Product Description

SEIKO 5 - the meaning of the "5" A great marketer had the idea in the 70ies: to be a SEIKO 5, the watch has to have the following 5 (five) attributes (thus the name SEIKO 5): 1. Automatic, 2. Water resistant, 3. Shock resistant, 4. Date, 5. Day. Please note that some SEIKO 5's are in fact SEIKO 4's, if the "Day" function is omitted, then the Caliber 7S25 is used. The only difference to the normally found 7S26 is the omission of the day wheel. Also re-issues of SEIKO 5 Sports often use the 7S36 caliber. Again the 7S36 is similar to the most popular 7S26, yet it features 23 Jewels as opposed to the 21 Jewels in the 7S26. Please note that all these movements beat at a rate of 21'600 bph (beats per hour) or 6 bps (beats per second). As a comparison, an ETA 2824-2 beats at 28'800 bph or 8 bps. A Miyota 82xx beats at 21'600 bph. Why do I mention these three movements? Because they are found in probably 80% of all inexpensive automatic wrist watches. A market share that is huge, yet challenged these days (2006) by an increasing share of inexpensive China Made automatic movements An automatic watch (also called a self-winding watch) is a mechanical watch, typically with a balance wheel escapement, whose mainspring is wound by the motion of the wearer's arm, instead of having to be wound manually every day. Whereas a quartz watch is powered by electricity, a mechanical watch is powered by a mainspring which must be rewound for the watch to keep time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2867 in Watches
• Brand: Seiko
• Model: SNK809
• Band material: Leather
• Case material: stainless-steel
• Dial color: Black
• Dial window material: Hardlex
• Movement type: automatic-self-wind
• Water-resistant to 30 meters

Features

• Japan 21 Jewel Automatic Self-Winding Movement (Calibre 7S26)
• Stainless Steel Case with Nylon Band
• Day/Date Display with Spanish Option, Luminous Hands and Markers, Hardlex Crystal for Durability
• Screwdown See-Thru Caseback
• Water Resistant - 30M

Customer Reviews

Great simple watch
I bought one of these a couple years ago in Singapore. I love it. It is my staple everyday watch. They are tough and withstand a fair bit of abuse. I wore mine while training and flying aerobatics up to 6Gs. Still works. The movement does tend to be fast, some say by 5 to 15 sec per day. My experience is that I notice it is running fast by a few minutes every little while and then I correct it. Not an issue especially since it is an automatic watch. If I go more than a day without wearing or shaking it, it stops anyway, so who needs longterm accuracy?

I love it. I'm buying a second one in dark green. ...May start a collection.

One out of four
This watch comes in 4 models, SNK 803 with a beige strap and dial, SNK 805 with a green strap and dial, SNK 807 with a blue strap and dial, and SNK 809 with a black strap and dial. What I like most is the red tip on the seconds hand that sweeps continuously across the dial and not in steps for every second like in most analog watches. Also cool is the untraditional numbering of the hour markings, where the 5-minutes are more protruding than the hours. The strap looks better in the photos than in reality, but it's still very nice and tough-looking, although it is narrower than you think when you see it on the guy's arm in the pictures above. The see-through case is a gimmick I could do without, but anyway, nice to watch the watch work. Buy all four and you have one to go with every occasion and dress colour/code. This item sells on eBay for 30-40 dollars.

Nice automatic watch.
Nice automatic watch. As most of Seiko 5 series goes a bit fast, but only a couple seconds per day. To be expected with almost any automatic watch. Nylon strap makes it look small at 18mm on a bigger wrist. The lugs could be a bit bigger 20mm or more. I bought I new 20mm Zulu band it fits works well and looks a lot better. 4 Sars because I wish the band would have been better.