Everything apart, one thing for which I like Seiko is their great attention to details. The best can be witnessed in the mid- and upper-level Seiko-s, which start with the Kinetic Direct Drive. Now, there are many among us who are not quite savvy with this mechanism as they are with the simple Kinetic, so a little bit on the K-D-D to start off.
At its very basic, Kinetic Direct Drive, conceptually the same thing as an automatic movement that also allows manual winding. The rotor charges the mainspring but you can tighten the mainspring as well, at your will. In a Kinetic movement, the rotor charges the electrical storage unit but when you want, turning the crown also puts the charge into the unit. That makes the KDD a rather exotic quartz movement to own. But wait, that’s not all. Here, you also get to see how much power you are putting in. The indicator hand (the same one that acts as the power reserve indicator) jumps accordingly with the turn of the crown, showing you the power you put in real time. It’s difficult to explain the feeling but one can easily estimate the fun of playing with it.
But well, there’s a negative side to everything and in the case of the Kinetic Direct Drive, it’s the max power it can store at a time. Unlike plain kinetics, this one can be fed with a month’s worth of power, simply because you do not need to rely upon your wrist movements solely. But hey, if you love your watch, you’ll surely love to caress it at least once a month and when you do that, you’ll definitely be hand-charging it!
There’s no point in commenting whether Seiko created a great design or not; tastes vary according to the person and not everyone is going to love the large indicator-arc. Whether it adds to the sheer elegance of the rest of the watch depends on how you perceive sheer elegance; all that can be said right now is it is a rare feature Seiko brought to the SRG019 Kinetic Drive Watch. It will be loved by those who love interacting with their watches.
As for the rest of the watch, being quartz, you’ll have no issues with accuracy and reliability. The Caliber 5D22 is a proven workhorse of the Seiko family and the Sportura SRG019 is built tough. Together they are prepared to take many beatings and rough use through the years, even when you want to go for swimming and play other water sports. Just remember not to cross the 100m depth and everything will be fine. For the money, , it’s very hard to let it pass by.
Watch(es) mentioned in this post are listed below. Click to see details and buy them:
