Reply With QuoteGood read, thanks for posting! Will look forward to the pics when added.
Edit: Good comparison pics .. makes the review so much better!
My new PRS-10 arrived this morning (18 June 2008) and it is now lying on my desk nest to the old Broadarrow one (not that that one was so old anyway). I should say 'ours' really, as my spouse has been wearing the Broadarrow 10 regularly for a while now, and I offered her the choice between the two. She decided to stick with the Broadarrow as it is thinner (pfoo - my luck! :wink: ).
I'll try to get a photo up later, but my first impression is that this is a G10 on steroids. It is also the first watch I bought from Eddie with an individual serial number (this is 08050228, which presumably means case no 228 produced in May 2008).
The most obvious improvement is the crown. On the Broadarrow that always seemed to be like an afterthought: just a bit too small, and not bead blasted like the case. The new one is much larger, blasted so it fits perfectly with the case, and it's even signed. A G10 with a signed crown. Wow. The case shape has been subtly adapted to curvew ell around the crown and protect it.
Of course it's thicker, mostly due to the screwed back, and the lugs have been reshaped to get the extra millimeter for the 20 mm spacing, as opposed to the 19 mm of the Broadarrow.
The hands and dial are quite different: the numbers are printed in a thinner version of the font, the railway track is marginally narrower and the luminous dots somewhat smaller. The dial seems a deeper charcoal black, but that may be because the older one has been sun-bleached by now... Or because the old one's crystal needed a polishing - I went to work with some polywatch and after a few minutes, the old one looked a lot more snappy. Must have been all that dirt and grit in my spouse's veggy garden...
The hands are more sword-like, polished as opposed to greyish blasted, and finally there is the Precista brand lettering. I worried about the script font being to curly for a military-style watch but in the metal it looks a lot better than I thought it would.
The case does not curve upwards towards the crystal like in the old version (most visible at the lugs); instead it just slopes upwards in a straight line.
Finally, the movement. Most basic quartz movements do not manage to consistently make the seconds hand hit the indexes, and neither did the Broadarrow's. The Ronda lithium-powered, 5-jewel quartz does hit the indexes practically spot on (which also means the dial was produced with sufficient precision and the watch assembled with proper care).
I think this new version of the 10 looks more adult. The Broadarrow was a boy's watch, the Precista a men's watch. A 20 mm strap and the big crown do make that much difference. It is very utilitarian but there is nothing cheap about it.
It makes one think about what a G10 is all about. Does it have to be a cheap, legible, one-mission, use-it-and-break-it, throwaway watch, or a sturdy, water- and dustproof timepiece without anything superfluous but with neccessities like a date, decent lume and a very legible dial? Maybe the procurement officers wanted the first, but I am sure I want the second. In that sense Eddie has managed to make a G10 as it should be.
Photos!
New (left) and old style PRS-10, on green NATOs:
Note the different crowns and crown protectors. The case has really been redesigned there:
Very different backs, too:
Finally, on a Bond:
I know these are not the great sort of photos some people here can take with their light tents and so forth, these are just some handheld shots with a compact. But speed was of the essence...
I think it looks particularly good on a Bond, but almost any strap looks good it, I guess. The obligatory black NATO certainly does (never even think about a watch if it looks bad on a black NATO...), as does the green. Having drilled lugs now allows you to wear it with all sorts of leather straps, too. And I noted that it now makes a noise when you pull through a NATO strap: the springbars rotate with the fabric being pulled through. Small surprises.
On the wrist this new version, due to its slightly greater thickness and the more massive crown, has more presence. One can probably wear it at almost any occasion with the proper strap. It does sit a bit higher, as most of the additional thickness seems to come from the case back. I prefer to have it on a RAF-style NATO, thus a real one-piece without the second part and the additional keeper ring (in fact I have slashed most of my NATOs to turn them into one-piece straps). I have not yet tried it on a two-piece leather aviator, but the old version tended to bite a bit into my skin due to the angular lugs that sat very close on the wrist. My guess is that this will be less of a problem with the new version.
Sizewise this a very comfortable watch. I prefer this size for a general wear watch - it does not bang into doorframes all the time.
Good read, thanks for posting! Will look forward to the pics when added.
Edit: Good comparison pics .. makes the review so much better!
/vince ..
nice review - but need pictures!!!
Can't decide on white or black date wheel though :roll:
Pictures added. Not great ones, but: pictures!
Great review. I'm glad you posted the comparison shots!
Very well done :-) :-)
I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
Nice review, and your right it does look good on the Bond.
Thank you for the review, Frank!
Two questions:
(1) is the space between the case and the bars sufficient to feed a thicker strap than a NATO through? I seem to remember that on the Broadarrow even a NATO was a tight fit.
(2) How is the readability of the hands which have less lume than on the Broadarrow? I have found that with polished hands, I rely on seeing the lume portion rather than the metal even in daylight, unless the polished material actually reflects in the direction of my eyes. I am wondering how the reduced lume area will affect readability.
Cheers,
Martin ("Crusader")
You would struggle to get anything thicker than my "new" NATO through the lugs. The springbars fitted are 1.5mm shoulderless and I wouldn't be happy going thinner than this just to fit a thicker strap.
I'll let Frank answer your other question.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
A good and useful comparative review. Thank you.
Like Eddie said, you can't really feed a thicker strap than a NATO. I tried a leather NATO, which did not work, and neither did a Rhino. I have one rather thin leather mil-style one-piece strap with a backing pad that does pass through, just. Of course you would be able to fit all sorts of two-piece straps as you can remove the springbars.Originally Posted by Crusader
Indeed at some positions, the hands almost vanish from sight, but the lumed part is clear enough to see and you can't mistake the hands. Lume is not great, but it is sufficient to still see the hands (not the indices) by the end of the night. Legibility by day and night is about the same as the Broadarrow version.
