Horological Meandering

In-depth review: Tissot PRC 100 Chronograph Automatic

 

Most of us watch enthusiasts are familiar with the problem: the quest for the Holy Grail watch, “the” one and only, perfect watch for the whole life. Well, those who know me a bit might remember that I have already found that Grail watch a while ago. But what would life be without challenges, and so I am pursuing the goal to find the perfect vacation watch.

Vacation time is travel time, so I want to have a good travel watch. GMT/two time zones, that would be the logical answer of all my fellow watch nuts. However, I need something different: When I am travelling, different time zones are not an issue, since we mostly stay in but one. We are travelling by car, or better: by offroad truck, which my dear friend MTF uses to respectlessly call the “Hankewagen”. This is not a fast vehicle, but versatile, and brings us to places that are normally not easy to be seen.


Therefore, my travel watch has to be sturdy, since I sometimes have to disappear under the car in order to execute minor surgery there, and the watch will be in contact with steel, grime and dirt. It should not be an oversized watch: the interior of our car is tightly organised, and to live for several weeks on 4.5 square meters demands some concessions. I could of course loose some weight, but it is a lot easier to wear a smaller watch, that does not bang against the furniture too often.


It should be a chronograph; I need a chronograph. Why? I now could argue that in the - admittedly unlikely - case that all three GPS systems would fail at once, or the U.S. government would decide to deactivate the GPS satellite network, I would be left with compass and maps, and thus is could be necessary to exactly determine for how long I am driving which course at what speed, in order to find the life saving well in the desert.

Actually, I like travelling with a chronograph just out of curiosity: How long do I need for this part of the trip? How long did we need to get up this mountain? How long does the teawater need to boil in 2,000 meters height?

Of course, its price should not be so high that a possible damage or even loss would pose a financial tragedy.

Many watches more or less meeting these requirements had accompanied me during various journeys, but the experience brought another entry onto my wish list: a weekday indication. Why this? When travelling through a distant area, most often remote from cities or other larger settlements, I always lost track of where we were within a week. I could see the date on the watch, sure, but mostly, any important events or deadlines are anchored in my brain by its weekday: ferry leaves next Tuesday, for example, or: still two and a half weeks before we have to be at home, or: it’s Sunday, shops are closed, no milk today ...

Consequently, I once again started my search for a new vacation watch: a solid chronograph with date and weekday indication, that should be well legible and not exceed the magical limit of 1,000 Euros too far.

Easy? Well, not really. First, the offer of chronograph movements with weekday display is small; very small. Besides the Zenith cal. 410 with full calendar, there is one Piguet-based chronograph by Blancpain and a chronograph, combined with annual calendar by Patek - and I somehow failed to find one of them for 1,000 Euros ...

This leaves me with either the ubiquitous ETA/Valjoux 7750, or the now rare Lémania 5100. the latter is available new only by Tutima, and these Military chronographs cost more than 3,000 Euros; a pity, I really love the central 60 minutes chronograph counter. Okay, let’s take the 7750. I am not a real fan of this movement. I know, it is reliable, parts are readily available, any average watchmaker should be able to repair it. But I do not like its height, resulting in the inevitable tuna can case shapes on the wrist.

The good thing is that simple 7750 chronographs can be found at prices far below 1,000 Euros already. Mostly, these are typical private label products that are offered under a large variety of brand names, but look all the same. If possible, I wanted to get a more unique design, but professional design work is not cheap, which forced me to accept slightly higher price tags, and to look at the more established brands.

This is how I found the Tissot PRC 100 chronograph. A list price of 1,200 Euros for the watch with a steel bracelet was considered an acceptable exceeding of my original price limit.

I. first impression:

As hinted above, it was the PRC’s design that caught my eye. Its case, especially the flanks and the bezel, clearly quote iconic designs by Gérald Genta, who sadly has passed away only recently. The steel bracelet nicely blends with this design, while the carbon fibre dial adds a touch of sportiness On the wrist, the watch appeared very nicely, despite its height, and is one of few watches I own that sparked spontaneous and favourable comments. Maybe it has just a right mixture of flashiness and sobriety that makes it attractive in many eyes.


II. Case, crystal, pushers and crown

As mentioned already, the stainless steel case reminds of classic Genta designs, and is not round, but slightly hexagonal. Due to the arrangement of pushers and crown on the right side, this shape is apparent only on the left flank. Unlike the well-known archetypes, though, the Tissot’s case is lacking the sharp, well-defined edges and plains. The tumble-polished finish is spoiling the faceted appearance a bit, but the overall price of the PRC 100 has to be taken into account, of course.


