Tag: Breitling

ExNotes Product Review: The Orient Panda

By Joe Berk

Some time ago, I wrote a blog about panda watches.  In it, I mentioned the Orient Panda.  I’ve been wearing one for several months now and I thought I’d share my opinions.

From an accuracy perspective, it just doesn’t get much better than what this Orient provides.  I set it to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) official time site, and it is still spot on after several months (no gain, no loss; it is accurate to the second).  The watch has a solar-powered quartz movement; you can’t realize that kind of accuracy with a mechanical watch.

I didn’t care for the Orient Panda’s stainless steel bracelet.  The bracelet’s appearance is good and the construction appears to be of high quality, but it was uncomfortable.  Maybe that was due to the bracelet’s relatively sharp edges.  I played around with the adjustment by removing links and then putting them back in, and also by moving the pin to different positions on the clasp, but I couldn’t get it to fit my wrist comfortably.  It was either too tight (which made it even more uncomfortable), or it would swim around on my wrist with the watch going from the top of my wrist to the opposite side (I hate it when a watch does that).

Orient and Breitling Pandas. The Orient is $160; the Breitling sells for $7,300.  For me, it was an easy decision.

I addressed the fit and comfort issues by ordering an inexpensive alligator style leather band from Strapsco (it was less than $20).  The band is black with white leather stitching, and when I put it on the Orient, the watch’s personality changed completely (and for the better).  The band matches the watch perfectly and it is much more comfortable.  I think it looks much richer (it’s very similar to the $7,300 Breitling Panda mentioned in my earlier blog).  I think Orient may be missing the boat here; the Orient Panda should ship with both bands.

The Orient’s solar power feature doesn’t need the sun; interior lighting is good enough.   I’ve left my Orient Panda unworn for weeks on a shelf in my office and my office light kept it going. I like the idea that the watch won’t die in the middle of an overseas adventure because the battery gives out.  That’s happened to me before.

The Orient Panda can be had in three different colors. I like the one on the left best.

Although I love the panda concept and look, on the Orient Panda the contrast between the hands and the watch face doesn’t work for me.  The hands should stand out so that the time is apparent at a glance.  It is not on this watch.  Maybe me being an old fart is aggravating the issue.  I have to stare at the watch to see the hands against the watch face.  The hands should be black, I think, as was the case on my 1970s-era Seiko Panda.  Maybe the Orient colors will work for you.  Orient offers this watch in three different colors, but I don’t care for the look of the other two.  Interestingly, the Orient Panda with the gray face is only $135 on Amazon, undercutting the price on the other Orient Panda color options by $25.

The Orient Panda has bits of lume on the numbers and the hands.  The lume is small, though, and like me, they are not terribly bright. I found the lume tough to see at night.  It’s also tough to determine where 12:00 on the watch face is at night.

The Orient Panda has a date feature.  I’ll chalk this observation up to being a geezer:  I found the date to be so small it was useless.  Plus, the date is set back from the watch face, which throws a shadow over the numerals (further obscuring the date).

The Orient Panda has three subdials, which I think is one too many.  Like many over-subdialed watches, the 24-hour subdial is a dumb thing.  I think I can tell the difference between night and day, I know when it’s a.m. and when it’s p.m., and I can do the mental math instantly to convert 2:00 p.m. is 14:00 hours (I don’t need a subdial for this).  If Orient had made the subdial hours settable in hourly increments independent of the main dial’s hourly settings, that would be a cool GMT feature that would allow knowing the time in two different time zones.  But like every other watchmaker that includes a 24-hour subdial, you can’t set the subdial separately, so to me all it does is add complexity where none is required.

With regard to the chronograph feature, there is a smaller subdial at the 6:00 position that tracks up to 60 minutes, and seconds are recorded with the watch’s main face second hand.  That approach is okay, I suppose, but the second hand really disappears against the watch face due to the aforementioned lack of contrast, and the 0-60 minute subdial is too small.  I think Orient would have a better product if they eliminated the 24-hour subdial at the 3:00 position and used that real estate for a larger subdial for the chronograph’s 0-60 minute feature.   That would knock the Orient Panda down to two subdials, which I think is just right for a panda watch.  It would look more like a panda.  But hey, what do I know?  Orient sells a lot of watches.  I don’t sell any.

