Swiss Army Men's Garrison Collection Brown Leather Watch #241083

Comment: This is the second time I have owned this watch. Was very surprised to have found it again. The last one lasted me 6 years and the crystal broke. It was cheaper to just buy another one.

Comment: I have owned a Rolex and the Seiko 5 Series Sport watches, which had automatic movements, meaning the motion of your wrist kept them wound. I often didn't wear a watch during various weekend chores so it was a pain to have to keep resetting my watch Monday mornings getting ready for work. I just thought that buying an electric winder was just too much, so I opted to go to battery-powered quartz watches so I could take them off for maybe days at a time and they'd still be running when I picked them up.
I currently own a Seiko Quartz chronograph, which has an alarm feature that I love. After 5 years with my company, I got to select an anniversary gift from a catalogue, so I chose to get the Swiss Army 241083, aka the Garrison. I figured I'd wear it on the weekend as my "knock-about" watch, meaning I wouldn't be that upset if it got banged around a bit while doing yard work or working on my car. At first the "leather" band was kind of stiff, but after a week or so it feels just fine. After carefully measuring, I glued the extra loop on the band that keeps the end of the band from flopping around to a permanent position. Since I'm the only one who wears it, its position shouldn't have to change over the years. I went to a website for the US Naval Observatory and synchronized my watch to it. It has been over a month now, and as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny would say, it's "dead on balls accurate." Simply amazing.
I love the large display with its easy-to-read numbers, and the date window is large enough to see without a magnifying lens. I would highly recommend this watch to anyone looking for a good "tool" watch.

Comment: I picked up this watch at $51 before the x-mas rush and am very glad I did.
The watch is very solidly constructed; easy to read including the date box.
It is a definite step up from the Timex expeditions which I previously favored;at a similar price point, the Victorinox product is certainly a step up.
Retail prices for this watch are misleading; this style of watch is/was manufactured for corporate sales and are not individually availbale from Victorinox as are their other watches. Sooo... the retail cited in previous reviews may reflect the corporate rate for bulk purchase, making this probably a more expensive watch.
But, you have to LIKE the watch, not just feel you got a great deal on it. If you can find this watch for aroung 80 bucks or less, grab it; otherwise, I would wait for the prices to fall again.

Comment: I have had this watch almost two months now. It is easy to read and I am glad to have a watch with real hands that I can read and understand instantly. A digital watch may give a correct number, but it takes a moment for my brain to convert that number into useful information. Douglas Adams made a good point when he wrote that the Earth's "ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea..."

I will accept that this watch is not as accurate as I would wish. Over the last fifty days, it has gone almost two seconds fast. (My primary timebase is ntpd on FreeBSD with GPS with PPS input) And I have corroborated this with a consumer clock that claims to synchronize itself with WWV (in Colorado). Two seconds off per month is not exactly a problem, but it is not a claim to special accuracy either.

Since the watch assumes that every month is 31 days, I guess I will reset its time and date every couple months anyway so that the the date window is correct. So the time shown should not vary more than a second or so, as long as I keep it corrected. But I think that is pretty sloppy. That's just my opinion, of course.

Having said all the above, I don't know if there is ANY watch with a reasonable price that is accurate. So even if this one fails to the extent of nearly two seconds per month, I can not say that there is a better one to buy. I refuse to contemplate a watch costing more than a hundred bucks. So this may a good value for someone who wants a reasonably accurate watch.

Comment: It's a great watch, elegant in it's utilitarian design. Swiss movement at a bargain price.

MSPR is $145. Some unscrupulous sellers on Amazon are attempting to sell this very same watch USED @ $235.

Don't fall for it. It can be purchased at $90. less than the above used price (MSPR @ $145.)

or as low as $70. discounted.