The upper parts of the main case, including the lugs are brushed. Dominating the appearance is the dodecagonal bezel ring that is fully polished and holds the flat sapphire crystal. This bezel looks highly attractive, but is of course a veritable scratch magnet.


As I had wished, the case is not that large: A diameter of 42mm is considered very decent today, and a width of 45mm measured over the crown assures a good wearing comfort, even when the wrist is bent. Typical for the 7750 movement, though, is the considerable height of 15mm

Another interesting feature of the case is the integration of the rectangular pushers into the crown guard. Without clearly protruding from the case, as standard chronograph pushers do, they are less prone to damage from direct blows, but nevertheless permit a water tightness rating of 100 meters. The screw-down crown offers good grip when winding or setting the movement.


The caseback is screwed on and features a sapphire crystal, displaying the movement.



III. Dial and hands:

The eye-catching dial follows current trends in watch design, by combining carbon fiber structure with some colour details. The surface sealing of the carbon fibre base is uneven, which is standard, and examined under high magnification, shows a few tiny bubbles that came to the surface after the fibre fabric was sealed with the lacquer.


Printed onto the rehaut ring is a tachymeter scale.


The print on the dial is sharp and very attractive, due to the three colours used, without this appearing too gaudy. There are just some faint aspects of yellow and purple, combined with the dominating white. Very noteworthy is that all three colours are in nearly perfect register, which is rather difficult, since it is not possible to print all three colours at once, but one after each other. Even the slightest change in the adjustment of either the rubber stamp (“tampon”) or the dial during this process would result in the colour elements being displaced.

Very high magnification reveals some tiny flaws, though, such as one dust fluff apparently being transferred together with the yellow paint, and a slightly irregular distribution of white and purple index markings in one place. However, these flaws are perfectly tolerable on a watch of this price class, and I am generally surprised about the high level of finish quality of these parts. Apparently, it pays off to be a part of the largest watch production group in the world.


While all components of the watch hitherto express the care and effort of the designer(s) involved, there are some details indicating that the person was not too familiar with how this mechanical chronograph works: The minute scale on the dial rim is subdivided into five increments, which would be correct only for chronographs beating at either 18,000 or 36,000 A/h frequencies. Since the 7750 beats at 28,800 A/h, a subdivision into four increments would be appropriate. Some fifteen years ago, this sloppiness was common in the industry, but since then a correct execution of the second increments, adapted to the escapement frequency is standard.


Also weird is the subdivision of the chronograph minute counter, where between the longer, purple-coloured five minute markers we find nine identical white markers, showing minutes and half-minutes alike, without making a difference. Since the 7750 is counting the elapsed minutes in full minute steps, this weird scale makes it impossible to make an exact reading.


What is too much at the minute counter, is missing on the hour counter, where only the full hours are marked, but not the half hours.


The hourmarkers are made from white Super Luminova C1, framed with polished steel. Here, too, are some very slight irregularities, visible only under high magnification. Around the subdials of minute and hour counter are thin metal rings, helping to draw the attention to the chronograph functions away from the permanent second at 9, which is lacking this feature.


The hands are made from polished steel, in a very modern, semi-skeletonized style. Recently, we have seen nearly identical hands on impressive designs, like the Concord C-1, or the chronograph by Linde-Werdelin. Its major disadvantage is that silver hands, be they polished or rhodium-plated, are difficult to see above a dark dial. this is the case here as well. Only thanks to the white Super Luminova segments it is possible to read the time rather easily, without constantly tilting the wrist with the watch, trying to get a good light reflection on the hands.

A feature I really like is the visual grouping of the chronograph hands with bright yellow colour. By this, the eye immediately recognises the components seconds, minutes and hours, belonging to the chronograph mechanism.


Quality-wise, the hands show a finish that I would not take as granted in this price class: They all have their edges smoothed, if not polished, edges are slightly bevelled. They are free of particles or stains, but the small second hand shows slight traces of the tool that cut out the hole in the center. The painted hands have the paint only on top, and apparently have been cut out from their sheets after painting. Their sides are a bit rough.



IV. Movement:

The displayback reveals the ETA/Valjoux 7750 in all its glory, powering the watch with its typical peculiarities: the wobble caused by the unidirectionally winding rotor spinning crazily after specific wrist movement, the late and slow date change, starting about an hour past midnight, lasting for at least another hour, and the stutter of the chronograph second hand, that often appears to hesitate a moment, before executing the next jump, only to make two jumps at once.