At an Amazon price of $160.84, the price on the Orient Panda is impressive, especially when viewed alongside the $7300 Breitling Panda.  My complaints notwithstanding, the Orient Panda is a beautiful timepiece at an affordable price.  It is both a nice piece of jewelry and a usable everyday watch.

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Pandas!

By Joe Berk

The big photo above is shows three very real pandas.  I took it in Chengdu when Gresh and I rode across China.  It’s a little blurry because I was shooting through inch-thick super-smudgy glass.  The photo is for attention only.  This blog is about a different kind of panda.

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When I was a pup back in the 1970s, I bought a Seiko chronograph watch in the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange.  The Seiko model number was 6138-8020, and it was $67.  I could have bought a Rolex there, too, but I remember thinking who spends $300 on wristwatch?  Nope, it would be the Seiko for me.

A Seiko 6138-8020 recently advertised on Ebay for close to $2,000.

The Seiko 6138 was an automatic (i.e., self-winding) watch.  It became known as the Panda due to its two black subdials on its white face.  I liked the Seiko a lot.  I was a jogger in those days, and I used the Seiko every day to time my 3-mile runs.  Life was good but I went on to other things.  After the Army I worked in the aerospace industry, and like most engineers I went the digital route (I wore a Casio calculator watch).  When Ebay became a thing I went on a decluttering craze and the Seiko went down the road.   I got $80 for it and I thought I was pretty clever.  Then I watched the price of a 6138 go through the roof.  That may be why I collect watches now.  I’m still trying to make up for that mistake.

I’ve missed my Panda over the years, and I started looking around to see what was available.  There are several.  In my opinion, Breitling makes the best (and best looking) Panda.   Their Premier model is an awesome automatic watch, but who spends $7,299 on a watch?

Breitling’s Premier chronograph.  It’s a Holy Grail kind of a watch.

The Hamilton automatic American Classic is another great looking Panda.  That answers the mail for me, too, but it’s a little bit rich for my blood.  The Hamilton goes for $1,541.

Hamilton makes a Panda chronograph.  Nice, but a little bit pricey.

Seiko has a solar-powered Panda watch in their Prospex line that looks pretty good to me.  It’s a $700 watch.  If you shop around, you can find them for about $500.  That’s not bad, but Seiko also makes that watch with a red and blue face and a red and blue bezel (informally known as the Pepsi), and one of these days I’ll probably pull the trigger on one of those.  So, I took a pass on the Seiko Panda.

Seiko’s Prospex Panda.   This is a very good-looking watch.

Bulova recently got into the Panda shtick as well, with a set of different colors on their Lunar Pilot watch:

The Bulova Lunar Pilot Panda. Nice, and incredibly accurate.

The Bulova is $895.  It’s nice, but a few years ago I bought the black dial Bulova that emulates the watch astronaut Dave Scott wore to the moon.  With a Lunar Pilot already in the collection, I wanted something else.

I’d been thinking about this Panda thing for a couple of years now, and looking at watches from time to time on the Internet, and you know where this is going.  The Internet is insidious, and the marketing emails starting coming in.  Amazon sent one on the Orient Panda and it was $188.  Seiko and Orient are both owned by Epson (yep, the printer company), and I know Orient to be a good watch (I’ve written before about my Orient moonie automatic watch).  Here’s the Orient Panda:

The Orient Panda. I like its looks.

The Orient had great reviews on Amazon, and I liked the look.  One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that it’s hard to judge a watch’s appeal by a photo.  Some that look great in a picture are totally unappealing in person, and vice versa.  But for $188, I’m willing to take a chance.  When the watch arrives (it’s a non-US model and it’s shipping directly from Japan), I’ll let you know how it looks.  I like the metal bracelet; I may spring for a black leather (with white stitching) band (like the Breitling’s) somewhere down the road.

A few general observations on the above watches.  You may have noticed that the bezel rings are different between the Orient Panda and the others.  The Orient has equally-spaced marks that show how many seconds have elapsed when the stopwatch is activated.  All the other Panda watches have what is known as a tachymeter bezel.  The idea behind it is that you can use the tachymeter for determining rate.  If you activate the tachymeter when passing a mile marker and then stop it at the next mile marker, it will tell you your actual speed (as long as you are going faster than 60 mph).  If you are on a production line, you can activate the stop watch when starting one item and stop the watch when the item is completed.   Let’s say it takes 9 seconds to complete one item.  The stop watch’s second hand will point to how many items can be completed in an hour (in this case, 400).   The tachymeter is a cool feature but I have never used it, so the fact that it is not on the Orient is okay by me.

