Omega

My company’s anniversary watch program works through a specific AD, with prearranged per-brand discounts. As it happens, the biggest discount is with Omega, which is apparently the favorite brand of some senior management at my company. Hence, we’re encouraged to choose Omega.

In many ways, this is fine with me, since Omega has a very good reputation and makes nice watches. Over the months since I started investigating watches, I’ve tended to favor other brands somewhat, but that’s partly just due to my own contrarian nature.

The Omega models I like best are the previously-mentioned Seamaster 300M Chrono Diver, also referred to as the “Bond Chrono”, and the Planet Ocean Chrono, or POC. The POC was actually my first choice when I started the search. One of my coworkers has the non-chrono version of this watch, with an orange bezel and black leather band, and I really like the way it looks. On my first visit to the AD, I tried on the POC with a bracelet, and liked it a lot. My biggest concern is that it’s expensive, although my later interest in the IWC Aquatimer has somewhat changed my definition of “expensive” in terms of luxury watches.

The biggest knocks against the POC, however, are the persistent stories of problems with the new Omega 33xx series movements. Some postings with lots of links to other discussions of problems are here on watchuseek and also here, and much more discussion can be found on the late Chuck Maddox’s blog. The general argument is that Omega adapted a fairly delicate chronograph movement for use in several of their watches, including the sports-oriented POC, and this movement has had some robustness issues. A few components had to be replaced with stronger versions after the initial release a few years back. The open questions at this point are whether or not the problems have been truly fixed, and the more troubling question of how well Omega is taking care of watches with problems. Many people complain that sending their watch to Omega for service takes several months, and when the watches finally return they break again. And once the warranty period ends, watch service becomes a fairly expensive proposition.

So far, at least, the 300M Chrono watch doesn’t use the new movement. So I’m somewhat torn. I do like the 300M Chrono, but not as much as the POC. Yet I’m not sure I want to gamble on the 33xx movement.

Decisions…