ESPRIT 24h – noon at 6 (AWW 53)

Name: ESPRIT 24h
Movement: Miyota 6M17, no jewel, battery type 364 (SR621SW)
Time display: 24 hours (with 6 on top), minutes and seconds
Date: no date
Case: all stainless steel with snap back
Size: diameter 37 mm with crown, 40 mm lug to lug
Height: 9 mm
Face:
a) blue display with yellow numbers and white markers
b) black display with green numbers and white markers
Text on dial: ESPRIT
Text on back: ESPRIT - WATER RESISTANT 50M - ALL STAINLESS STEEL
Hands: white hour and minute hands, yellow and green seconds hand respectively
Water-resistance: 5 atm water resistant
Crowns: unsigned crown at 3 to set time
Crystal: flat mineral crystal
Lug: 18 mm
Bracelet: black genuine leather or blue textile/leather strap with signed buckle

Foreword.

Time to time I try to review 24h quartz watches too. They are not as cool as mechanical, no doubt. And they are usually cheaper, or even very cheap. But sometimes you meet very unusual solutions that can teach you a lot.

I got two years ago ESPRIT 24h as NOS, with box and papers. Occasionally, recently another ESPRIT landed on my desk. Same model, only dial numbers are green instead of yellow. It's time to start review.

Comments

Fashion watches are not particularly valued. The trick is, that usually fashion brands have nothing to do at all with watchmaking. Fashion brand is only a name, label, which is licensed to watch manufacturing companies.

Esprit, founded 1968, is a global fashion brand, which licenses ESPRIT brand name to other manufacturers. Sub-brand Esprit Timewear & Jewellery is actually produced by Hong Kong based company Egana Holding. This company is also producing following watches: Pierre Cardin, Carrera, Puma, Cerruti 1881, Paolo Gucci, Field & Stream, National Geographic, Stefanel Tempo. And according to Wikipedia also (some?) Bulova watches.

So, when you try to rate Esprit you actually have to rate Egana.

New Esprit watches are usually priced between 100 and 200. Used watches are cheaper, of course.

I have only one model of Esprit. It is already amazing, that true 24h watch exists under fashion brand name. This model is produced in 1999 and has a unique design, "jour et nuit" or "day and night" dial with 6 on top.

The heart of this watch is Japanese Miyota 6M17. Quite popular, but now discontinued movement, you can have for purist 24h watches. Because this watch has both, 12h and 24h hour hands. Another 24h watch with same movement is GMT24 - something new from Japan (AWW 37).

The most remarkable part is here definitely dial. Here we see some kind of half circle dial ofted used in day&night-type of watches. Only one half of the dial is used.

Day&night watches usually have hours marked 6 .. 6, and 12 is on top. Here we have 0 .. 12, and 6 is on top! And I can say that this was the biggest mistake the designers did here. As a normal 6..6 day&night watch the dial would be much more legible. Think about it - you got 24h watch with 6 on top! Very unusual, and ... not practical. The legibility suffers seriously.

So the hour hand looks like retrograding between 6 and 6. Both ends of hour hand have the same lenght. The minute hand end showing 00 .. 30 is shorter, other end showing 30 .. 60 is longer. As I said coincidentally I have here two ESPRIT watches. One of them has yellow numbers, the other green numbers.

Case is stainless steel with snap case back. To open it was no problem, case back has small notch on the side. The case is brushed, gives a solid impression and is water resistant 50M.

Quite a small watch, diameter 35 mm, with crown 37 mm, lug to lug 40 mm. 18 mm genuine leather straps with signed buckle are OK.

Summary

I said already - 24h dial with 6 on top is a mistake. If you are wearing only one watch, then in long run you can get used to everything. If you are changing watches very often, then from top 12 to top 24 and vice versa is no problem. (Probably because you can easily correlate hour hand movement with sun, day or night.) Top 6 drives you crazy.

But the rest is more or less OK.