As a fan of utilitarian watches I've had my eye on the Marathon TSAR for a while. I've wanted one for a long time, but somehow the purchase of other watches got in the way - see my other watches here, here, and here.

As much as I love my automatics such as the Tactico TC2 and Crepas El Buzo though, they're a bit too special for me to wear while travelling and engaging in rough activities, plus switching from automatic to automatic or the manual wind Kemmner Bund can get annoying, so I wanted a tough, quartz, go-anywhere watch and the Marathon TSAR seemed to fit the bill.



Bezel Diameter: 42mm
Case Diameter: 40mm
Case Height: 14mm
Lug-to-Lug Diameter: 48mm
Lug Width: 20mm
Watch Weight: 110 grams (3.9 oz.)



I bought mine from TopSpecUS.com during one of their regular sales, so I got it for US$517 ($91 off usual price) which at today's exchange rates is about £340. They have these sales a few times a year, usually on American holidays, if you sign up to their newsletter you'll get an email. I deliberated a long time regarding the size, concerned that it might be a bit too small for me. At the same time for a travel watch I didn't want anything too big. I did consider models such as the JSAR but that's really a huge step up in size.



The quality and finish I think is very good indeed, it certainly feels like a solidly-built timepiece. Obviously I went for the "sterile" version because the last thing I'd want on my wrist are the words "U.S. Government". The size is a little weird, in that it's not all that large, but the depth is quite high for a watch this size, which means it does feel reassuringly "chunky" despite the diameter. If you like very large watches, you're probably better off with the JSAR. I do wish the lug-size was 22mm instead of 20mm, which to me would suit a "military" type watch like this better, but not much one can do about that. In the end I was lucky that it fit perfectly a GasGasBones strap I already had which I think suits the watch style very well and more importantly gives me that wider strap feel. The watch came with a black rubber strap, and I also tried it on NATOS which worked well, but the added width of the GasGasBones fits much better in my opinion.





Not much else to say really, it does what it says on the tin so to speak. The Tritium markers aren't that bright but when it's dark you do see them perfectly well and the fact they don't fade during the darkness is pretty useful. I don't like the white date wheel on black background (why does anyone do that?) but I can live with it.



Having had the watch for over a month I can honestly say that it's become my daily wearer (which before was mostly the Tactico TC2). It does everything it needs to, I don't need to worry about scratching it or knocking it against anything, the convenience of quartz means I can grab it and go, and overall I'd just say it has pretty much everything I look for in a watch.