Customer Reviews

Orient Men's YFH04001B Star Retro-Future Black Automatic Watch

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have handled many automatics the past few years. I finally settled on an Orient Mako. Orient fans were fanatic about it. They claimed it kept good time and was the most stylish watch for the price. Maybe so. I did find it annoying that I had no Idea when the power would run out as I dont wear my watches all the time. Also, It seemed I was constantly setting the time.

Something I have had NO PROBLEMS with on my new Orient. The YFH04001B airplane concept is precise. I haven't had to set the time since I got it (two months ago), and I never run out of power thanks to the 40/hr power reserve indicator. Since I fly occasionally on the weekends this watch was a perfect fit (and all the talk among my flying friends). I would have to say If I had to buy another Automatic I would def. stick with an Orient and Possibly a star because of the precision time keeping, the awesome looks, the power reserve indicator, and of course the not so ridiculously high price of say a swiss model.

Orient Watches are the best kept secret among watch collectors. Orient uses in-house mechanical movements with excellent accuracy and imaginative designs; they are all made in Japan, unlike other Japanese brands whose watches are assembled in China and the far east.

This Orient Star Retrofuture model is beautifully put together with a semi-skeleton movement and a features a 3D dial that evokes an aircraft instrument panel. The quality is excellent and compares very favorably to Omega and other Swiss brands. The price is no way near Omega prices. The design is one-of-a-kind. How can you go wrong?

What a cool watch this is. First, its extremely high quality. It feels and looks better than some much more expensive watches I own. Second, the movement on this is abou 2 seconds off after a week now. 2 seconds! That is unreal for an automatic. It is also really smooth running and long power reserving. This is not Orient's run of the mill movement at all here. Finally, everything on this watch is unique and very well done. It is just screaming of quality and style. Superb watch. Get one for your self and for your best friend.

Update: After about 10 weeks this watch stopped dead with no provocation. It just stopped running in the night while sitting on my night stand. It has never been dropped or bumped or jarred, so clearly there's an issue with the engineering or workmanship of this piece. I expected a great quality timepiece at this price so am very disappointed with the brand and this model in particular. The process of getting it repaired is not the best experience either. Amazon referred me to a third party and it took some investigation on my part to get all the info I needed in order to set up the repair and get it to the proper repair shop in Kentucky. I sent it there a few weeks ago and am still waiting for my repaired watch to come back. I'm leery about how this will work out. Who's to say the watch won't stop running again? Next time I'll buy from a local jeweler where I know who's accountable. I was surprised they wouldn't replace the defective watch.

Original review:
Got this watch recently, after much deliberation. I think the face design is fantastic, so based the purchase mostly on aesthetics and strong reviews for the Orient watch brand. My comments:
-It's actually not at all accurate. It runs about a half minute fast per day, so needs to be reset every 4 or 5 days. This falls short of my expectations in a watch that costs well over $500, but maybe that's typical of automatics?
-The watch is beautiful and very unique. Looks and feels to be good quality.
-The face is a little larger than you might expect from the pictures. 43mm in diameter. It's also quite THICK. I'll try to post a pic of it on my wrist for scale.
-The transparent back is cool and unique.
-Weight is substantial and feels great.
-The self-winding mechanism with power meter is an interesting/unique feature, but I assume this mechanism is the reason it's not very accurate.
-The time-telling details on the face glow in the dark. I like that.
-The band somehow doesn't seem like a perfect design fit for the face. I'm thinking about trying to find a way to get a different Orient watch band to replace it with.
-It arrived with all the band links on the watch, which made it very big on me. I had to have 4 links taken out, which my local Chalmers jeweler did for free. Thanks to them! It would be easy to do this yourself if you have the right tools, but you'll need to carefully hammer-tap the pins out. They look like screws on one side if you look closely, and I actually tried to unscrew them and couldn't get them to move. The jeweler said they're not actually screws, so you just have to hammer or tap them out.