I have all but sworn off quartz watches that needed battery replacements. Thus, I only buy solar powered or kinetic quartz watches.
Until now, that is.
Before I purchased this watch, I did some research. I was impressed by the Reactor philosophy and their Reactor DNA, and hence decided to purchase this non-solar, non-kinetic quartz watch. Since it has a 10 year battery life, I figure that's almost as good as a solar/kinetic powered one.
First off, the watch I received is slightly different in looks to the one shown here in the picture. The minute and hour hands are silver metallic, not black or grey as depicted in the pictures here. Secondly, the minute markings around the rim do not have the "tachymeter" etc words. They are just plain minute markings with 24-hour hours marked on them.
However, I am slightly disappointed with the watch I received. The luminous glow on the hands and numbers don't seem to last as long as my other watches, such as my
Pulsar Men's Solar Powered Tech Gear Dive Watch #PUA111. Reactor watches are famed to have glows lasting for 8 hours or more, but so far in my experience with this watch, they last at most 3-4 hours. After that, the tritium tubes take over and light up the 3, 6, 9 and 12 o'clock marks, plus the hands of course. I guess that somehow compensates for the glow fading off so quickly.
The date doesn't "flip" over exactly at 12 midnight too... it's slightly "late", and will only show the next day's date at 12.05 or 12.10am. The day of week takes longer - it will only show the correct day around 5am. I guess the reason is because it has another language for the day-of-week too (sorry I can't recognise the language - probably Spanish), so the day-of-week will take until 5am to flip twice to show in the language of your choice.
One thing that people might want to know - this watch is HEAVY. If you look at the reviews of the Pulsar watch I linked above, people are already commenting it is a heavy watch (180 grams). This Reactor Trident watch is 190 grams, so it's actually heavier! Yes, I actually weighed both watches on a scale.
The black nitride finish on this watch is beautiful, to say the least. Pictures can't really do it much justice.
I'd say overall I'm rather pleased with the watch, and will recommend it to friends if they ever ask for a rugged watch that ISN'T a G-Shock :)