I’ve mentioned automatic and solar powered watches.  An automatic watch is a mechanical, self-winding watch.  For some collectors, there’s a panache associated with a mechanical watch.  I feel that way, and I have automatic watches.  The downsides of an automatic watch are that if you don’t wear them for a few days they stop and then you have to reset them, and they are less accurate (typical automatic watch accuracy is about ±25 seconds per day.  Some are better than others.  If you’re a fanatic about time, you’ll probably reset an automatic watch about once a week.  For watch geeks that’s okay.  We like playing with our watches.

Solar powered watches are essentially quartz watches that are powered by the sun instead of needing a battery.  The downside is the watch has to be in the light (either sunlight or artificial light) a little bit each day to keep running.  The upsides are that if you don’t wear a solar powered watch but keep it where the light hits it, it keeps running, and solar powered (and quartz regulated) watches are phenomenally accurate (to the tune of a few seconds per month).  I have solar powered watches that I haven’t worn for a year or more, and they accurate to within a few seconds of the time.gov website.  That’s pretty cool.

Back to that ride into Chengdu to see the real pandas…you can read all about it in Riding China.  Here’s a short video of Joe Gresh and yours truly slogging through Chengdu traffic on Zongshen RX1 motorcycles.

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Pandas!

That Seiko watch you see on the right, known informally as “The Panda” in watch collector circles, is perhaps the best watch I’ve ever owned.  I bought it at the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange when I was a young Army dude in 1975 for the princely sum of $76, which was a bit of a stretch for me.  Oh, I had the bucks.  The Army didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t have expenses, either, so $76 was eminently doable.  In fact, I bought Seiko stainless steel chronographs from the Base Exchange for my Dad and my grandfather, too.  Their watches were only $67, but the Panda had the day and the date on the face, and three timing features:  Seconds on the main watch face, minutes on the lower subdial, and hours on the upper subdial.  It was a beautiful thing and it was all mechanical.  I wore it for about 10 years, and then when Ebay started to get popular I auctioned it away.  I was quite pleased with the results.  The watch that originally set me back $76 went for just north of $200 on Ebay 30 years ago.  Today, though, that same watch brings around $2000. I sold too soon. Go figure.

Anyway, being the watch junkie that I am, I was more than a little intrigued by a very similar watch now being offered by Breitling.  It is also an all mechanical watch Breitling calls the “Premier.”

I’d call it a Panda, and I’d sure like to own one.  But the Breitling MSRP is a lofty $8500.  They are just over $6,000 on Amazon, but that’s still way above my pay grade.

In poking around on the Internet looking at the Breitlings, I learned that they offer several versions of their Premier.  One is a model that pays tribute to the Norton motorcycle, which has different colors, old school numbers on the face, and a band that, frankly, looks cheap to me.   The colors don’t really work for me, either, but maybe that’s because I want my Panda to look like a panda.  If I wanted a Norton motorcycle, I’d buy a Norton.

Seiko is back on the Panda wagon, too, as is Citizen and perhaps others with modern versions of this classic watch design.  Their prices are way more reasonable, too, being in the $200 to $300 range. But the new Seiko and Citizen Pandas are solar-powered quartz watches.

There’s nothing wrong with electric watches (in fact, their accuracy is astounding), but I’m a mechanical guy.  I own a few solar watches and several battery-powered watches.  I like them all.  But there’s a certain cachet (a fancy word for cool) associated with a mechanical watch, even if you give up a little accuracy. I would like to wear that Breitling just to pretend I’m still a yuppie, but it’s not gonna happen.

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Malls, Munro, Taj Mahals, and more…

An Indian in the cupboard? Not quite. Read on.

I guess I should start this piece by explaining I’m not even sure what the Clifton Club is. After spending several minutes on Google researching it, all I could find is that it’s either a wedding and Bar Mitzvah venue in Lakewood, Ohio, or a series of bling pieces from high-end watch maker Baume and Mercier. I’m going to go with Door No. 2 on this one. It’s the only explanation that makes sense in the context of what follows.

