Montblanc is a brand I admire a lot for their seemingly effortless sense of style and beautiful simplicity. Their watches are all good looking, in my opinion, but the Timewalker series looks the best by far. Apparently designed by Officine Panerai, the Timewalker comes in a number of flavours, of which the Chronograph Automatic represents the highest level of complexity and price. I have to thank our Chinese friends and our friendly dealers for repping this masterpiece, as you will see that this is a very good rep.
The watch was ordered from Andew and arrived in four days to The Netherlands. Somehow, Andrew keeps amazing me with his great service, so he will be my dealer of choice for quite some time, I suspect.
I ordered the watch with leather strap for $258, while the gen with a leather strap retails for around $2,800 or €2,200. The strap was of average quality and I would have kept it, but it I decided to get a lighter brown croc strap that exactly matches my dress shoes. The strap you see in the pics is the new, hand made one, bought from http://www.watchbandcenter.com.
1. Overal Look & Feel
I have had the pleasure to hold and inspect this watch at Harrods of London a few weeks ago, so my first impression was that the watch really looks and feels a lot like the real thing. It’s got the heavy weight, the impression of the finish is really high and all the chrome parts ooze quality. It’s a stainless steel case with a correctly slightly domed crystal. Both the front and the case back window are sapphire glass, which really makes a difference.
2. Case, Movement & Rotor Details
The genuine Timewalker Chrono is powered by a Montblanc 4810/502 movement, which in the rep version is imitated by the by now famous New Asia 7750. The watch features a see-through case back, with an engraved rotor. The rep movement of course isn’t the same, but the rotor is really and accurately engraved, no decals and misspellings here. The engraving around the case back window is also very, very sharp, so I dare to say it is impossible to see the difference with the gen here, unless you use a 10x loup.
The strap is connected to the case with simple push pins, but the Montblanc star engraved faux screws look the part here. If anyone knows whether the screws actually serve a purpose on a genuine Timewalker, please tell us. As far as I’ve seen the gen, it had push pins too. The screws are also very sharply engraved and look high quality.
On the left side of the case, there is a push button that can be used to adjust the date. On the replica it is there for cosmetic purpose only, as you change the date on a 7750 by twisting the crown.
Somehow, the case looks pretty fat from the side, but the watch never looks plump or too thick once it is on a wrist. Don’t know how the designers managed that, but they definitely did a good job.
The crown and push buttons are visually very well replicated. Note how sharp the edges of the pushers are. The Montblanc star on the genuine crown seems to have a tiny seam between the black and white parts, to show that those are two pieces fitted together, instead of just the star being painted on. What amazed me was that this was also the case with the rep, as you can see in the picture.
The hatch texture on the side of the crown can be said to be identical to the gen. The crown operates as any other 7750, but on MB watches it doesn’t screw down. Twisting it clockwise winds the watch, click it out once to set date, pop it out further away to set the time.
3. The Dial
As replica collectors, we all know a rep stands or falls by the accuracy of the hands and dial. That is what people are looking at and that is the most detailed and difficult to copy part of a watch.
The image on the left is a scan from the 2006 Montblanc catalogue, the right is the rep Timewalker. Notice that the crown is clicked out on the rep, to keep the watch static. First of all, please note that more than half of the watch is reflective, so it was very difficult to recreate the shot on the left perfectly, especially because professional photographers have a chrome set-up in their studios to make chrome things really shine. Second, the position of the watches are close, but not exactly the same, so any milimetric differences in size of things can be caused by this.
The shot above is intended to measure spacing and size of important items on the watch. Note that the lighting is not the same, so the right image has a bit more depth. Apart from that, the bigger things as case size, push button size and the digits look the same.
The orange/brownish lines test the position and spacing of subdials and date window. They have been drawn on the gen (left) and placed on the rep. Notice the perfect subdial positions and spacing. The biggest thing that’s wrong here is the date window. It’s clearly out of position by half a millimetre and it’s a tad too small. The date window is by far the biggest ‘tell’, as it’s sunken in too far inside the watch. On the gen, it’s about 0,5 mm below the main dial, in the gen I would guess it’s over 1 mm below the surface.
The white marker under the number 6 also seems to be a bit to the left. The Montblanc Automatic letters above the subdials are spaced and sized to perfection, on the other hand, as they fit the gen dimensions perfectly.
The purple circles are used to compare hand sizes and the correct spacing of numbers. The minute and hour hands are spot on in length and look. The chrono second hand seems a little, maybe 0,3 mm too short. Also, the number 6 and the 5 ‘o clock marker don’t seem to fit the purple circle, but this could be due to a slightly different viewing angle.
This close-up is intended to show the high quality of the MB letters, the markers and the extruding chrome markers and numbers. It’s really superb to see how good reps have become and how much detail goes into a watch like this one. Also, look at the quality of the subtle texture of the dial itself and at the sandwich construction (chrono holes are cut in the main dial, then chrono subdials are placed under it, just like in the gen. Everything is sharp and sexy.
And then, there is a phenomenon I can’t explain. The rep has three small marks between the minute marks. In the up-front comparison shot with subdial spacing measurement (the image before the macro), the left (gen) Timewalker has four small markers between the minute markers. Count them, it’s four (4) instead of three. Now look at the shot from the MB Catalogue (two images above the macro). Count the small markers in the gen. Three. Yes, 3.
The Montblanc website too shows the exact same watch to have 4 small markers between the minute markers, but their catalogue shows 3. Maybe this is a small model update or something. You can also see the markers in the catalog shot and on the rep to be a bit thicker than the ones in the up-front shot. Weird.
4. Summary
The MB Timewalker is a great looking watch and it’s Asia 7750 rep is a very, very accurate rep. The only visually obvious flaw is the sunken in date window which is also a little too small and out of positon. Apart from that, and the weird 3/4 sub-minute marker dispute, the watch looks the look.
The 28,800 bph 9 ‘o clock second hand glides effortlessly over the subdial, the chronos are smooth and the watch itself is full of crisp, sharp details. It has great finishing and an almost impossibly detailed dial. It’s also great to see the rotor to actually be engraved.
The movement is a semi-visible flaw (the person must know that model very, very well and inspect the movement to see that it’s not a Montblanc movement), but I believe it’s saved by the excellent rotor. The non-working receded date push button and the two-step crown are the technical flaws.
I hope you have enjoyed the review, my goal was to describe the watch qualities and flaws in detail and explain more about the rep. Thanks for reading. Please leave any comments or ideas for improvement. I’m finishing this one off with a wrist shot and special thanks to Andrew / Trusty for making buying reps so easy!
Thanks to ImageShack for hosting these huge images.
