China Watches Review – Chinese Homage Watches Guide

CIGA Design Series U Blue Planet II

Post author By Bob
Post date February 16, 2025
No Comments on CIGA Design Series U Blue Planet II

CIGA Design, there are still a lot of people who do not know this brand, and it indeed seems to be not as popular as these homage watches like Steeldive, Sugess or even Pagani Design, the rule in the watch world is that cheap things are more welcomed than those watches that look high end. Originally I did not want to introduce this CIGA Design, it is an art, and due to the limitation of my poor English, I can not describe this timepiece well enough, so here I just give a basic introduction with my poor words.

The first Series U Blue Planet came to us in 2021, is that correct? I remembered that this watch won the Challenge Watch Prize at the 2021 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve(GPHG), this is the first time for a Chinese watch to win such an important award. Many brands in China are just copying the designs of Swiss watches, few or even no brands are just doing the creative works like CIGA Design, this world prize which CIGA Design has won will inspire more brands in China to create innovations.

Inspired by the traditional timer sundial used in old China, CIGA Design created this timepiece, it breaks the traditional time display of using hour hand, minute hand and second hand, CIGA Design used their asynchronous technology and the unique dial design of simulating the rotation of the earth to tell you the time at one point. The navigational indicator on the earth can point at hours and minutes at the same time. On the center of the dial, it is one part of the earth, and it can rotate with the rotation of the disc with minute scales. The most outer disc with hour markers is fixed. On the first picture, the time is about 4:47.

On basis of the first generation, the Blue Planet II has made the following improvements:

1.the arc height of the crystal is increased, it looks fuller.

2.the sculpture on the earth is higher and looks more tri-dimensional.

3.the case is recycled titanium.

4.the movement stability is enhanced.

5.the markers are longer and lumed. Readability is enhanced.

6.using new package, with a book inside detailing the message of “Only One Earth” in different languages.

CIGA Design Blue Planet with Brown Leather Band

Tags Blue Planet II, CIGA Design

Ebohr

Ebohr Master Golden Watch

Post author By Bob
Post date February 9, 2025
No Comments on Ebohr Master Golden Watch

Ebohr, maybe you guys abroad have not heard of this brand, even many people in China are not familiar with it, what do I think of Ebohr? What level is it at? In the entire pyramid level of Chinese watches, Ebohr has a higher position than most micro brands, but must be under the big threes that include Sea-gull, Beijing and Shanghai, those watches like Tianwang, Fiyta and Peacock also have a higher grade than Ebohr, so among so many Chinese brands, the audience Ebohr is really targeting at are those who can not spend too much but need ok quality watches. However, along with more and more creative micro brand watches in the market, people have more choices and do not think it is necessary to consider buying from Ebohr, which is a traditional watch maker in China.

Today, I want to introduce a golden watch from Ebohr, I just bought it two days ago, price is not cheap, I spent 1280 Chinese Yuan, which is about $180, at this price, most of you guys may not consider this watch, but will buy from San Martin, Sugess or other high quality micro brand watches. However, I like this Ebohr watch since I first saw it, its case has a very prominent shape that is extremely popular in nowadays watch trends, in such a yellow gold tone, I don’t even think it is too bright, but it looks very elegant.

The watch comes with a good box, which is much better than the box of most other Chinese watches I have seen. Everything included, including card, manual book and links remover. The case has a 40mm diameter and is measured to be 11mm in thickness. Brushed case with bright polished bezel, just like the same finish on the bracelet, middle links are polished and links on two sides are brushed. The entire case has a very strong angular sense, a bit sharp on very case corner, but I do not care this too much, I just like its case and the seamless connection with the bracelet.

The dial is in golden tone and features sunburst finish, bar-shaped hour markers are long and applied with white lume material just like hour hand and minute hand. The date window set at 3 o’clock with golden frame, insider, there is black date font in white background, very easy to read.The engine inside is a Japanese movement, which I think is a Miyota 8215, this Japanese movement is widely used in the watches made in China, I remember that some Tianwang watches also use this movement. It is said this movement has an inaccuracy of about 20 seconds to 40 seconds per day, while compared with its accuracy, our buyers are more concerned about its stability, which usually has no repairing issues in future.

My conclusion:

If Ebohr continues to upgrade this watch in the following aspects, I think we do not care spending more money to get it.

1.Uses a tridimensional brand logo on the dial.
2.Do a better polishing on the case and bracelet, ensure more smooth chamfering.
3.Use a golden Miyota 8215 movement.

Tags Ebohr, Miyota 8215, Yellow Gold

Giveaway

Free Watch Giveaway in Feb.

