Tag: Nylon

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Rdunae

Rdunae R6TR Diver’s Watch

Rdunae Watch

Do you know Rdunae? It is my first time to hear this watch, but before I review this diver’s watch, I did a research on google and found many people like Rdunae, especially this diver’s watch, a lot of watch fans have bought it and given good feedback, this Rdunae watch has a similar appearance to a watch from Blancpain, I do not remember which watch now, however, some people said this watch is a homage of tornek-rayville, I never heard about it before. Whatever, this Rdunae watch looks nice, the brand seems to be registered by a company in Guangxi, but the watch is shipped from Dongguan city in Guangdong.

Rdunae Crown

The watch has a fully sandblasted case that is measured in 40mm in diameter and 24mm in thickness, the watch features a wide black bezel and vintage nylon strap, it is sold less than $100, but with a NH35A automatic movement like San Martin and Steeldive, the watch is highly recommended if you are looking for a diver’s watch.

Unfortunately the bezel is not ceramic made, and Rdunae does not offer nylon strap and rubber band at the same time, you can only choose one. This is a very simple diver’s watch, because of its wide bezel, the entire case looks very strong, and the mineral crystal glass is very thick, which stands very high above the bezel, this also enhances the water resistance of the watch, so Rdunae claims this watch is 200m waterproof. The black dial features an unique logo at 6 o’clock, do you know its special meaning? The hour markers and hands have lume material being applied that looks a little yellowish or vintage, in the dark conditions, the green lume light from the dial is very strong.

Rdunae Case

The case back is interesting, there are instructions engraved to tell you how to lock it, behind it, there is a Japanese automatic movement inside, which is NH35A. I introduced this movement many times, it is the mostly used movement in these Chinese homage watches, cheap and considerable stability are its biggest advantages. Anyway, if there are two homages at the same price, I will absolutely select the one with a Japanese movement with no doubt.

Rdunae Case Back
Rdunae Watch Black Nylon Strap
Categories
Baltany

Baltany Military-style Quartz Watch Review

Baltany Military Watch

In recent years, many brands have appeared in Chinese market to do custom-made work, like the brands San Martin, Proxima, Octopus, STEELDIVE I introduced before, all of them seem to come from the same city in China and customize watches according to the designs of Swiss watches or Japanese watches. Many homage watches they created are beautiful with good prices, I have bought several pieces, however, I think too many brands do a repeated work in this field, that’s not good for the development of China watch industry, and sometimes customers also do not know which one to choose when facing too many options with similar designs. But among those custom-made brands, I think Merkur does a better job than others because they have more excellent watches with their own designs, that’s the right development route which every Chinese watch brand should choose.

Baltany Nylon Strap

Never heard of Baltany before, it seems to have some connection to Proxima and San Martin because their watches’ designs are similar, while still not proved. The Baltany watch I am reviewing is a good military style watch powered by a quartz movement, it has several styles that all look really wonderful, I chose the one with black nylon band. The case is made with 316L stainless steel, not titanium even though it looks not like stainless steel because of its darker matte finish. I like the matte finish on the case, I have a lot of stainless steel watches in polished, it is very nice to try another one that has a different finish on the stainless steel case. And the black nylon band also matches well with this matte case and black dial.

Baltany Quartz Watch
Baltany Stainless Steel Watch

The dial has a very good readability, there are four colors on the dial, the black background, red color on the tip of the central second hand, yellow lume color applied on the arrow-shaped markers and hands, white numeral hour markers. It is powered by a Seiko VK61 quartz movement that offers the watch hours, minutes, small seconds and chronograph functions. The subdial at 6 o’clock has a ticking small second, it will keep moving as long as the battery has power. The small dial at 12 o’clock is a 60-minute chronograph counter. At night, the dial will emit two strong lume light, one is blue on these numeral hour markers, the other is green, both are very strong but I have not tested if they will last for a long time. The dial lume is really a big advantage of those custom-made watch brands in China. The watch looks like on this nato band, well, there are too many band choices for such a military watch, a distressed brown leather band or a black calfskin leather band will also look nice, Baltany gives you choices to select your most favorite band because custom-made watch brand is doing such work.

Baltany Dial
Baltany Crown
Baltany Watch Dial
Categories
Merkur

Merkur 304 China Pilot Watch Review

Merkur 304 Pilot with Box
Merkur 304 Crystal

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.

Merkur 304 Pilot Black

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.

Merkur 304

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.

Merkur 304 Wrist Shot