ON THE WRIST: Swatch System 51 Watches

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Swatch Boutique / Carnaby Street, London 9th March 2019

This was my first exposure to the relatively new System 51 automatic watches from Swatch and as much as I sort of want to like them, I'm afraid they didn't really impress me. Both these watches are incredibly plasticy, and there's no real perception of quality here... they are quite big as well and while I did think some of the regular quartz pieces were fun (the 'Alien' watch in particular with its glow in the dark strap) I couldn't get over the feeling that these System 51 pieces were a bit overpriced. It all seemed a bit 'Emperor's new clothes' to me... especially when you read about the performance of the movements in these watches and realise they really aren't that great.

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I actually bought my friend Rich a Seiko 5 last year for his birthday it's a lovely looking watch with a deep blue dial and a steel bracelet, it's also surprisingly accurate and performs far better than it's stated accuracy of +/- 20seconds per day. I mention this only because that watch cost a fair bit less than £130 and holding the two next to each other there's nothing to compare. By comparison the Swatch watch looks like a toy, the cases in particular look very cheap and nasty and there's just no reason I can think of to recommend purchasing one of these.

I know Swatch has it's fanboys and people will say I'm missing the point, Swatch is collectible and funky and limited and blah de blah de blah. Well, I have to say, for me it looks cheap, it performs pretty poorly and given my recent experience with the Seiko boutique for me to recommend buying Seiko is a big deal. In fact I'd recommend a quartz Timex over this for a third of the price... this really just seems like money for old rope, I mean God knows it's hard being a TAG Heuer fan with constant accusations of overpricing and poor value for money, but this really is a bit of a joke.

Save your money and either buy a cheaper, much better automatic Seiko 5 for less than £100, or save up a bit more and buy a pre-owned quartz Kirium or 6000 for less than £300.