Introduction

Quite some time ago, I wrote a review of the Biatec Leviathan. I was pretty happy with it, so it’s no surprise I stayed on Biatec’s mailing list. They’ve sent out a few updates since then, but nothing really grabbed my attention—at least not until last July. That’s when they announced pre-orders for a brand-new model called the Biatec Fusion. The idea behind the name is fairly straightforward: it’s an integrated bracelet watch—what they describe as “a fusion of the metal bracelet and the watch case into a single whole.” 

About half a year ago, I wrote about the Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer VI (DME VI), a watch that mainly impressed with its insane 6000 m water resistance. In that article, I was also very clear that the overall design didn’t really convince me. To quote myself: “I have to admit I’m a bit underwhelmed with the design choices. It feels like the designers tried to cherry-pick the ‘best of’ features—either based on their own preferences or customer feedback—from models. Apart from the dial face, which is entirely new, everything else feels familiar. The dial layout, indices, date window placement, text—all borrowed from earlier DME models. The bezel is identical to the one used on the Deep Marine Explorer II Damascus. The hands are slightly modified versions from the ‘GMT Auto’ and ‘Titanium GMT’ models (I haven’t reviewed those because they use Seiko movements, and I focused on the Swiss-powered ones). What makes this worse—at least for me—is that they went with ‘Mercedes’ style hands, which I really dislike. In fact, it’s usually a dealbreaker for me. I don’t care if it’s Rolex, some Chinese homage, or anything in between—I’m just not a fan of that hand style.”

If you’ve been following my reviews for a while, you’re probably thinking, “What’s wrong with this guy? This is already his fourth Oceaneva review!” Believe me, there’s nothing going on between me and Oceaneva. Just like all my other reviews, this one isn’t sponsored either — I only write about watches I actually bought myself, and that goes for every Oceaneva I’ve owned. To be fair, I genuinely thought my last Oceaneva watch review — the one about their newest dive watch with an insane 6000 m water resistance — was going to be my final Oceaneva write-up. I even thought it would be the last Oceaneva I’d ever buy.

Finally, I got it! The watch I already teased back in my first review of UMF Ruhla watches. The reissue of the Ruhla digital jumping hour watch in burgundy – a reissue of the watch I wore in my youth. Before you continue reading, I recommend checking out an interesting article about the original Ruhla digital watches and 24-34 movement, which you can find here.

I’ve already written quite a few articles about Venezianico watches, and I own (or have owned) even more of their pieces than I’ve written about, since I haven’t covered all my Venezianico watches. So it’s obvious this (micro)brand has a soft spot in my heart. It’s probably no surprise, then, that last Friday — when I drove my son to Venice airport — I used the return trip as an excuse to visit the Venezianico atelier in person, which is located in the small town of San Donà di Piave. The town is just under 20 km from the airport, very easy to reach by car, and there’s a large free parking lot five minutes walk from the atelier at the town’s entrance. By the way, since I arrived well before their 9:30 opening time, I also personally tested the nearby cafés — and the coffee and croissants are excellent.

It was very hard to get, but once I finally did, I dug deeper into its background, because I had a hunch it probably wasn’t fully UČZ’s own design. Soon enough I discovered that the Lunokhod E-8 was in fact almost identical to the Moon Walker, a watch produced by OVD Watches from Hong Kong. The only difference was on the caseback: the Lunokhod carried the silhouette of the Lunokhod lunar rover, while the “original” Moon Walker had Armstrong’s bootprint on the lunar surface.

A little over half a year ago, I already wrote about the UMF Ruhla brand and reviewed their NVA Kampfschwimmer 1932-M. I was actually quite positively surprised by that watch, and at the end of the review, I mentioned that I’d be ordering their reissue of the Digital – Jumping Hour. Well, I did order it, and I’m still waiting for it to arrive (I promise I’ll show it here once it does).

In one of my earlier reviews—specifically the review of the Raketa Baikonur—I mentioned that I bought the watch from Watchbandit.com. Ever since then, I’ve been getting regular updates from them, and every now and then I browse through their selection (by the way, their lineup of brands has grown impressively since then, though Raketa is no longer part of it). Even so, despite coming across quite a few watches that tempted me, browsing was as far as it went.

This review marks my 72nd watch article—and if I’ve counted correctly, I’ve now covered at least 106 watches. And yet, despite that decent number, you can't find a single review of a Seiko watch among them. Which is kind of odd, considering Seiko is one of the biggest watch brands in the world.

A few months ago, I already did a deep dive into Oceaneva’s Deep Marine Explorer (DME) collection of Swiss-powered dive watches. At that time, Oceaneva was already teasing a new diver on their website—once again using the Sellita SW200 movement—this time promising an insane 6000 meters of water resistance. Naturally, I signed up for their mailing list so I’d be notified as soon as pre-orders opened.

If you’re a regular visitor of my website, you already know that I started my watch collecting journey by exploring Soviet watches. However, I abandoned that collection years ago and shifted my focus primarily to the world of mechanical wrist alarm watches. In building and researching my alarm watch collection, I’ve relied heavily on the two reference books I mention here. But even though Beitl’s book in particular is a true encyclopedia of alarm watches, it omits one watch that remains unknown to most alarm collectors—at least outside of Russia. The only reason I even know of its existence is thanks to my earlier collecting passion for Soviet watches. As the title already suggests, I’m talking about the Raketa 3031 alarm watch.

Some time ago, a fellow “Watch Geek” published a review of a Super Compressor watch by Berny, and even earlier, a review of another watch by the same company, which was an homage to the JLC Polaris. In both reviews, he emphasized the very good, high-quality craftsmanship for an incredibly low price. Although the Polaris homage didn’t convince me (JLC, and especially the Polaris models, are too dear to me to “dishonor” them with an homage), the Super Compressor review did prompt me to at least visit the Berny website and see what they were doing.

In my reviews, I have spent quite a bit of time discussing Venezianico watches, so after my last review, I was convinced that I had more or less covered Venezianico and that I wouldn’t be writing about their watches again. And I stuck to this principle, even though in the meantime I bought two rather interesting watches (the Nereide Lapis Lazuli and especially the Nereide Aquaforte, which is quite a unique watch).

Some time ago, I wrote a review of my first Oceaneva watch with a Damascus case and dial. As evident from my review, I was very satisfied with the watch—my only issue was the low contrast between the dial color and the hands. This turned out to be such a problem that I eventually sold that particular watch and pre-ordered a model with a dark brown Damascus dial, which I also mentioned at the end of my review.

Jaeger Le-Coultre Memovox cal. 489

Have you ever asked yourself what the main reason is for choosing a specific watch among the countless options available when buying a new one? Did you buy it simply because you liked it, or perhaps because others consider it a "good" watch? Was the price the deciding factor? Did you carefully analyze comparable models and brands? Why did you choose that particular model?

I must admit, I originally had no intention of writing about the watch you see before you today. In fact, I didn’t even plan to buy it. So why did this article about the Stalingrad Defender Titanium Lunar Dial come to be?