Post author By Bob
Post date February 2, 2025
No Comments on Free Watch Giveaway in Feb.

The last giveway I posted, no one came and participated, here comes a new giveaway. I ordered a Guanqin watch to set as a prize, it is a full stainless steel watch with quartz movement that offers functions of hours, minutes, seconds, day and date. This watch has a good finish.

To participate the giveaway, please follow the rules:

1.Please share the url link of any of the articles on my blog to one of the watch forums.

2.Please send a email message to show the above mentioned work you did. My email address is berrymoon86@gmail.com.

Prize:

One winner will be chosen and I will send you this Guanqin watch for free, also no need you to pay shipping fee.

This giveaway will end on February 7th.

Tags Giveaway, Guanqin

Sea-gull

Sea-gull Vintage TV 1051

For most watches made in China, they are just copying the designs from the Switzerland, but Sea-gull is the only Chinese watch on which sometimes I can still find creative designs, take this 1051 models as example, this is a watch Sea-gull launched in 2024, but it soon caught a lot of attention after being released in the market because of its unique dial design. The most outstanding and popular 1051 model from Sea-gull is the one with colored blocks on the dial, please check the first picture shown below, but this time I chose the ice blue dial version, which will be more like a watch I can wear regularly.

Check the first picture, the watch’s dial will remind many Chinese people of their childhood, especially the happy time in the generation after 80s, watching TV is a very happy time when they are childs, but the TV will have a maintenance time on Tuesday each week, I think most of them will remember this event. So, Sea-gull absolutely adopts the maintenance scene of the TV as the dial design of the watch.

This Sea-gull watch with an ice blue dial also looks amazing, its case shape is very similar to that of the old TV, actually there are other brands that have already adopted this idea on the case of their watches, this is not originated from Sea-gull. However, the TV scene on the dial is a very creative Chinese element Sea-gull added. The case is 36mm in diameter, with this ice blue dial, I think it will also be a good watch for women. A silver dial option is also available for this watch, with more obvious sunburst finish on the dial. The case is not a frame with sharp edge design, but looks more round on every corner, which guarantees a very comfortable wear. The round bezel has a polished finish that looks contrast in visual with the brushing on the case. Just like the contrast finish on the stainless steel bracelet.

The ice blue dial has long stick hour markers, day and date window with stainless steel frame is set at 3 o’clock, they do not look crowded on this small dial. Besides the TV dial, ice blue and silver dial, Sea-gull also offers a lot of other dial colors for this watch.

The watch is equipped with a Sea-gull ST2100 automatic movement, which beats 28,800 times per hour and has 28 jewels. The accuracy will not be bad if you remember to keep winding a bit every day. However, its price is a little high, for Chinese customers, they won’t mind spending a bit more on such a empathy timepiece.

Tags Sea-gull, ST2100, TV

Farasute

A Very Bad Experience with Farasute

Post author By Bob
Post date January 19, 2025
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Last time, in another post(https://www.bobswatchstore.com/2024/05/11/farasute-watch-review/) I said I bought one watch from Farasute for a friend in the United States, it is a good-looking watch, although the watch gained one minute and fifty seconds later, I thought he still loves it, and more importantly, this last shopping experience with Farasute is good, because I was normally treated as a customer. But the shopping experience with them, which just occured one week ago, was very bad. This is What Happened:

One reader saw my review about the first Farasute watch I mentioned above, he asked me to buy one for him, the following pictures show the watch I bought, it looks great, I think some of you guys will also love this dial. When I placing the order on taobao for this watch, I did not mentioned with the seller that this is a watch ordered for a friend in the United Kingdom, after receiving the watch, I was not satisfied with the watch. I paid the same money as the last one, but the movement decoration on this one is terrible, it is just a naked movement. And the box looks ugly. My UK friend did not want it.

My problem is I paid the same money, why I got a watch that looks lower quality for the second purchase, because I did not mention this is an order from UK? They treated Chinese customers and foreign customers differently.

The first Farasute I bought, very good-looking movement and box.

The following pictures show the second Farasute watch I am not satisified with.

Tags Farasute

Benyar

Benyar BY5177 Explorer Homage Watch Review

Post author By Bob
Post date January 12, 2025
No Comments on Benyar BY5177 Explorer Homage Watch Review

We all know that Benyar is a watch brand registered under Guangzhou Pagani Design Watch Company, so it is the sub-brand of Pagani Design, this has been widely recognized in watch forums, both come from China and are being sold very well abroad. Pagani Design watches are very cheap and are targeting low-end watch market, while their Benyar watches are even cheaper than Pagani Design, that’s crazy, do you know how much I spent on this BY5177? Only $25, that’s unimaginable, because for most automatic watches, even made in China, it is difficult to buy at such a low price.

