I bought this watch online one night after a second glass of Bordeaux.  Part of the motivation was price;part was curiosity.  What kind of watch do you get for (U.S.)$61.00?  When I opened the box, I was shocked by the elegance of the watch's face: a relatively unreflective black, with two textures - an inner circle of satin-prismatic black, surrounded by an outer ring of flat black containing and contrasting beautifully with, the polished-metal hour markers.  Unlike most watches, the day and date wheels of this watch are BLACK with white lettering/numerals.  This is a subtle but important difference - it makes the caldendar functions much less distracting and harmonizes with the rest of the black face.  If this watch had a polished-steel second-sweep  hand, it would be easy to mistake for a much more expensive dress watch.  As it is, the fire-engine red second sweep adds a bit of levity, and tells all onlookers that it isn't pretending to be something it's not.  This spirit of levity prompted me to abandon the folded-link stainless steel bracelet and substitute a dressy but slightly sportier black leather "Baby Crocodile Grain" leather band by DeBeer (available online from Strapped for Time).  The supplied stainless bracelet is a fine band, but those who have experienced the pleasure of solid-link stainless bracelets will find it wanting.

Timekeeping?  I have had the watch in operation only a few days, so I cannot comment upon long-term accuracy.  Mass-produced mechanical movements like Seiko's 7s26 are cased and sold essentially without regulation, so accuracy can vary greatly from one watch to another.  I own five Seiko watches powered by this 7s26 movement, and most will run, after a "break-in" period, at about +/- 5 to 10 seconds per day.  This little watch has been running at +15 seconds per day for the last two days, but it is just out of the box, and will take AT LEAST one month of uninterrupted running to settle into its own best rhythm.

In summation,this is an elegant, lightweight but solid watch with a dependable and durable automatic movement which will run for years without expensive servicing. Don't fret because it isn't as large as a Seiko "Monster" watch - just wear it and smile to yourself, knowing that it uses the SAME MOVEMENT as those larger watches (which means that their cases are filled with mostly air) and that, like any man who doesn't have to flash oversize phallic symbols to impress others, you've got the tool to do the job, dressed in a case about the same size as a Rolex "Explorer 1".