Reply With QuoteNice review, thanks for that!
As I write this, Eddie Platts from TimeFactors has just one of these watches left in stock. He says he sold no more than one hundred of them since it was introduced, which must be during about 3 years. The PRS-6 was, like the other Broadarrow models, built by Zeno Basel for TimeFactors. Zeno apparently sold a number of the PRS-6 through a German internet watch dealer, as ?Zeno Broadarrow Fliegeruhren? in a Zeno box. They still seem to be for sale there, for about 300 euros (Eddie had the PRS-6 listed for 125 pounds, or 187 euros). According to Eddie, Zeno also sold a number of them (same case, same movement) with a Zeno-style dial under their own brand. It seems likely that at most 300 (the number originally ordered by Eddie) were ever produced as Broadarrows, that is with the original PRS-6 dial; probably far less. A purist would say that only the ones sold by TimeFactors count as real Broadarrows, meaning one hundred produced and sold.
Either way, this is a rare watch of which fewer have been made than of many big-name 'limited series'. Reading the messages on Timezone UK, it seems that many more people have shown interest in the PRS-53; the whole Broadarrow range seems to be somewhat dormant, maybe as a result of the legal battle between TimeFactors and Omega over the trademark registration in the US. Still, they are generally well-built watches with specifications similar to those of most Precistas (the PRS-3 and PRS-11 divers have similar specs as the PRS-18Q and 18A, for instance - same movements, same general mil diver dial style, same water resistance rating). Stocks of existing models are no longer replenished, so they are all fairly exclusive.
Personally, I picked the PRS-6 over the PRS-53 as I like its dial better. Not just for the little seconds subdial and the 1940's WWW style, but for the typography: the small capitals of the Broadarrow brand name are more to my taste than the curly Precista. Most original WWW watches I found have very tight and no-nonsense typography - take the IWC Mark X or the Jeager WWW, for instance. I also feel that the numbers and the hands on the PRS-53 are a bit undersized. I also have a PRS-10 beater, which like the PRS-53 has slim silver hands with only a very narrow strip of luminous paint, and in bad lighting it becomes difficult to read. It?s no use to have a dial with a lot of lume on the hour indicators and very little on the hands - I feel the hands should remain luminous longer than the hour markers, if anything. The broader, white sword hands of the PRS-6 are eminently legible in all lighting conditions. I charged mine yesterday before going to bed (the LED flashlight sold by TimeFactors is excellent for that, by the way), and half an hour before sunrise I could still read it without difficulty in the dark bedroom. It?s not the searchlight luminosity of my PRS-4 with its huge lumed hour markers, but good enough.
The dial can not be confused with that of any other watch, due to the seconds subdial. The original WWW watches had slightly larger subdials that obscured the ?6' and, depending on the brand/design, the ?5' and ?7' as well. The PRS-6 has a relatively small FHF 1380-11 handwound movement, meaning the stem of the subdial had to be closer to the centre of the watch. Somehow the fact that the hour markers are not obscured or cut away by the subdial makes it look more refined. The IWC MkX has the subdial cut right through the 5 and 7 markers, for instance, as if it was an afterthought.
The dial is matte charcoal black, with extremely clean printing. I looked at it using an 8x magnifying glass and could find no fault. Apart from the word ?BROADARROW? and the arrow logo under the 12 there is nothing to distract. The subdial nicely balances the printing. The typography of the numbers with the slightly open 6 and 9 is sufficiently different to show that this is not a replica WWW but a modern interpretation. In all, a very clean and legible dial. There is no date, which adds to the symmetry; I?ll have to get used to that as most of my other watches have at least a date window. Of course these days we carry mobile phones, PDAs and such that also show time and date, so...
The PRS-6 has a no-nonsense stainless steel case which looks decidedly machined. The steel is brushed, parallel to the raised bezel. The edges of the case and lugs have been mildly rounded off so there are no real sharp edges biting into your wrist or wearing down your shirtsleeves (I?ll need to wear it a year or so to be sure about that last statement!). The thick acrylic crystal is nicely rounded and the inside of the bezel seems to be polished, as is the case back. As usual with Eddie?s watches, the case back is engraved with the bare minimum: the Broadarrow logo, the type designation PRS-6, and ?3 BAR?. That?s all. No fake military markings, technical blurb or serial numbers (I?d have loved this to be an official limited series though, given that so few have been produced).
