Timex Expedition Fullsize Camper Black Face Watch – T425714E

Well, it finally arrived – with an initial shipment date between the end of August and end of October (I wasn’t in a hurry to receive it, as I already had a wrist watch to wear during this time) and an update for shorter shipment between August 6th and 8th, it arrived even earlier (5/8). It was purchased from Amazon UK for about 21 GBP including shipping costs.

The watch arrived in a really nice packaging (carton box from Amazon) with additional paper balls inside, in order to ensure a safe shipment.  The watch was in its original packaging, as you would buy it from a watch store and included the manual and the receipt from Amazon.

It is really light (you cannot notice that you are actually wearing it), and looks nice and sturdy. It says that it is water resistant up to 50 meters so it must be ok for swimming in sea and pools. Indiglo functionality looks also really cool, by illuminating the whole watch plate with a single button press!

It will replace my Darch wrist watch which was apparently really nice but too small for my wrist. It will also replace my AK wirst watch, which collapsed a couple of months after purchase – I’ll try to avoid cheap, low quality items (especially ones which i plan to use daily and for a long time) in the future. It surely didn’t worth it…

Living on the cheap

Times are hard, especially regarding financial aspects. However, small gifts are always more than welcome especially when we are talking about practical items and useful gadgets. In this context I just purchased the following:

1. Philips Sounddot 2GB mp3 player: Bought it for just 19,00 euros from a local store in Athens. I just needed a portable MP3 player to replace my broken Sweex MP-303 (whose battery was completely worn and exhausted). I just needed a long-lasting battery for this one and I hope that Philips will prove to be continuing its nice tradition in this area (I still remember its mobile phones, holding a charge for about a week with medium usage!). It is small and supports fast charging and shuffle mode (which my ill-fated Sweex did not…).
2. Timex Expedition Fullsize Camper Black Face Watch – T425714E: Bought it for a little bit less than 22 GBP  including postage (15 GBP the watch alone; it is usually for sale at about 30 GBP minimum, not including postage), from Amazon.co.uk. I needed a durable watch to replace my unfortunate cheap Chinese purchase from Ebay. This time I went for a well-known brand and I avoided metal bracelets. I wanted something cheap but good, withstanding swimming (but not diving) and showing the date (because I tend to lose track of time lately…). I expect it to arrive in the next week.

My brand-new AK wrist watch

It just arrived from China, bought through ebay. I went for another one but the seller was not delivering to Greece for some reason… so I went for this one. What draw my attention? The AK (Alias Kim) brand reminds me of the company that I am currently working for, so it was also a teaser for my colleagues!

The watch (model AK-W063A) costed about 20 euros (GBP 12 + GBP 2,99 shipping costs) and it arrived in about three weeks from China. It looks solid and fits nicely to my wrist. All three dials are functioning (which is not common for such cheap watches and can be set up with the corresponding buttons). The watch is not water-proof but water-resistant (according to the seller; this is not mentioned in the back of the watch). It is automatic/mechanical and looks pretty nice – surely not as cheap as it is.

I am not sure for how long it will last, but it seems to be a good catch for the money!

::Edit 6/8/2013:: The watch started collapsing a few weeks after purchasing: The upper button just fell off with no reason and I managed to put it in place. However, it fell-off again and this time it was lost for good. Even though I followed the advice of the seller for adjusting time at specific times only (due to the possibility of damaging the small indicators) a couple of them just stopped responding. I just use it occasionally these days. It proved to be a bad purchase – low quality and not cheap, as for the same amount of money I managed to purchase a Timex Expedition wrist watch on sale…