The Marine-Officer is a new chronograph that the company has just introduced. It is a bronze watch, a current trend I have seen recently. The watch is run by a Dubois Depraz DD 2030. A movement based off of the ETA 2824-2. This is not a chronograph movement, so how do they do it? They add a chonograph module. This is basically the functional part of the chronograph movement stuck onto a non-chronograph movement, I have no problem with this as it is just as reliable as a regular chronograph. The watch bezel is fixed with a tachymeter scale that hardly anyone ever uses, but it can be lifesaving when one does use it, literally. The Omega Speedmaster saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts when they needed to know how fast they were going and needed to go. Going back to the movement, it has a hefty 49 jewels, providing quite a bit of shock resistance. The movement has a gold rotor, whether is is solid or not, who knows? For the price they are offering the watch at it better be solid though. The dial is olive green and has an interesting separation of 1/4 second markers (around the outer edge), hour markers (middle) and minute markers (closest to the middle of the dial). Telling the time are polished bronze hands all filled with C3 superluminova (with the exception of the central second hand). They advertise the watch as both an observer's watch (modern take off of watches from WWII) and a sailor's watch (hence, the "marine" in the name). I think it is more of an observes watch mainly because of the tachymeter and the leather strap. No one in their right mind swims with a leather strap, it needs a silicon (maybe isofrane) strap or a bracelet. The watch comes with a complimentary two year warranty, matching Rolex's warranty, but only half of Omega's warranty. It has the same layout as the Valijoux 7753, a bi-compax movement with a 30-minute chronograph counter and running seconds taking the two subdial spaces. The watch retails from their website for 860 EUR or around 1,200 USD, a high price but this is not a straight homage of any model I have seen. I am not saying that they are the first to make a watch that looks like one from WWII but is one going to say that around 1/3 of high-end watch manufacturer has made an homage? No, therefore I will not identify this as an homage and am happy to see Steinhart moving away from this market. More information and pictures can be found on Steinhart's website here: http://www.steinhartwatches.de/en/Marine-Officer-Bronze,661.html. With a retail price as high as it is these will still move quickly, so if you are interested order yours soon!
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Jake Fogarty is the founder of It's All About Watches and writer for most of what you will read here. If you want to contact me you can visit the contact and advertising page.
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