A day late, my mailman finally showed up with my PAM 229. Apparently I have one of the first (and only) five made so far. More will be released in 2 weeks but I wanted you all to see it in the wild.
Overall impressions are good. The dial is glossy metallic, like DSNs 082, BUT it's more purple than blue. I'm not sure if that's good or bad since I've never seen a gen in my hand. I have seen photos and it's a tough call. I'll leave that open to debate amongst the forums. You need something new to debate anyways. Keep in mind, there are only 100 gens of these so it's doubtful that many people have seen this in their hand either. I'm not so sure someone would call this out as a rep based on dial shade alone.
QC out of the box was a little lacking. My CG screws were not tight and one of the strap screws was forced into the thread. I had to WD40 it and use some pliers to unscrew it. I've had to replace that one with a springbar I luckily had in my spares. The lume is ok, not super lume standards, but fades pretty quickly. I couldn't get a lume shot at the moment due to too much light coming into where I have my camera setup. I'll get one later tonight when it's dark.
Build quality wise, it looks and feels good. Solid watch, nice weight. Date is nice and easy to read. Once I tightened the CG, my lever stays locked, nice and tight. It flops about when open but they all do. I took most of these in my light tent setup but I took a wristshot under different lighting so you could see the color change on the dial. In some lights it's blue, and in others it's more purple. The color is right in the fringe area of both blue and purple. Ok, I'll shut up now and bring on the pics.
It comes on a black rubber deployment strap:
That wasn't working for me so I put it in a MF Blue Buffalo:
Wrist shot taken in cloudy light:
Here are some gen pics I found on the internet:
Overall impressions are good. The dial is glossy metallic, like DSNs 082, BUT it's more purple than blue. I'm not sure if that's good or bad since I've never seen a gen in my hand. I have seen photos and it's a tough call. I'll leave that open to debate amongst the forums. You need something new to debate anyways. Keep in mind, there are only 100 gens of these so it's doubtful that many people have seen this in their hand either. I'm not so sure someone would call this out as a rep based on dial shade alone.
QC out of the box was a little lacking. My CG screws were not tight and one of the strap screws was forced into the thread. I had to WD40 it and use some pliers to unscrew it. I've had to replace that one with a springbar I luckily had in my spares. The lume is ok, not super lume standards, but fades pretty quickly. I couldn't get a lume shot at the moment due to too much light coming into where I have my camera setup. I'll get one later tonight when it's dark.
Build quality wise, it looks and feels good. Solid watch, nice weight. Date is nice and easy to read. Once I tightened the CG, my lever stays locked, nice and tight. It flops about when open but they all do. I took most of these in my light tent setup but I took a wristshot under different lighting so you could see the color change on the dial. In some lights it's blue, and in others it's more purple. The color is right in the fringe area of both blue and purple. Ok, I'll shut up now and bring on the pics.
It comes on a black rubber deployment strap:
That wasn't working for me so I put it in a MF Blue Buffalo:
Wrist shot taken in cloudy light:
Here are some gen pics I found on the internet:
It's my only one of 18 so I balanced it out. I asked on another forum 3 months ago why they didn't make this watch. I felt like I needed to buy it now. I really want to wear it back side up. That engraving on the back is amazing.
