116500 vs Limited edition Grand Seiko GMT/Chrono

[fmc000]

I then suggest you to contact Seiko and explain them, with your absolutely perfect knowledge of how a watch must be made, that using the SD technology to produce a decimal minute repeater, a grand sonnerie and the watch that's probably the most expensive 3-hands available in the market today is "pointless".

[belligero]

^
Oh, don't be so sensitive. ;)

I'm certain that Seiko knows perfectly well that there's no real advantage to the SD method of quartz timekeeping. They seem like a very logical and rational bunch of folks, and I seriously doubt their engineers would deny that it's a bit silly to run a quartz oscillator in such a maintenance-intensive and complicated way, even if the marketing folks don't mention it.

But so what? It looks different than a conventional quartz movement and the seconds hand moves continuously, and that's enough for some to buy, so they produce it. Though it has disadvantages compared to either mechanical or non-high-maintenance quartz, it's also a good display of their technical capabilities. Only Piaget's 700P calibre offers a similar layout for quartz-controlled timekeeping, and only very recently. Piaget certainly doesn't deny that their new 700P movement is quartz-based; they even reference their top-end 7P quartz movement from 1976 in its name, and it was released as a 40th-anniversary tribute. :)

Luxury goods aren't particularly rational; nobody ever said that this stuff needs to have a basis in pure functionality. If it did, we'd all be wearing solar atomic G-Shocks, or just using our phones to tell the time.

And don't forget that all fancy wristwatches are pretty pointless in the end.

[Cru Jones]

If there's one sure way to get the crowd riled up, it's posting about Grand Seiko in the forums.

[myc ritz]

Daytona is more timeless.