I had an original Seiko Kinetic that I bought in Hong Kong in the early 90's. It worked very well for almost 12 years, and then the capacitor crapped out. They then upgraded to these new Kinetic's with the L-ion rechargeable batteries. Problem is, if you purchase one these and the battery has run completely down, the battery will be unable to fully charge again. So when you purchase one, and it's not already running, beware! These watches in all likely hood have been sitting in storage or a display case for months, so they all probably have half dead batteries.

I purchased this watch, and it really is stunning and well made, but it was DOA out of the box, the instructions tell you to shake it a few times to get it running, well it took almost a hour before I could get it charged up enough to make it stop doing the "double click" on the second hand, which is a low power indicator. After wearing it for almost 2 weeks, it never got past the first indicator mark for the power reserve, meaning it was only charged with enough reserve for one day to one week.

Unless you plan to wear this watch every single day, or like sitting watching TV while shaking a watch, take a pass on the Kinetic. Get a Citizen Ecc-Drive, just as well made, and absolutley maintainence free.