How is the quality of this watch? If they sell this watch at $30 and include shipping fee, then you can buy one to try, do not pay express shipping like FedEx or DHL, not worthy, and do not expect too much on this watch. I do not know how to say, however, sometimes such type of low-end automatic watch can surprise you because it can last for a long time. If you want to pay only $30 to get a high quality or middle quality watch, then this Benyar watch must be not your choice.

After receiving this watch, I was surprised that it came with a black box that contains everything inside, you know many watch brands do not provide these accessories, like the Beijing watch I bought last time, which does not include a manual book inside, this is not normal, because Beijing is one of the big threes in China. The first impression the Benyar watch gave me is it is too thick, later I measured, almost 13.5mm, the case diameter is 41mm. And later I felt the entire watch is too rounded, I mean, its case does not have angular sense, entirely polished case with simply brushed stainless steel bracelet, there is an obvious gap between the lug and the end link, the gap also exists between the bezel and case body, if you can accept these obvious shortcomings, that’s ok. Although the watch does not have good polishing and brushing on case and bracelet, it is surely made with solid stainless steel, because the watch has a weight of 150.6 grams.

Fortunately the watch comes with a see-through crystal back, the movement inside is a G2666Z, which is a very low-end automatic movement made in China, nowadays, even the cheapest fakes do not use this movement, with this movement, do not expect that your watch can keep a very accurate timing, by the way, you need to wind your watch at least once each day to gain enough power.

For this Benyar BY5177, my conclusion:

It is a watch that can just tell you a basic time.

Cheap finish on case and bracelet, which is worse than that of its brother watch Pagani Design.

Tags Benyar, BY5177, Explorer, Pagani Design

Beijing Watch

Beijing Watch – a good source to get quality mechanical watches with affordable price?

Post author By Bob
Post date January 5, 2025
No Comments on Beijing Watch – a good source to get quality mechanical watches with affordable price?

Every Chinese knows Beijing watch, while it seems like they are not as popular as those micro brands, I do not see too much talking about Beijing watches in watch forums and Reddit, those watch fans seem more likely to buy micro brand watches to enrich their watch collection. However, not every micro brand watch has a trusted quality, after all, most people are attracted by their more affordable prices. While the big three watch companies in China, including Sea-gull, Beijing and Shanghai, have already established a relatively good reputation in watch industry. There are a lot of watch brands in China, if classified by level, Beijing should belong to the highest tier 0 level, while I think their high-end tourbillon watches and enamel watches make the greatest contribution to make Beijing have such a high position in Chinese watches industry, and our watch fans, whether in Italy, France, UK, USA or other countries, are more familiar with the dragon dial watches and tourbillon watches from Beijing. But there are also some good quality watches with cheap prices and good styles from Beijing, just like this watch I just bought from them.

It is a full stainless steel made watch, I bought it because of its Bauhaus dial style and they said they will also send me a free leather band, but they did not, and in the box, which is hard to draw out, there is no manual book. On the card, all information such as purchasing date is empty. These information sometimes are important to our watch fans, they shouldn’t ignore this.

This Beijing watch has a round polished case that is 40.1mm in diameter, 10.9mm in thickness. The weight of the entire watch is about 90.1 grams, not heavy for a full stainless steel watch because it has a hollow mesh bracelet. Its dial has a very simple and easily readable design with black hour markers and minute markers in white dial background. For Beijing watch, making it different from other micro brand watches in China is that they do not have compromise in the finish of some tiny places, for example, on this watch, the Beijing logo on the dial is tridimensional, the date window has layered silver frame, the clasp has a more secure locking method, these are tiny details, which may not be well finished on some micro brand watches, but are finished perfectly on this Beijing watch.

This watch is sold at less than $100, it comes with a see-through crystal back with an automatic movement that looks like Citizen 8215, well, the watch has been on my wrist for three days and still keeps a very accurate time.

