Great Watch - A Few Flaws:
First off, kudos to the folks at Joma Shop. I’ve bought several watches from these guys. They have excellent customer service, great communication, and good prices. You can do business with these guys with confidence. Now the Omega Aqua Terra – and I’ll cut right to the chase: Pros: • This may be the most gorgeous watch I’ve ever owned. The dial design, the hands, the ornate movement, the color, the fit-and-finish…it’s hard to take your eyes off this thing. It perfectly straddles the line between sport and elegance and will be appropriate (and draw compliments!) in either environment. • The 41mm size is perfect – and I believe stylistically “future proof.” It’s not a monster like so many watches of the 20-teens, nor is it a tiny retro-size. It nicely fills an average wrist and will look appropriate no matter the direction in which future styles move. • The Omega 8900 Master Coaxial Movement simply blows away anything by comparably priced competitors. Yes, Rolex Datejust, that means you. • So far, it is maintaining accuracy to within approximately one-second per day. Not bad at all. Cons: • What is up with the crown?? When I first got the watch, I was sure that the crown had been cross-threaded and/or broken. Unlike similar watches, when you unscrew the crown it does not “pop” free from the sleeve – thus you have no way of knowing when it is completely unscrewed (expect for the very tiny click you can hear with your ear pressed to the watch). Be careful! Give it a few extra turns so as not to tear it out of its threading when you pull the crown to Position 2 or 3. Even worse, screwing it back down is not fun. The action is incredibly stiff – it feels like it’s jammed or broken, and you will be very reluctant to force it. Before screwing the crown to full closure, I researched extensively on the watch forums. It turns out that this is a very strange but acknowledged “bug” in this watch, reported by many people. I can’t imagine how it can be so difficult to screw the thing closed, especially when it opens quite smoothly. This does, however, appear to be the nature of the device. Hopefully it will last and not truly break. • The band clasp on the rubber strap is great – but has one big problem. When inserting the band into the enclosed, guided area of the clasp, the buckle arm will not allow you to thread the band through. So you have to find the proper adjustment hole, press it down onto the buckle arm, and then forcibly wedge the sides of the band into the retaining area of the clasp. Not a big deal if you set it once and forget it – but if you need to regularly change sizing for any reason (e.g. putting it in a watch winder with a different girth than your wrist), I believe it will quickly wear out or break down the edges of the strap and the stitching. In short – five stars for a truly awesome watch, three stars for some pretty serious functional design flaws.