I have previously written about the value of being able to tell time in a grid-down situation. Although there are many practical benefits to being able to tell time, the ones I most value are the less tangable emotional and psychological benefits. In the midst of a chaotic situation, timekeeping contributes to emotional well-being by helping to maintain orientation. This emotional benefit is so significant that interrogators often try to deprive their subjects of this support by restricting their access to timekeeping devices and cues.
I recently purchased an Invicta 29178 Automatic Watch. I like automatic watches because they don’t have batteries that constantly run down and need to be replaced. In my childhood and youth, automatic watches were called “self-winding” watches. They collect energy from the motion of the wearer’s arm to wind the mainspring and keep the watch running. Unlike spare batteries, the shelf life of an extra automatic watch is virtually indefinite. With a reasonable amount of care, most users report receiving decades of service from a good automatic watch.
I am afraid that I am not “most users”. The automatic watches that I have owned to date have lasted an average of five years each before they wore out or were lost. But even taking into account shorter than average life-spans under my care, automatic watches are my preferred tool for keeping time in daily life as well as in a grid down situation.
The new Invicta is amazingly accurate. It is also fairly reasonably priced, costing me $82.90 at the time of purchase. The watch is a little larger than I anticipated, and is too shiny for field conditions that call for non-reflective equipment. Otherwise, I am fully satisfied with the new watch.
A Sense of Abandonment
I bought the Invicta because my beloved Seiko 5 recently abandoned me. I was bucking logs into six-foot sections for transport. During a pause between cuts, I looked down to check the time, and my watch was gone. I searched for the watch among the sawdust, mud, broken branches and crushed vegetation of the work area, but it was nowhere to be found.
This desertion did not come completely out of the blue. Over the past couple of years, the Seiko had displayed an increasing tendency to go astray. The pins that connected the watch to the band had already slipped loose on multiple occasions. I had sought counsel with a couple of different jewelers, and had new pins installed several times. Unfortunately, all attempts to preserve the relationship were ultimately in vain.
My Dad’s Watch
After the Seiko disappeared, I quickly grew tired of consulting a stripe of pale skin on my left wrist whenever I wanted to know the time. I dug out an old mechanical watch that had belonged to my father many years ago. It is a Timex, and needs to be rewound every eight hours or so to keep it running. It has day and date functions, but they can no longer be reset. So the day function was two days ahead of schedule and the date function was two weeks behind schedule at the time that I started wearing it.
The watch was not a good long-term solution, but it did work well as a temporary fix. I also decided that I could use it to extend the life of whatever watch I would buy to replace it. I could continue to wear the old watch while doing manual labor, and save my new watch for less challenging environments. Hopefully, this would help to prevent an unfortunate accident from befalling the new watch.
My Dad’s wrist was a bit smaller than mine is, so the band was just a little too tight. Because of this, I began to develop abrasions on my wrist after about a week of wear due to chafing from the overly-tight band.
The Invicta 29178
Even before my wrist started getting sore, I went online and started looking for options for a new watch. I finally decided to give the Invicta 29178 a try. It met three criteria: It was relatively inexpensive, it looked halfway decent, and it had good user reviews.
Prices fluctuate. In the time since I placed my order, the 29178 model has become more expensive, and other Invicta models have become less expensive. If I was ordering a new watch today, I would probably pick one of the other similar-but-currently-less-expensive models.
The watch arrived about a week after I ordered it. The product box contained the watch with its band wrapped around a tiny pillow, a silica gel pack, and a card with a QR code and the words, “Scan for your watch’s manual, warranty, service information & more.” That was all fine and dandy, but I am an old fogey who did not know how to scan a QR code. A blood drive coordinator subsequently filled this hole in my knowledge by teaching me how to scan a QR code related to the drive. But at the time when I bought the Invicta, QR codes were still largely beyond my ken.
The pattern of the Invicta 29178 is obviously influenced by the design of the Rolex Submariner, although the Invicta doesn’t cost in excess of $12,000 like the Rolex does. The Invicta uses the Japanese-made Seiko NH35 movement, and is assembled in Malaysia. Invicta was originally a Swiss company, established in 1837. When the Swiss company went bankrupt in the second half of the twentieth century, they were acquired by an American company. So the Invicta 29178 is a Swiss/American/Japanese/Malaysian watch, a microcosm of the United Nations, although I feel that it serves a much more useful purpose than the United Nations.
The case of the watch is 42mm in diameter and 14.2mm thick. It has the exhibition case back that allows one to view the mechanical workings of the watch. It also has a black dial, with luminous hands and hour markers.
The shiny silver watch band was significantly too large for my wrist at first. Since I was still largely clueless about QR codes, I went to the Invicta website to find and download a manual. I hoped to find out how to remove links from the band. The manual contained absolutely no information on that subject. I did some more searching online, and found a YouTube video that detailed the steps necessary to complete this process. Those steps looked quite a bit easier on the video than I found them to be in real life. After a bit of struggle, I ended up removing a total of five links, and achieved a good fit. Once the band was properly sized, I found the watch to fit extremely comfortably.
The thing that has most impressed me about the watch so far is its accuracy. My Seiko tended to lose a minute or so every few days. Whenever I noticed that the Seiko was a minute or more slow, I would move it forward to the point where it was about a minute fast. I needed to make this adjustment once a week or so. So I am quite please that I have not yet needed to readjust the Invicta. Every time I check it, the time is still correct.
A Dive Watch
This particular Invicta model is identified as a “Men’s Pro Diver Watch.” It is rated to be water resistant down to 600 feet in depth.
Normal surface pressure at sea level is about 14.7 pounds per square inch. This level of pressure is referred to as “one atmosphere.” For every 30 feet of depth that an object is submerged in water, another atmosphere of pressure is added. So a depth of 600 feet adds twenty atmospheres of pressure to normal surface pressure, for a total of approximately 308.7 pounds per square inch of pressure.
A watch built to withstand that kind of pressure should not have any problem handling a rainstorm, a dog bath, or a fall in the creek.
The Water Test
I must admit that I am not 100% convinced that the watch could withstand 308.7 pounds per square inch of water pressure. I do not have a deep enough spot in a body of water handy and 600 feet of fishing line, so I can’t put the depth rating to a full test.
But I did construct a simple test for practical, everyday water resistance. I put the watch in an empty peanut butter jar, filled the jar with water, and left the watch in the water overnight. The next morning I emptied the water and took out the watch. It passed the test. The watch is still running great, with no condensation on the inside of the crystal or other signs that water has penetrated the case.
Conclusions
The Invicta 29178 Automatic Watch is accurate, attractive, fairly reasonably priced, and quite water resistant. It is too shiny for field use when non-reflective equipment is important. It is otherwise well suited for everyday use, or for timekeeping in a grid down situation. I highly recommend it.
Disclaimer
I did not receive any financial or other inducement to mention any vendor, product, or service in this article.