This San Martin is a top quality diver’s watch with several retro design elements.
San Martin is a very young Chinese custom-made watch brand, which was founded by Liao Jiaming in 2016. From a small workshop to a watch company, the development of San Martin brand is very fast, certainly, this must be attributed to the efforts which Liao Jiaming made in watchmaking field. Among so many custom-made watch brands in China, San Martin is the most high-end one, although their watches are still homages of Swiss brands such as Rolex, Tudor, Omega, Zenith, IWC, etc., they really have a very good quality, even much better than some other Chinese homage watches I introduced before. As a high-end custom-made watch brand, San Martin offers a great flexibility for the customers to customize the watches they want, besides, San Martin provides the wearers with a lot of bands made with different types of materials and in various styles, this will bring a lot of fun to the wearer. San Martin never opened a physical store, they only sell watches online.
The San Martin SN004 200m I received is a homage of Tudor Black Bay, it is a very good diving-style watch with retro combinations. The case is made with solid 316L stainless steel, which is fully brushed, except the polished streamlined case edge with glossy face. The case has a diameter of 38mm and is measured to be 13mm in thickness, the size is not big or too small, very suitable for most men. The weight of the entire watch is about 140 grams. The uni-directional rotating bezel features a black ceramic insert, I like ceramic bezel, but I will be more happy with the watch if it uses a metal bezel insert that will enhance the retro temperament.
The crystal uses sapphire, which is arch-shaped and features AR Coating, this sapphire crystal is very hard and highly scratch resistant, it is an important feature that brings this San Martin watch to a new quality level. Certainly, if San Martin chose to use a mineral or even a acrylic face on this watch and reduce its price, I will also accept it, afte all the retro element means a lot to a vintage watch. On the black dial, hour markers and hands are applied with C3 SuperLuminova that looks a bit yellowish, just like the yellow fill on bezel markers, handset is not the style on Tudor Black Bay, it uses iconic Mercedes hands on Rolex Submariner. At 12 o’clock, “San Martin” letters are printed.
The bracelet is a rivet style and made with solid 316L stainless steel, every link is brushed and there is a embossed “SAN MARTIN” logo on the outer face of the buckle. The solid case back is screwed down, it is empty and has nothing on it, no brand logo or water resistance information, very clean. Inside the case back, it uses a Japanese NH35 automatic movement, which beats 21,600 times per hous, the auto rotor is bi-directional winding and has a high winding efficiency. Considering its good finish, high-end feature and reasonable price, this movement is already good enough.
The San Martin SN004 200m is a great quality homage of “Tudor Black Bay”, I love it very much.
