(2024-04-29) When an interesting watch is boring... as it should be
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It might look like I'm breaking my oath by writing about a Swiss made
wristwatch in a place where non-Swiss wristwatches are usually talked about. 
Well, considering I'm about to exit the hobby soon, I think this might be an 
acceptable exception. So far, I've been using this watch for a week but this 
is exactly the case when you know almost everything about it from the week 
of usage, and the only things you can learn over time is how well it holds 
to its claims about accuracy and battery life. Of course, I'm talking about 
my current choice, the Certina C035.410.44.087.00 aka DS Caimano 39 Titanium.

Well... What's so interesting about it then? First, it fulfills all of my
requirements stated in my previous phlog post with its 39mm diameter, <8mm 
thickness, 20mm lug width, <44 mm lug to lug distance (although this isn't 
documented anywhere), all-titanium casing and bracelet, sapphire crystal 
with AR coating, 10 bar WR rating, minute hand reaching the minute markers 
and, finally, a thermocompensated quartz movement I'm gonna talk about a bit 
later. Second, this is the first watch in a long time where I don't want to 
replace the stock bracelet with something else, particularly because it's 
also thin, lightweight and made of titanium. It's a jubilee-type bracelet 
with solid links (including end links), dual finishing (the inner links are 
polished and the outer are matte titanium) and an internal two-sided 
butterfly-type clasp that totally disappears under the bracelet itself in 
the closed state, leaving only the pushers visible. And the total weight of 
the watch is quite featherlight for what it is: 67.4 grams after shortening 
the bracelet to my wrist size. Which, for the record, is only about 12 to 14 
grams heavier than my all-resin 5600-series G-Shocks and still virtually 
disappears on my wrist.

The only downside to this bracelet is that it, due to its construction, has
no micro-adjustments: I have gotten away with it by removing one link from 
the upper side and two from the lower, but I understand how this might be a 
problem for some people. And speaking of downsides of the watch itself, I 
have found only one so far: lume. It is present on both hands and hour 
markers, but in miniscule quantities. I also predict the press-on caseback 
might be a problem for me when the time comes to replace the battery. I've 
been a strong proponent of screw-on casebacks for that very reason, and have 
some examples of rather thinner watches that successfully implement them. 
But we'll see. Of course, this watch ideally should have solar charging so 
that the battery replacement would never be required (I mean, CTL920/1616 
replacement might be required every 20 to 30 years but that's a lot of time) 
but that's the Swiss we're talking about, they will never implement such a 
killer feature in addition to everything else for this price. For the same 
reason, we won't find an autocalendar feature here and we'll have to move 
the date manually if the month doesn't have 31 days.

Now, let's talk about the real killer feature of this watch: the ETA
PreciDrive series movement. Particularly, F05.411, which is only known to be 
used in the DS Caimano models, otherwise it's all but extinct by now as it 
has been replaced with a "superior" F05.412. Little is known about the 
movement itself, other than the fact that it 1) is thermocompensated and 
promises to keep time within 10 seconds per year deviation if the ambient 
temperature is within 20..30 degrees Celsius, 2) uses a Renata 371 battery 
which corresponds to the SR920SW standard marking, and the movement is 
supposed to work for about 5 years on this battery and indicate when the 
charge is low with the second hand skipping 4-second intervals. By the way, 
when setting this watch, the hands are moving tighter than usual, but the 
same precautions apply: first you move the minute hand a bit (~10 min) ahead 
and then slowly adjust it back to the exact minute position. Otherwise 
you'll find the minute hand lagging behind the second hand, which is 
extremely annoying. On the positive side, this movement has very distinct 
date and time setting crown positions, so you can pull the crown and advance 
the date without being afraid of stopping the hands and ruining the 
timekeeping accuracy.

Neither of these things would seem out of the ordinary, save for one simple
detail: I got this watch for about US $490. This is a lot for a usual quartz 
three-hander with a date, this is more than average for a titanium quartz 
three-hander with a date, but this is dirt cheap for a titanium HAQ 
three-hander with a date. Yes, 10 seconds per year deviation without any 
synchronization is considered HAQ (high accuracy quartz), and if you step 
into this territory, you won't find any other offerings for such a price or 
even twice that, if considering the same case material. It's a totally 
different money and a totally different level of availability to general 
public. And I don't even know whether or not the discontinued Longines VHP 
line had anything made of titanium, or any current Tissots or whatever using 
F05.412 have anything made of it, or if there were any titanium Citizen 
Chronomasters or 9F-based Grand Seikos, but as of now, I have a strong 
suspicion I'm wearing the least expensive titanium HAQ watch in the world. 
This alone IMO makes it worth mentioning in this phlog, putting into my 
collection and into my personal "top 10 watches of all time" list, despite 
it being non-Japaneseand the dial having a minor but obvious design blunder 
around the minutes 28 to 32 where the markers are replaced with a "SWISS 
MADE" writing.

Other than that, this Certina is pretty boring and looks like a typical Swiss
watch from the dressier side of the spectrum. But I think this is how it 
should be: interesting inside, boring outside. There's something about the 
feeling when only you, as the owner, know what your watch really can do. 
Like, it impresses me that it still maintains 10 bar WR with such a look and 
a press-on caseback. Unfortunately, this, as I already said, is an exception 
to the overall "quantity over quality" trend, but not without its own 
compromises either: looks like the world manufacturers really aren't 
interested in producing a perfect wristwatch, otherwise they wouldn't have 
anything new to sell afterwards because no one would need anything new if 
what they already have was perfect. 

Sure, one cannot exclude such a conspiracy in these crazy days, but there
might be another reason. Probably good watches also became a rarely seen 
phenomenon because less and less people still use any wristwatches for their 
only intended purpose and view them solely as fashion items rather than 
tools they should be, and the market responds accordingly. The mere fact 
that such a term as "GADA watch" (GADA means "go anywhere, do anything") 
appeared in the English-speaking community already means that people started 
to admit that most watches are naturally non-GADA, i.e. created to blindly 
increase consumption by fitting one watches for one situations and others 
for others. It's hard to overestimate the level of conceptual absurdity of 
making an accessory out of a tool. Imagine buying various phones for various 
occasions nowadays. How does a wristwatch fundamentally differ? Those who 
view the time on their phones, by the way, shouldn't have a right to vote on 
such questions as they represent a pre-wristwatch era of pocket watches, 
only now they are much bulkier, less reliable and allow their manufacturers, 
governments and various third parties to track their owners.

This is why I'm going to end my collection with a watch that is undoubtedly
GADA, totally autonomous and will surely enter my top 3, not just top 10 
like this DS Caimano. The only problem is that I'm still not sure when I'm 
gonna get it (hopefully within this week), but I'll definitely let you know 
about this. For the time being though, I really like this Certina too and 
hope it will live up to the manufacturer's promises about its accuracy and 
battery life.

--- Luxferre ---