u/TSiWRX

A good buddy of mine, u/partanyc, texted me a while ago, excitedly reporting that on the Shop app, a coupon had populated a $325 USD coupon on quite a number of Jack Mason watches.

Lo and behold, I open the app, and it's there for me, too!

Like two giddy teenagers, we schemed for weeks, debating how to spend our discounts. When this 40mm (x47mm LTL) diver popped up with the offer, I lamented that while it was titanium, it didn't have an anti-scratch treatment. u/partanyc immediately punted me a screenshot that corrected my ignorance...and that set the lust truly in-motion.

Until the coupon went away.

Kincking myself that I'd let a 20%+ discount slip through my fingers, I made a promise - that if the coupon came back at $400 (because I also wanted to get their FKM strap...that Lone Star keeper was such a turn-on for a detail-freak like me 😅 ), I'd do it. I'd commit to the buy.

So when the coupon came back that very same evening at $390, I said that was close enough. 🤣

If any of you are looking at any Jack Mason watches, take a look in the Shop app to see if you've got a coupon (most folks have seen a ~$325 coupon, but anything from $225-$390 is possible: and no, I haven't figured out exactly how or why). It's not on every model, and definitely not the newest colorways, but it's worth checking out. And if it goes away, be patient and wait-out for a few days to see if their algorithm will punt you something even better.

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The lume?

Reviews of the first iterations of the Strat-o-Timer suggested that their lume wasn't all that great. Seiko Lumibrite competitive, but not much more than that.

I'm *_very_* happy to report that this is no longer the case. Jack Mason did a wonderful job in iterating improvements to this watch, and one of the areas they targeted was lume. The lume is outstanding overall, and very suited to a watch of its price-point. There *is* a bit of un-evenness to the appearance of the lume on the hands on mine, in-daylight, but I would not place it outside of what's normal/par for watches in its price-tier. The daylight color is very nicely white and is a close color match -if not outright identical- to the markings on the bezel.

I will have to do a more detailed assessment of fade, but as of last night and into this morning, for an ~7-hour lume-run, I can say with-certainty that the hands and indices still were brightly lit: it's either Grade A BGW-9, or they've just used so much of it that it retains excellent luminous performance at this extended time. My guess is that it's the former, however, I find it strange that they would not have called more attention to the use of premium-Grade SLN.

Regardless, here's the lume shot for y'all to enjoy.

This is with my usual potato of an iPhone, a 6-years old Gen.2 SE. It's using a cheap $30 clip-on macro lens, and I've just finished charging the dial with UV. The double-domed, boxed sapphire really distorts and reflects the light well. It's a pleasure in the dark.

There's been several recent posts with folks lamenting the that they'd missed the Gen.2 Marinor drop from Héron this past January: they've just announced that their pre-order window will open again on August 13, 8 AM EDT.

To help you with colorway, here's my Marinors.

• Left, on their OE black leather strap is my Gen.2 Caribbean (thanks to by very good buddy u/partanyc !)
• Right, on their OE brown leather is my Gen.2 Menthol.
• Bottom is my Gen.1 Atlantic.

Yes, I know my pictures suck. I'm a poor photographer. However, I do believe that the colorways are represented fairly, which was the actual goal of my post. These are unprocessed/unedited pictures via my potato of a Gen.2 iPhone SE, which is probably older than some of y'all's kids. 😂 Lighting is with the two armature lights and the light mounted in the "objective" of my $150 AliEx/Amazon "digital microscope." It's actually reasonably day-light-ish in hue.

Yes, the indices are an off-white in daylight.

The black strap picks up on the darker hues, but you'll notice that there's quite a bit of aqua-green in the Caribbean. Brother u/partanyc initially thought it would bias more towards a light blue, more like Héron's website pix. While the blue tones do come through in bright sunlight (which is simulated in my pictures), at first look, you may even mistake it for being green-ish....kinda like shallows off the Caribbeans themselves.

