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| Joined: | Thu Jan 20th, 2011 |
| Location: | Land Of The Norsemen |
| Posts: | 720 |
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First of I´ll shed some light on the background of the ocean diver form Prometheus. It is basicly a watch created after a design contest held on prometheus´own forum (on WUS), and a forum member called B.F. Green won the contest with this design (Design by B.F.Green can be seen on the case back). Prometheus first wonted to offer an affordable chronograph, and looked to Asia for production. But after having gotten back a prototype, and not being happy with the result, decided to change production to Switzerland and the Jura mountains, even though this raised the price on the OD line quite a bit (there is also a 3 hand version and a GMT besides the Chrono). And Prometheus states that the OD line is produced to the highest quality standards (and that is one of the reasons I decided to pull the trigger on it in the first place, that and the general design, that I liked) And the general quality and attention to details is the reason for my issues I will mention here.
I ordered mine from supercrono.com as it actually was a bit cheaper than directly from Prometheus.
So to the watch ...
When I opened the box from UPS, I found a straight forward looking black leather watch box, and inside the watch it self, and an extra orange silicone strap and instruction manual. So nothing special there. The rest of the OD line comes in a kind of travel case, so don´t understand why the ODC just gets this boring box, but no biggy there. But kudos for at least adding the extra strap.
First of I was a little disappointed that even with the stated 44mm case, it looked very small on the wrist (imho). And comparing it to for instance the Vortex (also 44mm), it looked a bit smaller. In reality it is 43mm from 3 to 9 (at least with my measuring tool). And 47mm including the crown. It is 16mm high. I guess the reason I find it looking a bit small is the rather small/thin hands and the kinda busy dial being a chronograph. But all that said, I´m actually warming up to the look of it on the wrist as we speak, and the size isn´t really an issue for me any more. But there are some other issues ...that I will get to a bit further down.
Case:
Size I have already gone through, but it is a supercompressor case. For those of you not familiar with supercompressors, to make a long story short, it is a way of making watch cases much utilized in the 50´s and 60´s. And it has a case back that rests on a kind of "O-ring" that is not quite tighten up, so when pressure from the water outside increases, the case back is actually pressed even harder against the O-ring, creating a better seal the higher the pressure (quite a brilliant design actually) More info here for those interested.
http://scubawatch.org/EPSA_SC_FAQ.html
The case sits high on the wrist with its 16mm but is very comfortable indeed. And is 51mm from lug to lug.
Crowns/buttons:
Being a chronograph with an internal bezel it has two crowns and two buttons. The crown at 11 o´clock adjusts the bezel, and crown at 3 o´clock adjusts time and day/date. The main crown screws in and out with a confidence, and is nice and tight. It is also VERY tight pulling out to adjusting to the 3. position IOT adjust time. I´m afraid of pulling the whole pin out every time I set it.
Now to the buttons that start/stop and resets the chronograph function. The start/stop button is firm and nice, but the reset button on mine is loose both from side to side and up and down. Not very much but more than I would like on a watch "made with the highest attention to quality" I still haven´t tried to tighten the screws on it, so that might just do the trick.
But, her we come the the first issue ...The crown for adjusting the internal bezel has quite a lot of play. I would say mine has about a 1-1,5mm play and is quite loose. Being so loose, most of the time the V pip on the bezel is of-centre to 12 o´clock. Not a BIG thing, but something I find irritating. There is no real reason why this crown should be so loose.
Bezel:
And here we get to issue nr two ...
As mentioned, the bezel crown has play. That of course effects the bezel also. And this has the same play but also it moves just a bit sidewise and not only clock wise. This does not scream quality in my world. It seams to be a bit loose and wobbly.
The lumed V pip on the bezel is clearly of a different kind of lume than the rest of the watch (I will address lume "quality" later on) And the applied lume on the V-pip is just a bit "off" compared to its white background. You can clearly see this in the picture abow.
Dial:
Being a chronograph it might be a bit busy for some, but I find it ok, although I don´t care that much for it having "pressed" in a tachymeter ring on the dial also. And the number markers have a little dot in addition to the mark, that just ads to its busyness (imho)
Hands:
hour and minute hands are black with lume in the centre. The minute hand on mine however is not completely coated in black, but has a unpainted area on one of the sides, again not high attention to detail (imho) You can see it in the picture below if you look closely at the side of the minute hand.
The small seconds hand is white, and I personally would have liked this to at least have a lumed tip, so one at least can see that the watch is working in low light conditions. The chronograph hands are red, and lines up perfectly every time.
Lume:
Here we come to maybe its biggest weak point ... And should mention that as some of you probably already know, I´m a BIG lume addict. And love me some lume. But on this one the lume just don´t cut it. According to Prometheus it is C3 all the way, but as the hour/minute hands are quite bright and nice, the rest is just REALLY weak. And the worst is the V-pip on the bezel. It looks like it´s some other kind of lume, and just can´t be C3. It looks a bit "dirty" when inspected, and looses its glow in a matter of seconds after charging.
10 seconds charge with UV torche, along side the Vortex for comparison.
After only four minutes, you can hardly see the dial lume, and the V-pip is completely gone.
