Merkur offers a lot of watches with novel designs, different from other watch brands coming from China, Merkur is more willing to use the elements of some old Chinese army watches on the design of their products. Sometimes, I was more attracted by the mysterious symbols and novel designs on a watch, rather than its quality, I know the quality of each brand watch is very close within a certain price range, so whether a watch has an innovative design will be the main factor in my decision to buy. As a new designer watch brand in China, Merkur is the first one to use a lot of elements which you could only find on old Chinese army watches, that’s the main reason why I have bought three watches from them.
This 304 pilot is my third watch bought from Merkur. It is a manual winding watch that sets a vintage dial in a modern case frame. On this watch, there are four design elements I like very much, the red star, “航空”, “304” and blue color. Merkur offers three bracelet options for the watch, stainless steel bracelet, black leather strap and khaki nylon strap, I choose the nylon band on their website.
The dial is most attractive, the sunken digit “304” is in dark black, which is still clearly readable on this black dial. Central hour hand and minute hand are in track style with blue frames. the hour hand is special, it has an exteneded tip, so the entire hand looks like having the same length of the minute hand. All Arabic hour markers and two hands are applied with retro yellow luminescence, they will emit a green lume light in dark conditions. The small subdial at 6 o’clock also looks beautiful, it is a display of small seconds with a small blue hand. There is a very small red star ★ above the Chinese words 航空”, which means Pilot, so I think the design inspiration of this watch must come from those old Chinese pilot watches.
The case is brushed, which forms a high contrast with the polished round bezel. The case has a diameter of 38mm, not including the crown, it is measured to be 12mm in thickness and 45mm in length(including the lugs). The crystal face is arched, it is not sapphire but made with acrylic. The solid case back has brand’s name engravings in Chinese.
Inside the case, Merkur claims that they use a Sea-gull TY2901 movement, which is manual winding. This movement has inherited some features of Swiss Venus175. The khaki nylon strap is a perfect fit for this vintage pilot watch, you can also replace it with a brown leather band, it is very easy to do this, tool not needed. In a word, the Merkur 304 is a very good China Pilot watch full of retro flavor.