Funny you should ask this because I thought of the same thing when i saw odj's picture of his G10 with the Bonday NATO in this thread:
http://www.tz-uk.com/forum/viewtopic...48847&start=15
It's a good example of an angle at which the polished portions of the hands disappear and only the lume remains visible. You can probably judge for yourself how readable it is based on this picture.
Great side-by-side comparison Frank. The new G10's beefed up crown and crown protectors really make the design for me. I also think the khaki canvas strap looks particularly well suited.
Rick
Great review, Frank!
This watch belongs on a NATO IMHO, but the fact that the choice is there is great.
Absolutely. Also my only criticism of the '53.
good review and a great read
the comparison photos are a real help
this is the watch we should of had when i was serving
Nice watch,nice review.
Need to see the white on black date before i decide which i want - but i want one.
Update: it's now November 2009 and In still wear my PRS-10 as my daily beater, getting 6 days wrist time out of 7. It's still going strong, no sign of moisture or dust ingress and the crystal is keeping up nicely - I have given it maybe two or three quick polishings with Polywatch during the 16 or so months it has been on my wrist. I consider it by far my most practical watch to wear.
The older Broadarrow model we keep around may show up on SC soon as I just purchased a second Precista 10 for my spouse. Hers has a black date, so we can distinguish them while still having a sort of 'partnerlook' on our wrists. Nothing wrong with the Broadarrow as such; the Precista is just better... ;-)
Nice review and the shots of the "old" and the "new" excellent and helpful.
Glad your still enjoying the 10, you still seem to be very happy with it. :)
Update, long term use on the Precista PRS-10b, April 2015:
I have been wearing my PRS-10b very little lately due to vision matters. In short - I am now presbyopic and can't properly read a dial like that of a PRS-10b with relative slim hands without reading glasses - or varifocals, which I hate and thus don't use. I certainly can't read the PRS-10 at night without glasses now, so I wear my PRS-4 (PRS-3 PVD) with its huge luminous hands that allow me to see what time it is even in the middle of the night without glasses.
So recently I found that, while I had not been looking and it had been sitting in a box, the battery on the PRS-10b had ran out. It's the same lithium cell as that in the PRS-3/4 (they have the same quartz movement), and it had lasted some 6 or 7 years at least, so no problem there.
I replaced the battery with a new lithium cell, but unfortunately after this operation, the watch stopped when I screwed the crown back in (I had to unscrew it to set the time after the battery switch, of course). It now only runs with the crown unscrewed. I suppose the crown could have been bent a bit or something, although there was no violent movement of any kind during the battery switch. But it is a very thin rod and I did take the retaining ring out to clean and lubricate the O-ring, sor the movement had a bit of play for a moment. Somethig was probably forced when I put the retaining ring back. Even a quartz watch can be delicate...
A supposedly waterproof watch with the crown unscrewed is not much use as a beater (as the crown, once screwed in, also holds the movement tight in place, an unscrewed crown means a somewhat 'loose' movement inside the watch, it is not great for shock resistance either). And of course leaving it unscrewed doesn't look right.
So for the moment, after years of pretty intensive use, I have retired my PRS-10b. I don't think having it repaired is worth the investment given the original value. We have another one (my wife's), which has a fractured crystal, the second time for that watch. By contrast, we have an original Broadarrow PRS-10, much simpler and lower specced, which still works. Newer and upgraded may not always be better.
Of course being beaten around until they give up is what cheap beater watches are for. Given the price, half a decade of frequent use is not bad in the present throw-away economy. It's just a shame that it wasn't some violent event that killed it, but just a battery swap. (I did use proper tools for opening it, btw).
Oh well.
Last edited by Fschwep; 3rd April 2015 at 16:16.
I know it might still not be cost effective but I know, if it were mine, I'd still want to get it done.
Last edited by markrlondon; 17th April 2015 at 01:28.
[QUOTE=markrlondon;3475930]'minimal cost' would still involve sending it somewhere. Although the Ronda lithium-powered movement is supposedly repairable, I guess that simply replacing it with a new one would be cheaper (the movement that is, not the entire watch). Still, this is 'just' a beater and was used that way. Same for the one my wife used for gardening etc. - that one suffered stress fractures in the crystal two times, the second time after the crystal had been replaced by the German manufacturer (and at that occasion we had to send it back a second time because they had not properly fitted the crystal in and it just fell off - they forgot to put the tension ring in). The original Broadarrow may have been simpler, with lower specs (no screwed crown or ditto back) but it survived longer. Zeno may indeed have their commercial faults selling Eddie's designs with their own logo through back channels, but technically, they did a very decent job.
A beater is supposed to be a relatively cheap watch that can take some rough treatment and can be retired or lost once it gives up the ghost. One just hopes that it would survive a simple battery change (even if that comes after about 7 years...).
I have put my old Edox Delfin handwound back on when I'm not wearing my *Broadarrow* PRS-4. 1970s vintage, indestructible and still looking good. They don't make them like that anymore. Of course that would be a bloody expensive watch if it were made and sold today. I have a review of it elsewhere on the forum.
Fair enough. I know I'd be more sentimental than you and get the watch fixed but I can appreciate that you are content to leave it as a beater that has had its day. If you tire of it living in a drawer you could always sell it on SC for spares/repair. I suspect it would sell quickly at the right price.
Posting Permissions