The case does shine a bit more than a bead blasted case, but this fits the watch eminently. Honest steel. The crown is unsigned but brushed to go with the case.
At 36 mm (maybe even 35) measured over the bezel this is not a very large watch according to modern standards. The lugs are relatively long, though, and the modest bezel leaves a lot of room for the dial, so it looks larger than it is. Lug size is 18 mm and a NATO passes through very easily, due to the pronounced downturn and length of the lugs. The lugs being fixed, this watch must be worn on either a NATO style strap or some kind of open-ended leather strap. It looks nice on one of Eddie?s open-ended aviator straps, but a black NATO fits it best; watch and strap look like they were made for each other. I put it on a modified (slashed) black 2-ring NATO, and it wears very comfortable. I can imagine that this is not a watch for the members of the Big Wrist Club - I have an 18 cm wrist (a bit over 7 inch), which is fairly slim for a guy of 183 cm and 96 kilos. Of course, the original WWW watches were produced around the end of WW2, when people used to have far less excess fat and flesh than these days...
Anyone needing a watch for precision timing, or obsessed with accuracy, will be disappointed with the PRS-6. The subdial seconds hand is rather small to be used for, say, measuring a pulse with sufficient accuracy (I?m rather myopic, and can just keep the watch close to my eyes, so for me it would be possible). The main hands sometimes obscure the subdial, as is the case with all subdials... And most importantly, the movement does not hack, so it can not be synchronized with precision. I knew that when I bought it. For many years as a young man I wore an Edox Delfin handwound, which does not hack either, and it never caused me to miss an appointment. In daily life, precision to the second is usually not needed, and if it is, one uses a wholly different watch: a quartz with a large seconds hand, possibly a chrono, maybe even a digital like a G-Shock.
No mechanical, handwound or auto, is a high-precision timepiece no matter what manufacturers? blurb tries to make us believe: on the equator, one minute off when using a classic sextant to determine longitude by measuring the elevation of the sun at midday on the chrono means a distance error of 15 sea miles (27 kms). A so-called COSC chronometer may be up to 5 seconds fast or 4 seconds slow; after two weeks of sailing it could be that one minute/15 miles off, enough to run a ship onto a reef in bad visibility; and for longer voyages the error would become laughable: easily 10 minutes after six months, meaning 150 miles/270 kms, in spite of those impressive wax-sealed COSC certificates. Any cheap quartz watch is several times more accurate than even the best mechanical movement, the better quartz movements even orders of magnitude - my PRS-4 has lost just over one second in six weeks, so after six months it would cause a position error of less than 4 seconds or about one mile, similar to what a COSC certified auto might cause after one day...
COSC certification limits must have been set to ensure that any decent movement that has been regulated and is not broken can pass the test. Which is why every Rolex and Breitling can pass and subsequently be sold at an inflated price with some impressive-looking documentation (never mind that they may need to be regulated again after transport and after sitting in a box in a jewelers' store for years while the oil got thicker...). Building an affordable wrist-sized mechanical clock that keeps time to within a good handful of seconds per day is in itself an impressive feat of mechanical engineering, but calling it a 'chronometer' and supplying impressive-looking documentation with seals and stamps is just a marketing trick that provides jobs to Swiss gnomes.
Back to the PRS-6. The 17-jewel handwound FHF movement is 8.75''' or 19.4 mm in diameter, 3.2 mm high, so it must have a lot of room in the case. It ticks at 21,600 beats/hour and has a power reserve of 46 hours. I'll have to get back into the habit of winding my watch every morning, but if I forget it will happily run for another working day. The crown feels solid enough and winding is smooth with a fairly small number of turns needed after a day. Setting the hands is OK; getting the minute hand exactly lined up with a minute indicator is a bit hit or miss as you are actively pushing the hands against the force of the movement due to the lack of a hacking function; as soon as you let go the minute hand jumps forward a bit. However, it feels more solid than my Sinn with its V 7750 ever did. My old Edox is slightly smoother, but then it would have been three times as expensive now, if it had still been on the market.
The Swiss-made FHF is new old stock, dating from around 1975, around the same time I bought my Edox. The Swiss watch industry still had a lot of white-coated old gnomes building movements in the mountains these days, and it seems they built them well.