If you prefer a darker blue, Atlantic is the way to go. On a darker strap, the Atlantic really picks up on its fumé border, and can even appear black.

The Menthol is quite green.

Nodus recently dropped their Fusion FKM traps

I've always wanted to put my Sector Deep (Polar Destro) on a strap, but being a "case-guy," I really liked how the lugs/head met with the endlink on this model.

As luck would have it, a couple of days after I got my Sector II Sport (Marigold), they dropped these integrated metal endlinks!

They are model specific, so if you're interested in one, *be sure_* you select the proper model from the drop-down. If you're not sure, e-mail them to double-check. As you can see by my macros, the finishing really is quite different between the models, corresponding to their watches, of-course.

They have the usual quality stuff: quick-release spring bars and solid stainless steel pin buckles.

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First picture is in afternoon sunlight filtering in through my work room laundry room's windows. They do have solar tint on them, so that's somewhat affecting the the colors rendered.

No post-processing on these pictures at all. What you see is what you'll get. As you can see, the finishing is done quite nicely, and the tolerances are pretty darned good.

Second picture is on my my wife's closet countertop.

Purchased a San Martin SN0012-GB in preparation for the arrival of my Monta Noble 40.

I know, that's weird, right?

It's actually not. I'm trying to reconcile in an objective manner our mostly subjective take on "finishing." What do I mean? Well, when was the last time someone wrote/said that a watch had "awesome finish," and then you ask them for some details, and they came back with "it plays so well in the light!"

Is that objective? Does that actually tell you *anything* at all about how the watch is finished?

No, and absolutely no, right? That's what I mean - I want to kill that 7-word platitude. I want to get beyond.

San Martin's evolving their watches as fast as their profits will allow. It's like asking Old Man Ferrari which of his cars he likes best: "....the next one." There's no rhyme or reason to the references for us hobbyists and collectors. It's just catalog numbers for their contracts. They don't care at all. The SN0012-GB is the newest revision to their product line ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1thamml/san_martin_upgraded_toolwatch_with_1200hv/ ), overhauling a watch that's approximately 7-8 years old in their catalog, by their own words: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1trvwrr/san_martin_sn0012gb_production_process_overview/ (I'm a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese), with heavy focus on the bracelet, for which they tout some of the tightest production tolerances they've had, to-date.

I wanted to get it for my Monta comparison because my own SN0144 Jian Zhan is now some 2 years old. In a sector of the business where products are evolving by the day, I wanted to make sure the Monta got a fair fight on its card, and the SN0012-GB at least fulfills the brushing and bracelet tolerances part of that equation.

But of-course what also interests me is the lume, I want to see how its lume blocks look under my scope ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1rnh0x8/lume_blocks_what_genuine_rctritec_superluminova/ - more, soon), and I wanted to see how it stacks up in performance against today's best, too ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1sph6bb/phorcydes_ph5_lume_comparison_wph4_ph2_and/ ).

So, here we are....

My "Drawer of Lume," as of March, 2026.

Glad to have found a community of like-minded folks! xD

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My running lume thread -
https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1otyjrl/lume_micros_are_lumetastic/

Whenever I'm soooooo looking forward to something, I'm always afraid it might somehow fail to live up to my expectations.

Montréal is a special place in my life. My wife and I honeymooned there. As med students we wanted somewhere relatively close by, yet would feel like a totally different country, a different culture. That was 25 years ago on March 10, the day that this watch's pre-order dropped.

I'm thrilled to say that this one exceeded my expectations.

From the vintage Airstream-esque watch box to the brilliant BGW-9 reflecting off that sunburst stainless dial.

Well done, u/Lacite_Watches .

