- 3/8/15
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Not much talk here about the Noob 116520, everyone seems to be mostly interested in the ceramic versions now so I figured maybe someone would be interested in this short review.
Just got my Noob 116520. I am actually surprised with how good the black dial is. It properly mimicks the latest 116520 series shiny silver subdials, it has good print of the subdial numbers. It has very nice dark red and 3-dimensional DAYTONA print too. To be honest the only real issue with this dial is that the ROLEX and all 5 lines have a bit too narrow spacing (116500 style instead of proper 116520 wider text). But it does not shout FAKE that much in real life - with like 15 black dial variations in the 116520 range over the years, this is kind of acceptable really.
Bezel is still bad. Too tall, wrong angle, skinny engravings. They also still use their bad milky crystal gasket that makes the rehaut look twice as tall.
SEL fit and clasp are both improved when I compare this to my v3 116500.
My original plan for this watch was to use it as a base that I would put my gen white APH dial and gen bezel into, but the dial looks so nice that I think I will just source another gen bezel for this one, use proper crystal gasket and leave it at that, adding a nice black 116520 to the collection. Which means that I will now need another noob 116520 to make a white franken. Oh well, the hobby!
