preforated inserts on the strap serve to cheapen the overall look of the watch, and I immediately put it on a StrapLuxe grey leather strap with white stitching which matches the watch perfect in my opinion.

A close up of the dial, and you can see the crisp lines of the bezel in this photo as well. The dial lume is applied meticulously and precisely. While this watch is made in Italy, I have no doubt that the quality of the painting on the dial is up to the standards of similarly priced swiss watches. While the overall style of the watch probably does not ooze class, it is a well made watch in my opinion. The crystals are Sapphire, and the case steel is 316L, the same type as most high-quality Swiss watches.

It was told to me that the quality of this watch was no better than the Nixon watches out there. While I might agree with this statement if it were applied to Hamilton watches or Swiss Army Victorinox case finishing, I would not agree in repect to U-Boat. I would put U-Boat solidly along the lines of Tag Heuer’s Carrera line for quality of finish.

The movement finish on the other hand is sorely lacking, and not up to the quality standards of even Tag Heuer. The U-Boat movements are definately in the same quality range as Hamilton. The extra canteen hardware is very well machined and made as well, given a quality feel when unscrewing and using the canteen cover.

The Plain Jane Valjoux/ETA 7750 is visible on the caseback as can be seen, and is mounted reversed for a left-crown configuration, an obvious necessity given the size of crown and 50mm case diameter. The watch is quite heavy and does not feel light for its size in my opinion.

Not seen in the photos is the U-BOAT deeply engraved on the side of the case, which is deeply sunken and bead basted in the deep parts, given the case an extra level of finish. I purchased this watch from a friend, after I had handled it and felt that the quality of the finish was at an acceptable level. I have since sold this watch, mostly because I found the 50mm size a bit inconvenient. It makes the watch somewhat impractical for daily wear, and sometimes the size makes it look a bit tacky IMO. This is the “mid-sized” U-boat, with a larger 55mm size and smaller 43mm version available.

There’s the proverbial wrist shot, mounted on the stock strap and shown on my 6 3/4″ wrist. While it is large, and somewhat saucer-like in appearance, it is not entirely out of the question, and much more manageable than I would have thought 50mm would be. Now, the 55mm version would be totally out of the question for me, but I could see a guy with an 8″ wrist pull a 55mm U-Boat off no problem…

Here is a video review that I just posted of the Breitling SuperOcean Heritage 46. I bought one of these and a Heritage 38 for my wife and myself as wedding gifts… we had them engraved and you can see that in an earlier post. This is the first of the reviews, looking at the 46mm Heritage on the Mesh Ocean Classic bracelet.

I posted this video a couple weeks ago, but had forgotten to announce it here. So I’m linking it now. This is to supplement the Wilson Watch Works Navigator Watch Review that I wrote previously. I also believe that its called an Observer Dial not a Navigator dial, and since Wilson Watch Works doesn’t name their watches, I had to kind of make up a name. Nevertheless, it is a very solid, well-made watch using great materials.

I hope you enjoy the video if you haven’t already:

My first Solid Rose Gold watch, a 18K Rose Gold Louis Erard 1931 manual winding watch. I really like this one, and its about 40mm in diameter, with a Peseaux/ETA 7001 movement, a manual winding workhorse like the Unitas 6497, albeit quite a bit smaller. This movement is used by many brands out there and some that modify movements such as Nomos, Blancpain and Chronoswiss.

Louis Erard is a more affordable brand out there, that still makes some beautiful watches more in the dressy/classy line-up. The 1931 series is a very sensibly sized line with refined dials and solid build quality, especially the precious metal versions.

The 18k Rose Gold case is beautifully crafted, but simple. The lettering on the back is laser etched presumably to save money, and has a sapphire crystal display back. The gold markings are stamped, not etched.

The dial is an interesting matte/bead blasted black, with Rose Gold indices. The subdial uses a large chapter ring in order to give the dial balance due to the small size of the movement. The 12 o’clock index is the only one in arabics.

As you can see, the small seconds subdial is sunken with light guioche pattern. I put the watch on an aftermarket Gucci strap made by Camille Fournet in France. It is one of the many that are available on Ebay at discount prices. I feel the Gucci straps are the best bang for buck straps available if you have the right size with Crocodile and Ostrich straps made by Camille Fournet in France for around $30 a peice.

There is the Peseaux movement with geneva striping. It is niceley finished, and shows well. The movement is signed as well, and as you can see, is quite small compared with the size of the watch.

The requisite wrist shot. The 40mm size actually measures closer to 41mm, and works great for my wrist size (6 3/4″). I love this watch for wearing with suits or any other dress-up occasion. The standard Louis Erard watches are very nice looking watches for the money, and these Gold models can be found for a song on the secondary Market, making them a great choice for an affordable modern gold watch.

Don’t really want to get into an extensive review of this Omega Seamaster GMT, as there are plenty out there. Just wanted to make a few notes regarding the watch, as I have reviewed the other Seamasters in the past, both in videos and in writing.

The Omega Seamaster GMT is a very nice watch, which uses the same 41.5mm case design as all the other Seamaster 300m Divers. The GMT hand is unique compared with most other GMT watches in that when you adjust the hour the main hour hand moves, not the GMT hand. This makes the watch much easier to adjust for Local Time than other GMT watches. You simply keep your GMT hand on Home Time permanently, and adjust the main hour hand in the 1-hour increments to adjust for local time.

The watch has a day/night two-tone bezel which many peopel don’t like, including myself. It can be relatively easily changed to a standard black or silver bezel if you wish however.

Basic Specs:
Diameter: 41.5mm
Movement: Omega 1128 (Base ETA2892)
Water Resistance: 300m
Crystal: Sapphire