Baltany

Baltany 1926 Oyster Retro Watch Review

Post author By Bob
Post date December 29, 2024
No Comments on Baltany 1926 Oyster Retro Watch Review

Baltany is a micro brand that produces watches in Dongguan, Guangdong of China, I did an introduction of Baltany in my previous articles, today, I want to talk more about this brand by introducing a new watch I just bought from them, because I love Baltany more after reading “About” on their website. Here I posted two screenshots I took from the “About”. From the first picture below, we can know the type of watches Baltany is producing, yes, they are redesigning and making the vintage watches that had appeared in old time, I appreciate this because this is also the thing which I have been wanting to do. I want to create a micro brand and remake these retro watches, is there anyone here interested in this project, we can do together. From the second picture, they said they are a small company in Asia, actually in China, they are honest, not like some other micro brands in China that like making up a false Swiss watch-making history. By the way, Baltany also accepts custom-made watch orders.

Now I will introduce the watch that was just bought from Baltany. The watch came to me very fast, I received the package three days ago, opened the package and found a draw-out box, there is a brown leather packet and an envelope inside. When I opened that brown leather packet, I was surprised, because the small hand is still working and the watch keeps an accurate time. Inside the envelope, there are white cloth, card, manual book and screw driver. I like the brown leather packet, it is the most beautiful watch packing, and compared with the box of other micro brands from China, this leather packet is more in line with the watch production DNA of Baltany.

It is a small watch with a cushion-shaped case and looks like the old Rolex watch with first Oyster case in 1926, you can see keywords “1926”, “Oyster” and “Tribute” on the product title on their website, which mean Baltany redesigned this watch to pay tribute to the first Rolex Oyster watch made in 1926. The watch is small, its case is measured to be 39.5mm in diameter, including the crown, you can see the big threaded onion crown without trademark. The case is about 11.4mm thick, including the crystal. The width between the two lugs is 18.1mm. The watch adopts fully mirror polishing finish, the threaded bezel is the fluted bezel feature on modern Rolex, it is in golden color that has the same bright polishing finish as the case.

The black dial is under the protection of a domed sapphire crystal, the hour markers have been applied with the luminous material that has the same color as the golden bezel, small second hand is running on the subdial at 6 o’clock, three hands have polishing finish on the edge. The track-style minute scale looks very classic.

The Baltany watch is equipped with the Sea-gull ST1701, which is automatic, not manual winding. ST1701 has a power reserve of about 40 hours, 20 jewels and beat frequency of 21,600 bph. Any way, the watch still keeps an accurate time within this week, only several seconds faster.

The watch has a black leather strap, which has a smooth leather on the front side and calfskin grain on the other side that contacts your skin. The leather band is fitted with a polished golden pin buckle.

Conclusion:

In my opinion, Baltany is a micro brand that is more creative than the others in this field. Its price will look more reasonable if they can offer one extra band for free.

Tags Baltany, Leather, Oyster, ST1701

Binger

Binger Watch Company Down

Post author By Bob
Post date December 23, 2024
No Comments on Binger Watch Company Down

About Binger, actually I do not know too much about this brand, just do not buy from this watch company now, I saw all watches on their website(https://bingerstore.com/) were sold out, means they do not sell them now. Also on their aliexpress site, there are only four watches left. I guess that they will quit the watch industry, too many niche watch brands have appeared in recent years, they can not compete.

Like other niche brands, Binger also made up a watch-making history, they said they came from Switzerland, this always can not cheat people who are outside of China, but works for some customers in China who know little about watches. At the beginning of their business, that’s about more than ten years ago, Binger used good sapphire crystal face and has good finish, their watches were more well-known in China than in other places. Well, people are now more acceptable to those homages than the watches that look like Binger, that’s the main reason why they can not run their business now.

Guanqin

Guanqin Watch Review

Guanqin, about this Chinese brand, I already have introduced its watch-making history in one of my previous articles https://www.bobswatchstore.com/2022/04/08/guanqin-tonneau-shaped-watch-the-skeleton-beauty-of-mechanical-watch/, Guanqin is not old or very new, it has some customers in China, but not too many. Besides, the customers of Guanqin do not have a young age now, most of them are over 40 years old, or even older, and many customers who have bought Guanqin watches are not well educated, people here who have graduated from college won’t choose Guanqin watch. That is my opinion, I do not know how you think of this brand.

Does Guanqin succeed in Chinese watch market?
Yes, their watches are accepted by a small group of customers, and prices are very affordable. In recent years, many niche watch brands appeared in China, but none of them have succeeded like Guanqin.

Does Guanqin have boutiques in China and in other countries?
No. They have an office in Guangzhou and online stores in Taobao.

My advice:

If you want a mechanical watch from Guanqin, just choose the best seller with a very affordable price, the fewer functions the watch has, the better finish the watch will have, the watch will also be more stable. Just like this Guanqin I show below, it is the cheapest automatic watch from them, works very well, case and bracelet have moderate finish. Overall quality is acceptable.

Tags Guanqin

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