Curious to see your impression on the 438
it was one of my most favourite pam on paper then once in hand it was errrrrr
as for your collection i’d say nautilus looking at the pattern, might be wrong
Just received the PAM 438 today. My impressions
(i) It is heavy with the ceramic bracelet! I removed it and put the asso strap.
(ii) For a bulky watch, it sorta sits well on my wrist. Unlike the PAM destro titanium 569 which I sold a while ago. This is a bit smaller than 569 of course.
(iii) Is very comfortable with the asso strap. I have to figure out how to remove links on the ceramic strap. It looks like pin and sleeve assembly, but normally watches with such have an arrow on the links which show direction to push the pin out.
(iv) Watch being extremely simple in design, there was pretty much nothing to QC. No bezel markers to check alignment. No rehaut. Nothing to check on dial for alignment as every feature is machined. I still feel that under artificial lighting conditions and some viewing angles, the color of hands and hour numerals are slightly different. But maybe it is to do with the fact that the lume of hour markers is a few mm below the hands
(v) The lume is impressive. Easy to read in low light conditions. Dont know how long it lasts yet.
Will I wear this? Absolutely. Will I keep this? Yes, as long as it keeps good time. Out of the box, it is indeed accurate, but beat error is high. See 6 position measurement in next post.
Now for criticisms. This being such a simple watch in design it is easy to get it to super-rep status. No complaints on VSF replication. But I have significant complaints against the Gen.
(a) That 12 hour GMT is a completely useless feature. Compounded by the fact that it is adjustable only in 1 hour increments. There are some weird parts of the world where the timezone is 1/2 hour away. This is pretty much useless if one is in those parts, or one wants to reference the time in those parts. A 24 hour GMT would definitely have been more useful, at least as AM PM indicator. The rep can become better than gen BTBIG (better than buying in gen) if it is 24 hour GMT, or adjustable in 1/2 hour increments.
(b) Lack of seconds markers - say you want to time 3.5 minutes for some purpose. Not really that easy. Perhaps they drill small holes around the circumference on the dial to show seconds markers? Will make it BTBIG in my opinion.
(c) Anti-glare coating on sapphire will make it BTBIG, although it is easy to read time even in high glare situations. Dont know if gen AR or not
Thats it for now forks, until I post the timegraph pics
It took me a minute to two to recognize acronym SMP300 and that was only because while browsing a week to two ago, one had caught my attention and I did ask my wife for her opinion. The fact that she had liked it then helped me in recollecting the model.
