Some seven years back, Seiko thought about creating something different from the sports divers that’s equally extraordinary and would give them a different identity while sticking to the same price range. The result was a series of mechanical watches that embodied the glamour of the cocktail bars. The sad part is, Seiko made them available only to the Japan domestic market.

Just like a good man, you can never keep a good thing down. It didn’t take long for the worldwide watch community to become aware of these marvelous little pieces designed especially for the Japanese market. Huge demands started showing up over the blogs and forums; these were mostly from die-hard Seiko fans at first. Presage indeed showed what was to come.

Today’s Presage collection is based on the Seiko Mechanical Cocktail Time Watch and became a global success within a year after their launch at Baselworld 2016. Whether it’s the diversity of designs or the wide range of calibers (4R, 6R and 8R), any Seiko Presage is an outstanding value for money. The collection brings together most of the important advancements Seiko made in mechanical watch making; some of which are the Magic Lever, the Spron alloys and the Diashock system. All the more, Presages are entirely in-house manufactured; so that’s another point it scores above the low and mid-tier Swiss watches.

The new collection comprise a total of eight models, of which, the SRPB44J1, the SSA346J1 and the SRPB46J1 are pivotal; around which, the rest of the designs (SRPB43J1, SSA341J1, SSA343J1, SARX019 and the SARX029) revolve. Each of these designs is inspired by a different cocktail and showcase the same subtle shimmer present in the original model, enhanced further by multiple layers of gloss finish. The cases have a slimmer profile; the crystals curved along the sides and the hands too bend near the edge of the dial to keep up with the domed crystals. The crowns are big, solid and fluted with a unique shape; turn one and you can feel a strong torque coming from the winding mechanism.

The new models share a lot of similarity with the previous ones, the chief differences being mostly to the insides. The SPRON510 – the mainspring material for the caliber 6R15 provides the 50-hour power reserve while for the 4R35, it is the SPRON110, storing 41 hours of power. Accuracy varies between -15/+25 sec/day to -35/+45 sec/day respectively while in terms of thickness; the 4R35 is slimmer than the 4R57, which goes into the Seiko Presage SSA series.

To cut the long story short, the new cocktails can highly be regarded as the initial steps towards wearing the higher-end Grand Seiko and are a suitable alternative to low and mid tier Swiss watches.

 

Watch(es) mentioned in this post are listed below.  Click to see details and buy them:

 

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