Unexpectedly smooth, however, is the operation of the pushers. From my earlier experiences with this movement I am used to the need of a rather strong pressure, until the chronograph starts running. A similarly hard pressure is needed for resetting. The reason for this is the rather crude finish of the various moving parts involved in the chronograph operation, mainly the levers. They were assembled as the fell from the machines, without any deburring. Since then there seems to have been quite some evolution, though.

All relevant parts are tumble-polished smoothly. Of course they lack the fine hand-finish of bevelled edges and mirror-polished surfaces. But the machine-finish is now perfectly functional, and this is enough in this case.


The rotor is gold-coated, adorned with a few Geneva stripes and printed with the brand name. Nice.


V. Accuracy:

As a standard, the mass-produced movements are not hand-regulated. This is left to specialised machinery. Consequently, the tolerances for these movements are rather wide, compared with the individually hand-regulated movements in the chronometer quality grade. Manufacturers like Tissot do not regulate all movements by hand either, they are simply taken from the package and dropped into the case. The final test only assures that they are working, and random sample testing assure that the series itself is not out of the tolerances.

Therefore, I did not expect too much from the movement’s accuracy. When worn on the wrist, the Tissot gains between 1 and 5 seconds per day, which is rather good. A more detailed, COSC-like test in different positions kept for two days each showed a somewhat different result:

The average daily gain through all five positions is 9.4 seconds. More important, though, is that the difference between the two rates in the same position is exactly 0, in all positions. That means, that in every single of the five positions, the movement performed exactly the same every day. This is excellent and shows that it should be able to achieve a very good regulation, if one invests the time. The difference between 6 up and dial up are 7 seconds, which would still meet the chronometer requirement of 8 seconds max.

I think this is a good example of how efficient mass-production without noteworthy human interference can be.


VI. Bracelet and clasp:

One reason why the PRC 100 looks so attractive is the steel bracelet. At first sight, one assumes it to be a nice, but rather standard bracelet from the supplier’s catalogue. But the second glance reveals that it was actually designed specifically for that case shape: the polished parts repeat the latter’s unique edged outline, the result is a really cool-looking combination.


Looking at its backside, one realises the cleverly made rationalisation for the production process: instead of individual links, some polished and edges, the others brushed and domed, every row is but one link. This makes the assembly a lot easier, while retaining the complex appearance.


The length can be adjusted by means of removable pins in several link elements near the clasp.

The clasp itself is the only part that appears cheap, a stamped sheet metal with a safety bow and without an integrated quick elongation option.


With a lug distance of 20mm, there are countless options of aftermarket straps available to replace the bracelet, if wished.


VII. Ergonomics:

The PRC 100 wears very comfortably, due to its decent size. Typically for high watches with the 7750 movement, it feels a bit top-heavy when worn on a strap, but is well balanced on the steel bracelet. Of course, the risk of collisions with door sills and furniture edges is larger, due to the case height.


The shaped chronograph pushers offer an area large enough to be found at once, so the fingers do not have to feel around for them.

Legibility is mixed: Since the polished steel hands disappear in front of the black dial most of the time, only the smaller luminous areas can be seen. These tend to blend with the other white elements of the dial, the hourmarkers and the date/weekday windows.


At night, situation is also less than perfect, since the currently fashionable white SuperLuminova C1 is not nearly as efficient as the lightly green C3 variant. But the luminosity can be considered as sufficient.

Really good is the legibility of the bright yellow chronograph hands, permitting immediate comprehension of the elapsed time, even while driving.


VIII. Conclusion:

During the last years, the Swiss watch industry became infamous for increasing its prices not once, but several times per year, so that the price level for quality watches kept speeding away from the average salaries. Consequently, I am happy to see that it is still possible to find uniquely designed watches with good quality and even traditional, highly reputable brand names at such a decent price.

The bad news, though, is that the PRC 100 reviewed above seems to have been discontinued by Tissot. Apparently, the price was too high for the targeted customer group, since the succeeding model PRC 200 is a lot simpler in every respect: simpler case, simpler dial, and - above all - the much simpler and cheaper ETA C01.211 movement, which was originally developed for the Swatch Irony automatic chronograph. This brought the price under 1,000 Euros, but also reduced the number of interesting chronographs on the market by one.

If the PRC 100 will indeed meet the expectations as a good travel watch, is yet to be seen. In a week, I will be traveling with the chronograph on the wrist, and of course I will report about my experiences.

  This message has been edited by Marcus Hanke on 2011-09-06 15:36:00 This message has been edited by MTF on 2011-09-11 09:01:08