With the Original Post of my old thread somehow having been mistakenly booted into moderation by the sub bot, I thought it's time to come back to this post to make it a bit clearer and better, particularly as the sub moderators have entrusted me with "Approved User" status. =) 

Before I begin, I need to declare that I am an independent hobbyist only. I have no vested interest in any of the makers or products that I'm comparing below. I stand to make no gains -financial or otherwise (i.e. free/discounted watches or products)- directly or indirectly via any of these comparisons. I paid for every watch that I own out of my own pocket, and these findings can be replicated by anyone with access to these same watches and some slate: I was not supplied with "ringer" products, as these purchases were made just like you would make them yourself, blinded to the makers/vendors/manufacturers.

Apart from the lead-post below, every "update" you will see listed will be top-level replies. I will provide direct links to them as I edit this "overview" OP. 

[ pending add - 904L and 316L, polished versus brushed finishes - Wise Timepieces and MT&W - ]
[ Wicked Watch Co. - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olfckan/ ]
[ WREN - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olfbzs6/ ]
[ Mark Time Watches - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olfawz7/ ]
[ defunct link sample from Wicked Watch Co. - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olfab4u/ ]
[ Swiss Watch Co. (SWCUSA) - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf9oik/ ]
[ Canopy Watch Co. - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf8u56/ ]
[ Watchdives - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf85na/ ]
[ Héron Watch Co. - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf7cgp/ ]
[ Taso Baltimore and Second Hour - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf4f7s/ ]
[ Englemaan - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/comment/olf2r3u/  ]

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Not-infrequently in this sub, I see posts from my fellow Redditors asking about the anti-scratch surface-hardening treatments and coatings that some of our favorite microbrands spec their watches with. As a lifelong desk-diver who isn’t shy about wearing everything in my collection, I’ve always lived with some level of scratches and blemishes on the ulnar side of my watches. I figured that’s just par-for-course. But as I spent more of my free time in this community, these posts had me wondering, so I eventually decided to take matters into my own hands. 

I work in a pre-War building. My benchtop is slate, which I knew empirically to be very abrasive. Pictured here are two of my non-treated 316L stainless watches, each after ~3 years of honest 5-days-a-week, evey workweek, wear. Left is my Seiko SRPB81, right is my Maratac DC-50 (my apologies for the face shots, it was originally used to facilitate a discussion on long-term wear of mineral glass versus sapphire crystals). I’m a benchtop scientist and typically rest my wrists on the bench not only to do what I need to do on my computer, but also when I sit at my little dissecting scope for my specialty work.

What follows is a series of comparisons. 

This is NOT a “scratch test,” like the one seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oX1itHnqcY from Benjamin Arthur's Ben’s Watch Club YouTube Channel.

My informal, non-quantitative comparison here doesn’t use a Mohs Hardness Test Kit [ understand that even with the Mohs picks, it's still more or less a qualitative comparison: it's whether "this" (i.e. Pick X) will scratch "that" (i.e. the tested object)]. I'm simply using my slate benchtop to demonstrate how a watch might accrue scratches and scrapes from "normal" everyday use. Slate (Mohs Hardness of ~4) is actually “softer” than stainless, but being a metamorphic rock, it contains inclusions which are often quite high on the Mohs Hardness Scale (6+). 

My comparison here can be equated to a “snapshot in time” of the more innocuous type of wear that many of us tend to incur on our watches – repeatedly wearing away at the finish, until, all of a sudden, we realize that we’ve got this kind of situation going on….. https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenWatches/comments/1n6cysn/unusual_watch_band_wear/ . I absolutely believe that this particular Redditor didn’t think that he was mistreating his watch. But the truth of the matter is that he did *something* to cause that kind of wear. This is the kind of wear that I’m trying to simulate. The kind of wear that you see in my two daily-beaters above, with the watches having near daily interaction with my benchtop.  

[ continued as replies to this post, below ]

For u/No_Mix_7617 , who wanted to see this watch in varied lighting.

Videos and pictures to-follow.

Lead picture is high-macro from typical $150-ish Amazon/AliEx "digital microscope." Lighting is via its included crappy armature LEDs.