Grand Seiko 9F Quartz Champagne Dial SBGP001 Grand Seiko Watch Review

Hi, this is Tim of The 1916 Company. Welcome and thanks for logging on. If you love this watch, email me, TimOsso at The1916Company.com for purchase pricing and availability questions concerning this watch. And this watch from the Grand Seiko Heritage Collection, you're looking at the SBGP001 in a 44GS style case and stainless steel. This is a champagne dial 9F quartz series watch using a next generation 9F movement that was new at the time. The watch is 40 millimeters in diameter. The SBGP001 only 11.2 millimeters thick from lug to lug, 46.2 millimeters. And if we engage the end links, the total distance across the wrist is 49.9 with a 19 millimeter spacing between the lugs. I know some people can't make peace with quartz luxury watches, and I think that's self-defeating. You need to consider what sets luxury quartz apart from something you would get in a Happy Meal. This is not disposable consumer electronics. It has nothing to do with your phone or tablet, and it's certainly nothing like an Apple watch. I often see appreciation of luxury quartz as a litmus test for the true sophistication of a collector or the confidence of a collector. In other words, it's almost like when you find world-class Swiss milk chocolate handmade by a confectionary, and someone proudly exclaims, I only eat dark chocolate. Well, you're missing out, and you're ignorant of just how good milk chocolate can be. And I'm probably going to upset you because I also enjoy white chocolate. I also enjoy champagne. And this dial, according to Joe Kirk, who is the world's foremost source for Grand Seiko knowledge, he tells me that the champagne dial, in spite of its outward simplicity, is perpetually and perennially one of the most labor-intensive and step-intensive dials for Grand Seiko to create, even more than the snowflakes. So this watch is a lovely size, and it wears beautifully on my 16 centimeter circumference wrists. Champagne and milk chocolate never tasted so good. And you can see how low it sits on the wrist. It'll easily fly underneath the cuff if you want to wear it with a formal sleeve, easy to do. It's 100 meters water resistant, so it can be your sports watch too. It's really a very capable all-arounder. Now, taking a look, you can see that this watch is nowhere near the edge of my wrist. So even though it's almost 50 millimeters end link to end link, I can recommend this for a wrist as small as 14 centimeters circumference. Again, mine is 16. If you were to put this on a strap, you could wear it on a wrist as small as 13 and a half centimeters circumference. The bracelet's very nicely made. You can see it's not perfectly conformed to the case. It's designed to look a little bit like a icon of Grand Seiko. So it makes a lot of sense that it would be used here on a Prestige model. We have a three-link design with polished intermediate set and center set and shoulders. We've got a little bit of a rolled bevel down the side, polished outer face. As you can see, removable links fixed by screws. We've got an intermediate size link on each side in case you find yourself in between sizes with the primary removable links. Thick gauge steel right here, and the clasp has a combination of polished, media blast, and satin externally. It closes. You have to press both triggers to open it up. Again, 100 meters water resistant, though it does have a push-down crown. It's not a screw-down. It doesn't need that. The seals are sophisticated enough to give you 100 meters for a swimming capability without a screw-down. Saratsu case polish. Now, that's, from what I understand, just the Japanese word for Zolitz machine polishing, but this is a real art. And although the machines themselves are of European origin, the foremost practitioners of this type of tin plate mirror polish are the folks in Japan at the extended Seiko empire, where Grand Seikos, Kradors, and some prestige Seiko models get this hand finishing. And it takes three years to master this art. So this is a true craft. We have a little bit of a polyhedron end to the lug profiles. And again, that's distinctive of the 44GS. You can see strap tool holes in the end of the lugs. Grand Seiko is one of the last true luxury class watchmakers that expects you to use a strap tool to dismount the bracelet and actually fit straps. You can also see that we've got a combination of creases and curves, satin and polish, and this lovely dip as the crown juts out between the swells of the lugs at each end. Polish and media blast on the crown, a vintage style Grand Seiko lion on the back, made in Japan and proudly so. You can see this is the 9F85. You can usually find the caliber on the base of the dial of a Grand Seiko watch. Now the champagne is a relatively simple looking thing. We have a little bit of an off-white shading. We have a metallic sunburst. And depending on what light you're in, it can look purely silver-white or almost yellow. It's a very complex thing. And I think it teases out its remarkable refinement and depth of detail with experience and time. I'm going to move the hands here so they don't overlap. This was a new feature on the 9F85. The ability to move the hour hand independently, because these are accurate to plus or minus 10 seconds a year, it would be enormously disruptive and self-defeating to allow you to set the watch to the second and then desynchronize as you're traveling. So Grand Seiko allows you to move the hour hand independently and even jump the date forward or backwards depending on which direction you're traveling. Now it's important to note that if you do move backwards, you can occasionally discommode the seconds hand a little bit. So it's best to move it in one direction forward. Now taking a quick look at the hand itself, you can see it is a true fired blue steel. And fired blue steel is naturally beautiful. This is not some sort of weird chemical dye. It was done the old-fashioned way by actually heating it up. Dials at Grand Seiko are co-equally with Rolex, the best in the mainstream luxury class. I've said this many times. Rolex achieves perfection by automation. Grand Seiko does it by a lot of hand craftsmanship. So the logo, the indices, the hands, even the frame for the date. Take a look at those hands. Mirror polished on every facet with razor-like sides. The same true of the indices themselves. Diamond-tipped milling tools operated by hand by people whose full-time gig at Grand Seiko is to make these parts. They are then placed and caulked by hand. Now you can see there is a unique mechanism with that seconds hand and it's called double impulse. And the double impulse is a method of allowing the hands to be long, extended, and graceful while using less energy. So here we still have three years of battery life. Another thing that's important is the lash adjustment that keeps the hands more or less right on their target. If you look at its ability to hit the index, its ability to hit the index, you got to do it from the right angle, is very consistent because of the lash adjustment. There's also thermocompensation, which means over time temperature cannot cause a great deal of deviation. Temperature can affect quartz as much as it affects purely mechanical movements. So thermocompensation adjusts for that. There's also a quartz trimmer on this hand assembled and hand regulated 9F85 movement that allows the watchmaker to adjust for the drift of the quartz crystal over time. And it is a nine-jewel movement with wheels and pivots and jewels and lubrication and a lot of traditional watchmaking that's really important to keep in mind. So this is one of the world's most sophisticated movements and its ability to stay accurate to 10 seconds a year puts it head and shoulders above not only just about every mechanical watch ever made, but also most quartz calibers. Keep in mind Breitling super quartz is about 10 seconds a year, but a standard quartz watch is going to be plus or minus 15 seconds a month. So this is really something exceptional. The movements even decorated to a degree, which is uncommon for quartz. Look, milk chocolate is legitimate, can be just as good as dark chocolate. Yes, dark chocolate has the snob appeal and probably always will, but just like milk chocolate, quartz watches, luxury quartz watches designed to last a lifetime, have their own special virtues that need to be appreciated in their own right on their own terms. And in terms of being able to do things no mechanical watch can, in a watch that's still handmade of dial and movement and case and bracelet, this gives you something very different. With the addition of the 9F85, you also get that unique setting capability and hacking seconds. So you can set the watch to a reference time. So reach out to team also at the1916company.com for purchase and pricing details.