My PRS-6 seems to be a tad fast, as to how much will be difficult to determine unless it is counted in multiple minutes per day, which does not seem to be the case.
In all, the movement and dial seem to fit our lifestyle here in rural France, where we do not have to rush to an office in the morning and we tend to adapt to the rhythm of sunrise/sunset, feeding cycles for the animals and, of course (this being France), meals. For keeping a dentist appointment or ensuring one goes shopping before the stores close, it is plenty accurate enough.
In all, the PRS-6 is a very nice watch. It was the first thing my wife said when I unpacked it. 'It's beautiful, I really like that style.' I would not describe it as 'retro' like Eddie does, but as a classic. No matter what epoch you're in, this watch will always look good and wear well. Recommended.
Update 7 February 2007: completely sold out now, Eddie tells me. Keep an eye on the Sales Corner...
Update 10 March 2007: the PRS-6 has hardly been off my wrist for the past month. It easily got 90 percent of total wrist time, it is that comfortable to wear. It has been a bit fast indeed, somewhere between 30 and 50 seconds per day fast (difficult to say without hacking seconds, and when you push the crown back in, the minute hand tends to move just a tiny bit forward, so it may seem faster than it really is). It did not really bother me, as being fast never makes you miss an appointment... But over the last few days it seems to have been getting more accurate - I went from synchronizing it daily to once every two days. It must be settling down. Case holds up really well, the crystal is showing the first very light scratching as an acrylic is supposed to do. Getting slight WABI, which is fitting.
I swap straps fairly often, as it looks good on any type of NATO, black, grey, green or Bond...
Update 24 March concerning precision: it seems like the watch really had to run in. As it does not hack, a difference of 10 seconds or so would not show up in a day, it can't really be set more accurate than that, but I have not synchronized it for 3 days or so and it's still within those 10 secs of dead accurate compared to my radio clock. Even better than I thought it would be.
Nice review, thanks for that!
Dave E
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day
Great review of a great watch. :thumbright:
...and good to see you got that whole COSC precision thing off your chest! :)
Thanks for the excellent review. now I have something to look forward to :)
Yep. Today sailors have GPS, so they'll never be more than 10 metres off course. And it gives them the most accurate time possible, too. So they don't need a chronometer anyway - certified or not.Originally Posted by quoll
Years ago when I got my Sinn I got almost anal retentive about its precision. I found the trick to put it away for the night crown up or down, or flat, depending on whether it was a few seconds fast or not during the day. Kept it within 3 seconds of GPS time for weeks without ever resetting it. After a while it gets boring.
Nowadays I often just sit back on a bale of hay after feeding the donkeys to watch the sun setting while these animals stand chewing next to my ears. Crunch crunch. Zen... and quite fitting for the PRS-6.
Wonderful review! Thanks for taking so much time!
I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
Excellent, excellent! I really enjoy your posts Frank, very clear and bang-on.
I was considering the PRS6 and/or the PRS53 but can't really decide. Well, now there's not much choice left it seems.
How do you feel the hands and the dial fit together og the PRS6? For some reason the hands seem a bit to hard-edged (if that makes sense) when compared to the dial numbers/markings.
Congrats on what seems to be a great watch :)
Cheers,
They are more pointed, or rather sword-like, than the hands on an old IWC or Jeager, true. I generally prefer pointed hands as they seem more precise (I know, precision is not the main reason for this watch...), but they should also be wide enough to allow a fair amount of lume. So you end up with a more pronounced sword shape. It's a slightly unusual combination, but together with the smaller-than-usual subdial it provides the PRS-6 with a very recognizable face. I think the hands look a lot like those on a Seiko 5, or like a slimmer version of the hands on a PRS-3/4 diver.
Just thought I would add that the last (unless Eddie finds another couple in his drawer) PRS-6 is getting lots of wear, and is the envy of my mates. A beautiful watch, thanks for your review, which tipped me off to act swiftly :)
Great review, was a pleasure to read (esp. the paragraph about accuracy of automatic watches...).
I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
With this kind of balanced, level-headed marketing, how can I possibly resist. :roll:
...but what do I know; I don't even like watches!
Update 7 March 2007.
