To the Bulova man for years, this doesn’t need an introduction. Sadly, I’m not, so I turned to someone who takes more interest on the brand than Citizens, Seikos and Hamiltons and the outcome was nothing less than satisfactory. The Bulova Marine Star is what I will gift me this Christmas.

The friend of mine gave me an exhaustive review and I seemed to be lost in the flurry of words. It took me some time to untangle the core meaning of what he tried to portray the Marine Star as and how he found it different from other Bulovas.

Firstly, he went gaga on how striking its looks are. Frankly, the photo didn’t appear half as appealing to me until I was shown a high-res image (man, did it impress?) and I found my opinion slowly changing towards a better one. I stay more concerned on the sturdiness, accuracy and reliability of the watch; the looks come later. Sadly, he couldn’t enlighten me much on that department, so here are some bits and pieces of info I could gather around from the net. Hopefully, this will help you out if you ever set your mind on one.

I’m flabbergasted (yes, not even surprised) that most people go for the looks first but I also believe in behaving like Romans while in Rome. So, most say it’s a complete turn-on and a little bit of surprise comes in the form of a screw-down crown, the Citizen Promaster Chronograph alike, another fav to me. But the turn down is it’s not quite the Seiko Automatic Alpinist, so while you may wash your undies (or tub-hump) wearing one of these, do not go for deep-sea diving with it; in that case, the  Bulova Solano Marine Star shall hold up better. But then again, both are excellent pieces if you tend to be hard on wrist-wears. Both hold fine against abuses unless you pummel them with a road roller and shall remain flawless for many years to come. The material is top-rank, not tank.

Another reason I would like to go for it is despite its U.S. marking, the movements are Japan-built, which added to its credibility. Now, there are a lot of people who won’t agree with me but there are more Japan movement lovers who will latch on to it solely for this reason. To cut down to the simplest point: If I know even a little bit on watches, this baby won’t trouble me at least for two years. On the accuracy ground too, which all agree as exemplary as the way it looks.