Independent Watch Brand Addict

Specs

• Diameter 42mm
• Thickness 11.8mm
• Lug to Lug 49.7mm
• Lug Width 22mm
• Stainless Steel Case
• 120 Click Unidirectional Ceramic Bezel
• 200m Water Resistance
• Screw Down Crown
• Sellita SW200-1 Automatic Movement

Brand

Anonimo was came about in the late 1990’s in Florence Italy by previous senior management of Panerai Watches. Panerai moved out of Italy to Switzerland and Anonimo found themselves perfectly positioned to make use of the void that was left and used the watchmaking community in Florence in the construction of their watches. The brand established themselves as great underwater watch creators with patrons such as the Cooperative Nazionale Somozzatori that specialised in undertaking diving operations, which helped increase their reputation.

Then in 2013 Anonimo moved operations to Switzerland, and are still based there today. Despite the move to Switzerland, Anonimo have kept their design style, as seen with their distinctive case shape. Anonimo have a passionate following in the watch community, people who love their designs and philosophy, and their watches are available to buy directly or through authorised dealers, the full list of which can be found on their website. Despite this there have been questions leveled towards them in regards to their custormer services, value for money and quality, more on that later.

Positive Points

First off this watch has a very pleasing dial. the sunburst brown with an almost extreme gradient effect of light to dark, which makes the outer edge of the dial match in very well with the brown ceramic bezel. The dial is also highly legible, as is to be expected from a dive watch, and while the date display is not colour matched to the dial, the fact that the applied indices are white with a steel coloured border means that the date display doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Onto the bezel, it has a very nice clicking motion and as mentioned earlier the bezel matches in very well with the dial, and is very legible. As for the rest of the case; this case is not a common one but there have been alternatives to this. You can see the Paneristi influence on the case design and despite the size of the case being larger than I normally go for the case actually fits very well no doubt thanks in part to the thinness of the case and it’s curvature. I’ve previously owned a Seiko Land Tortoise which had a similar cushion case shape similar to this watch and I did not find it anywhere near as comfortable. The same can be said for the Circula Watch that I owned. The only reason for this that I can see is the lightness and thinness of this watch as well as the placement and how recessed the crown is. Add all this to the very nice display caseback this is a very attractive watch.

Negative Issues

I feel I have to start this section of my review with the price for this watch. I purchased this watch at a substantial 50% discount which seems fair for a watch like this. However, the retail price of this watch is CHF2,290.00. This price seems far too high for a dive watch with a standard Sellita movement and no complications other than a date display, a seconds hand and hand-winding, the last two of which come with just about every modern watch. When I think that my Raymond Weil that while being more expensive than this is not overly so considering that my RW piece comes equipped with a gmt, worldtimer and date complications I don’t see why this is priced so highly. And there are countless dive watches that can be compared to this watch such as my Christopher Ward C60 Sapphire in build quality, looks and specifications, and that come at half the retail cost. Luckily it is not too difficult to find this watch at reduced prices, just don’t buy from Anonimo direct.

This brings me to my next issue with this watch and it has not got anything to do with the watch itself but more to do with the brand Anonimo. As I mentioned in the Brand section of this review there have been questions levelled towards te brand in regards to things such as value for money and customer services. I have already mentioned how I agree that value for money should be questioned with this brand and I can unfortunately attest to the fact that the customer service of this brand is greatly lacking. I bought this watch from a local AD on it’s leather strap and that went really well, which made me decide to get the bracelet for this watch, and I thought it would be simpler just to get it directly from Anonimo. I checked and they seemed to have it in stock, so I paid for it and then heard nothing. A few days later I tried e-mailling them and then raised a query on their website. I heard nothing then two weeks after my initial order I messaged them via Instagram, and still heard nothing although I got an automated message from DHL a few days later that a delivery had been booked. After all that I haven’t heard anything directly from Anonimo. One of the things I like when dealing with smaller independents is the level of personal service you can get from these brands and I have found similarly sized brands such as Norqain for example to be very good at dealing with their customers.

Movement

This watch comes with the well known Sellita SW200-1 automatic movement. This movement has a beat rate of 28800vph, with a power reserve of 38hours, and 26 jewels. This is a commonly used third party Swiss movement and because of this it is a movement that will be easy to service if needed. The movement’s accuracy, at least with my watch has an average of -3.6s/d that’s definitely a very good movement with very good accuracy, and the movement has been well decorated, but all of this still does not justify the cost of this watch in my mind, but if you’re able to get it for a similar discount to what I got this for this movement should be about what you’d expect.

Conclusion

This is a very nice watch and I consider it one of my better dive watches, and one I definitely plan on keeping just now. However, I can’t recommend you buying this watch at the retail price. The specifications and movement, as I’ve already stated don’t justify this price, and there are plenty of decent dive watches that can match this one at half the retail price, such as my C60 Sapphire from Christopher Ward. The watch has some heritage being formed in the 1990’s by previous members of the Panerai management, a brand with excellent heritage, but this brand isn’t Panerai and the heritage it has again in my mind does not warrant it’s price.

So I’d say that if you are able to find this watch for around the CHF1,200.00 mark or under go ahead, otherwise I’d suggest that there are a large number of alternatives. And the bad experience I had with Anonimo’s customer care has put me off this brand a little, there are plenty of alternatives out there to Anonimo and I probably won’t be looking at getting another one from this brand. And all this is a shame as this is a truly nice watch and one I’m very happy to own.