Update on precision, 15 May 2007: recently someone mentioned in Sales Corner that he was selling his PRS-6 due to its temperamental behaviour. Mine has been temperamental as well, lately. It may have been a shock or magnetism or whatever, but several times it suddenly gained five minutes or more in one hour while I was physically active outdoors. While being relatively sedentary (working at my pc, driving, writing etc.) or when it is stored the watch keeps time very decently, but a few times it speeded up enormously. Doing hard work in the garden or running and playing with a large animal apparently was something it did not appreciate.
I discussed it with Eddie, who told me that if this behaviour continues, I can send it to Zeno (who built it), where they will fix it under guarantee. Have not sent it in yet, as the local mail people here were on strike and I want to be sure that all the backlogged packages have been cleared out, and today I have been wearing it all day without obvious deviations from normal timekeeping. I'll keep an eye on this and update when neccessary.
Meanwhile, it might be wise to realize that this is a NOS movement from the 1960s, and not as shock-resistant as a modern ETA. So chopping up logs of firewood with a heavy axe while wearing this one may not be the wisest thing to do... Which is of course a good reason to get one of Eddie's other watches, maybe a quartz, to use as a beater. :D
Update, november 2007: the watch is off to Zeno so they can get its temperamental behaviour under control while it is still under warranty. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Will update when it is back.
MY PRS-6 arrived back this morning (3 December) from Zeno. According to the accompanying letter they replaced the mainspring ('new spiral'). Quite a good turnaround, a bit over two weeks (I dropped it off at the post office on 15 November). It seems to be working OK, it's on my wrist on a green NATO as I write this. I guess I will just have to remind myself not to wear it while chopping firewood or something similar. The movement was not originally meant to be used in a beater watch, after all.
I'll probably make it my dress watch, of sorts. The only argument against that is that, apart from my PRS-4, this is my only other watch with really good enough lume to read the time in a dark room after a full night. Which is why I wore it a lot, I guess - and how it ended up on my wrist while doing manly things it may not have been meant for. Oh well.:wink:
Last update: have been wearing it for half a day and it seems to have lost about 4 seconds, thus likely within 10 seconds or so per day. Which is quite good. Let's hope it stays that way. :)
Ultimate update, January 2008: it stays that way. :D
So frustrating. I love the Broadarrow line of watches and wish they were still available. Excellent review. :)
Great review! Thank you!
Excellent review/thread; contains so much info - many thanks for posting.
/vince ..
Having just picked up one of these from the Sales Corner I was very interested to read your review. Excellent. Told me everything I needed to know. 8)
Sorry to drag this one up from the depths. I was lucky enough to get the recent one of SC and would like to know more about it.
Has anyone got any more shots, info or experience on this one please?
Any owners out there that can tell me more about this one or share some photo's of different straps?
Here is a quick pic of the new arrival.
Here are some better pics that I took today.
I've been wearing it for quite a bit this week and changed it over from the aviator strap to the Green NATO.
Nice review, thak you :)
thanks for the review and what a nice watch.
It's 2015 now, and the PRS-6 has been sitting in a watch box for a long time as I have been mostly wearing my PRS-4 quartz diver. The 6 has recently been 'borrowed' by my wife to wear at her new job in a bank. It looks very good on her smaller wrist, on a Timefactors brown leather Aviator strap. But I sometimes have to remind her to wind it in the morning - it turns out that the power reserve is not really 46 hours but more like 30 to 36, meaning that if she forgets to wind it it stops during the afternoon. Or maybe the new mainspring they fitted at Zeno has less reserve.
Seeing this watch on someone else's wrist makes me realize again that it is one of the best-looking models Eddy ever made.
Now I just have to ensure that she does not wear it while gardening, she has a PRS-10 for that...
Nice to hear about this again.
Thank you very much for the PRS-6 review, it took me on the patch of wanting one, which arrived today. A great watch
I have a PRS-6, love it, am always changing the strap on it, give it a totally different look. I posted a tag a few weeks ago as i need to list it on my insurance. You guys have any idea?
I've just taken delivery of a Zeno PRS-6 and I have to say I'm very impressed. I always avoided them as I didn't think I'd get on with the Zeno / plane logo but it actually works perfectly on the dial. The watch is beautifully built and the proportions are perfect in my opinion.
The domes plexi is lovely, giving a warmth and just the right amount of distortion to the dial.
A really lovely little watch.
Posting Permissions
