CADISEN DEUS homage

So, after much deliberation between the Sugess and the CADISEN versions of this watch I put my money down on the CADISEN.

For me the deciding factors were:

• smaller size case (51mm is actually wider than my 6.5" wrist)
• the pushers
• the chronograph seconds hand

I was concerned about the more subdued colour scheme, but I'll get back to that.

Smaller size, I couldn't conscion having a watch which is actually lug to lug wider than my actual wrist, its farcical. One day people will look back at the trend of watches and consider it like  Flairs or Safari Suits. If I had a 9" wrist maybe.

The pushers. The CADISEN has a different choice of Chronograph "stop/start" and "reset" pushers which are actually also found on a Breitling watch;

and frankly I find the "traditional" pushers to be like Chrome versions of Prawns Eyes.

Lastly I thought that the "lightening bolt" Chrono second hand of the Sugess was not my bag. I'll come back to that.

So with my expectations laid out I'd like to review the watch and give my The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good

In a word the good is the specifications and component list

• fit and size was exactly as I expected
• hand alignment on the dial was perfect
• colour coding of the hands (time in yellow, chrono in orange) worked as expected
• the two sub dial ST1901 movement was everything I'd expected of it
• it came with the Swan neck regulator (the latest adaptation on the ST19xx)
• case finishing was as good as any proper commercial watch (so not like Baltany or Pagani)
• Crystal and AR (inside only) was excellent
• weight was good

You can see here that the weight of the CADISEN is very comparable to the weight of my Seiko SRPE. Note the annotations to the image of the CADISEN, I'll come back to that.

Now this leads me to talk about the case, and something I've not once seen mentioned (except in error) anywhere; be that Reddit or YouTube. Its almost like nobody reviewing these things has eye or knows what a watch looks like. The point is that on the lugs are protrusions that could be thought of as covers for drilled lugs or pins for attaching the strap. They are neither and are simply a feature of the case styling. You can see above how the positions of these faux lug pins are not inline with where the center of the spring bar is (see red circles and lines).

Most curious

The next thing about the case that I like, which is also not discussed anywhere, is the convex nature of the bezel. Its hard to be sure of that from the picture above, so this angle should make that pretty clear:

So both the upper and lower halves follow that same design cue. Combined with the screw down back (rather than the screw in back) it adds a really nice touch to the watch. You can again see the faux pins I mentioned on the lugs here

The crown is a good size (and needs to be for winding and feel of that) and operation is good. 

The Bad

So what could possibly be bad here? Basically the problem is that a good watch is not just the list of its specifications.

I'll declare up front that I do need readers (reading glasses) to see fine print, but outside in daylight I don't. I can read the time on every watch I have: except the CADISEN where I have to really give it a look.

Why? Well you can begin to see it in the picture above, and that is the hands. In an effort to put more lume area on the hands they've really taken up a lot of the width of the middle of the hand making seeing the hand (rather than the lume) difficult. 

This results in the hand edge being than half a millimeter per side of the lume patch on the CADISEN and you frequently just can't see the rest of the hand. Indeed its bloody hard in some lighting (especially indoor artificial light) where the colour of the lume (which isn't glowing) blends in with the colour of the face and all you can see is two stubby hands. So telling the hour from the minute becomes something of a small study. Further in low light your ability to see colours fades off slowly into the black and white (its a rods and cones thing) and so the use of colour as the "tool of contrast" gradually fades.

if you take a step back from the screen (or hold your phone further away) you'll see that the hour hand becomes a little harder to see. Adding in a little blur makes it worse. This massively increases the time taken to actually read the time (but who uses a watch for that?). For instance this shot of me just sitting on the couch. I had to actually know what time it was to verify, seeking the time would be harder, if the lights were dim then forget it.

If looking for alternatives, then as far as I know its only the Sugess, which is a closer copy of the size of the Breitling at least. However the Sugess fares only marginally better and both are crap compared to the Breitling Top Time Deus when it comes to contrast.

Not one reviewer has ever pointed this out. Basically I've found this all but negates the readability of the CADISEN everywhere except bright outdoor light. Driving in the evening is just "forget it". Contrast is important for readability. I'm sure if I ever get to hold a Breitling that it'll just pop.

Lastly the second hand on the CADISEN is so thin as to be lost on the dial, again I'm going to call this "lack of contrast" as my Phylida is entirely legible in all situations. Here I've photographed my Phylida beside my Pagani and despite being back lit (for reducing contrast) the hands stand out.

This is reflected in daily wear where the Phylida can be easily seen with the naked eye in a dim restaurant. Were I wearing the Deus in (say) a conference or a cinema, I'd not have a bloody chance.

Meanwhile outside in daylight the Phylida (with similar polished applied markers) just pops and sparkles in the light

The CADISEN not so much.

So if you want a watch that you can tell the time from at a glance, and maybe don't have perfect vision or are always in perfect lighting then the CADISEN is not your bag baby.

You'll notice I haven't even bothered with examining the performance of the lume ... that's because none of the watches featured here (except perhaps the Breitling) have any lume duration worth mentioning.

The Ugly

So this is where it gets bad, the mechanism for the Chronograph has problems right out of the box. Best described in this short video.

So basically what I believe is at work here is that  the pusher button is attached to a rod which slides though a tube (and I hope also a seal) and pushes on the lever that engages the chronograph.

This has manufacturing problems in the following ways:

1. the rod has a bullet shaped end
2. the rod is perhaps a little short
3. the rod is off axis by about half the width of the rod where it actually engages with the lever
4. the lever has a flat (but narrow) surface that needs to be pressed centrally while allowing for it to move laterally as part of its rocking.

I have another Chronograph with an ST190x movement in it (my Phylida) and its rod is flat and at a slightly better angle (for the needs of the lever). So basically unless this particular watch has the wrong type of end on the actuating rod then I believe this is a problem which is going to plague the CASIDEN watch of this type.

Conclusion

So there you have it, the good, the bad and the ugly. I am a bit sad that this hasn't worked out, but at the same time the discovery now (rather than a year or two later) of this issue has allowed me to dodge a bullet (so to speak).

While I'd really like to have liked this watch, and really it had so much going for it, I just can't.

So back it goes.

HTH