Straps:
It comes on a Caribbean style silicone strap, and a similar orange one is also included. The straps are held in place by screw bars. The screws have a very shallow and thin slot, and normal panerai screwdrivers will not fit. I had to take some old ones and file them sharp to get them to fit. And after a bit of work with warm water the locktite loosened, and they came of. The silicone straps are extremely soft, and VERY long. I´m not sure if I would trust the silicone straps completely, as they are so thin, soft and flexible I feel like they are about to snap every time I flex the wrist. So I got a zulu on it straight away, and haven´t looked back since. The lug bars are not so long, and will probably not accept the thickest leather straps. Even though the case has a "slot" on the underside so the strap wont rub against it.
Movement:
It houses a ETA Valjoux 7750 Elaborè movement, and not gonna say much about it, as you probably know it well. Can´t really say that much about accuracy yet, since I just got it on Friday, but it has run a steady +8/24 so far, but that might settle nicely once it gets some more wrist time.
So to some other goodies ...
When I first got it I wasn´t completely satisfied as I mentioned. And on closer inspection in the sun, I actually found specs of dust on the dial and the internal bezel ring.
If you look closely, you can see three specs of dust around the 25 mark on the bezel and between 53 and 54 on the bezel. There are more, but for the life of me I couldn´t get it to show on the photos. But believe me, it´s there, and irritating the crap out of me.
So with the dust and loose bezel ring and bezel crown, and also the poorly applied lume on the V-pip, I felt like adressing the issues I had on the prometheus forum on WUS, and see if others had experienced the same. I was quickly asked to to contact Prometheus, and did so by PM on the same forum. And yes, one could easily argue that I should have contacted them straight away, and not first on a forum, but I was quite disappointed, and I would have liked it if others with the same issues on theirs had posted it, so one could read about it before buying. Because all the reviews I had read up till then, was positive. (some mentioned the lume not being great ...)
But Carlos at Prometheus quickly stated that he could clear the dust from the case for me, but not fix the rest of my issues. I never asked him to take the watch back and give me a refund, as I bought it from superchrono (a AD for prometheus) But he keept on repeating that he really could not give me a refund. And I repeated that I didn´t ask for that from him. I only wanted to know if there was anything wrong with mine, or if it in fact was the case that the bezel was supposed to be loose, the reset button was supposed to be lose and the bezel crown was supposed to have that much play in it? He never addressed those issues in the PM, but instead closed the thread I started and stating that "Issues with watch to be sorted out as part of warranty as mentioned to OP in pm where I have suggested to get watch looked at and dial cleaned by us. " And I had clearly stated to him that I wouldn´t send the watch to him if the only thing he was going to do was to clean the dial (as I could get my local watch maker to do that for a lot less hassle at almost the same amount as it would cost to send it to Portugal and back). And he was not interested in fixing the other issues, rather stated that the rest button was that loose by design, since the 7750 mvt needed it to be IOT work properly, and that all internal bezels had that much play, and also that it was a known fact that the OD series had rather poor lume. And summed up with "accidents happen ..." So that kind of pissed me off. I then made a new thread to inform other forum members of issues actually NOT being agreed upon fixing by Prometheus, other than dust. Only to get hammered by admin, and that thread closed also ...
For those interested here is the link to both threads
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f242/my-first-prometheus-not-so-blown-away-539772.html
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f242/interesting-carlos-prometheus-closed-tread-regarding-issues-new-odc-539975.html
So to sum up ...
I still like the design of the ODC, and besides the issues mentioned I like my ODC quite a lot actually. At first I thought this was going to be a case of catch and relese, but now I have decided to keep it, get my watch maker to clear the dust out, try changing the gaskets on the stem of the bezel screw IOt tighten it up a bit (if possible) and look into if someone can relume the whole thing for me. And when those issues are taken care of, I´ll be a happy camper again.
But must say, I´m not extremely impressed by the CS from Prometheus, nor am I impressed by WUS per say. It almost seems like people there only are interested in hearing positive information, and they act almost like a religious sect (I felt like I swore in church or something when I told of my issues with my ODC there, and got quite a few PM´s, hehe)
Was a "frequent" poster on WUS some time back, under a different nic, (that I for the life of me can´t remember the password for) so had to re-list IOT say my meaning this time, but needless to say, I´m sticking to 3T from now on ...) And they can sit there give each other positive feedback and censoring everyone that has something not so good to bring to the table ...I have better places to spend my time.
And the whole reason why I gave my insight and experiences in the first place, was so others on the fence about the ODC would get a more nuanced picture, and have some more info before pulling the trigger, and I will always say what I mean and feel about something, regardless if others disagree. I kinda thought that was the whole reason for having discussion forums in the first place ...
And to finish of, something isn´t made to the highets quality standards only if you say so ...And I guess there are some lazy and not so detail-focused watch makers even in the Jura mountains of Switzerland.
Because cleaning the dial before reassembly is a given, and something you just don´t forget if you have attention for details. And a quality inspection before shipping is newer a bad thing ...
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Last edited on Sun May 15th, 2011 08:05 pm by FnuSnu99