Let me back up a step. Yesterday I chauffeured the ladies to Fashion Island in Newport. It’s a very trendy shopping mall in a very trendy part of So Cal (think Neiman-Marcus, Nordstrom’s, French poodles, BMWs, and the like).  For me, a visit to any shopping mall is torture, but it keeps me in good graces with the rest of the clan and builds up goodwill points for the next collectible firearm purchase, so it all works out.

Anyway, while the girls were shopping I wandered into a high-end watch store (think Rolex and armed guards) and I noticed, of all things, a motorcycle. A new Indian, to be precise, in the middle of the store. I’ve never ridden an Indian (new or vintage), but I always thought they were beautiful motorcycles (again, both new and vintage).  I’m not a big cruiser guy, but if I was, I think I would buy an Indian. They are good-looking motorcycles, and my buddies Joe Gresh and Duane both hold them in high regard (and that’s a powerful endorsement).

While I was admiring the Indian, a sales guy approached me (my new good buddy Eduardo…Eduardo, I think, is a particularly elegant name).  Eduardo saw my confusion (a motorcycle in a jewelry store?), and he explained that Indian had a marketing partnership with Baume and Mercier, a high-end Swiss watchmaker.  It all centered on Burt Munro and his record-breaking land speed record activities.  Indian.  Baume and Mercier.  Burt Munro.   Ah, it all came together.

The Baume and Mercier Indian watch. $3900, and it could be yours. Motorcycle not included. It is a beautiful timepiece.  It’s part of their Clifton Club collection, and if you wear it, you could be a member, too.
Indian got it right.  It’s an OHV engine, but the valve covers are designed to emulate the flathead design of the original Indians.  It’s masterful, I think.
There’s a lot of room in those freight and setup fees.  Don’t ever pay what any dealer asks for in these two categories. Read 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, available on Amazon.com, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Do these marketing partnerships work? I suppose they do. More than 20 years ago, Ford teamed with Harley to offer a special limited edition F-150 pickup with Harley decals.  As near as I could tell, the decals were the only thing special about that truck, and the only thing limiting the edition was how many they could sell. I had a lot of fun teasing a friend of mine who owned both a Harley Bad Boy (yep, they actually had a model with that name) and the limited edition truck. I drove a ginormous Tahoe and I rode a Suzuki TL1000 in those days.  I told my friend I was going to put Suzuki decals on the Chevy and call it a TL-Ho. Good times.

Anyway, the Baume and Mercier watch I saw yesterday was cool (at $3900, it should be), and the Indian was beautiful. I hope the deal works out for Baume and Mercier, and for Indian. I pondered the Harley and Ford partnership mentioned above; I’m guessing nothing came of that, as the two companies seemed to have parted ways.  Then I remembered that Bentley, the luxury British carmaker, has a partnership with Breitling (Breitling is another expensive Swiss watchmaker).

I wondered…what’s in it for the companies that strike up such partnerships, and what’s in it for their customers? I don’t think there’s any kind of pricing advantage or free gear package, so what would be the attraction?  Is it simply living a branded lifestyle (you know, for insecure rich folks who need something more in their lives)?   Or is it somehow making a statement about one’s wealth?   Look at me!  I drive a Bentley and wear a Breitling!

That got me to thinking…would a marketing partnership work for other brands, and in particular, would such a partnership work for less expensive motorcycles and watches?   You know, look at me!  I ride an RX3 and I wear a Timex!

What if you could sell a new motorcycle and give away a free watch with it? I’m thinking of China bikes, India bikes (not Indian Moto, but bikes actually made in India), and maybe Thai bikes.  It might work if you included a free watch with each new motorcycle, and it would cost essentially nothing. I visited the Canton Fair in Guangzhou last year and I’m on their email list now, so I get all kinds of offers from Chinese manufacturers.  You can buy new Chinese watches for $0.62 each (and if you’re thinking they are low quality, you need to think again and maybe research where what you’re currently wearing is actually manufactured).

The branding and theming opportunities might be fun.  KLRs are made in Thailand…suppose you got a free milk-crate-themed watch to match your KLR’s topcase?  The KTM 390 is made in India; perhaps you could include a Taj Mahal themed watch with each new 390 (isn’t that what the “TM” in KTM stands for, anyway?).  Think of all the marques with models, engines, or major components manufactured in Thailand, India, and China…Hawk, SWM, CSC, Royal Enfield, BMW, Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Honda, and more.  You can see the possibilities.

Yeah, this could work.