Independent Watch Brand Addict

Specs

• Diameter 41.5mm
• Thickness 13mm
• Lug to Lug 47mm
• Lug Width 20mm
• 200m Water Resistance
• Screw Down Crown
• Sapphire Crystal
• Automatic Miyota 9015 Movement

Brand

Borealis was founded in 2013 by Carlos Carvalho with the stated goal of creating professional, reliable and affordable timepieces. The brand focuses on the making tool type watches, most often divers but also having a selection of field type watches and different gmts both traveller ones with the ability to move the hour hand to the local time, and office gmts with the fourth gmt hand moving independently to keep track of a separate timezone.

Last year (2023) the Brand came under a bit of scrutiny and quite a bit of criticism, mostly from watch youtubers a fair few of whom were well respected in the watch community, for some alledged bad sales practices. Alledgedly the brand founder had contacted a few watch reviewers about reviewing their watches, and getting compensation, either in the form of financial compensation or watches for positive reviews that Borealis would have input in. This left a sour taste for these youtubers some of whom went on to buy these watches and review them while letting their audiences know about Borealis’ alledged practices. Unsurprisingly the reviews by these youtubers were less than complimentary, which I can understand and you can see my review of my Wise watch to see that I can be a little biased against a brand if I’ve had a bad experience with them and there were reports of Borealis threatening legal action. All of this led to a bit of bad press and led to Borealis making a change with Maria Ivanova, who was employed by Prometheus at the time, taking over the company.

Speaking for myself I’ve only had good interactions with the brand. The watch came as ordered when it should have, I had an issue with the bracelet and Borealis just posted out a new bracelet immediately, not having to check the bracelet first as I was expecting, and the company have always been nothing but professional and helpfull with me and I’m nota name in the community. I also really like their packaging.

Positive Points

This watch has a truly beautiful dial. The texture along with the applied triangular indices and stepped down minute track has drawn comparisons to Omega’s Aqua Terra. The dial remains uncluttered, with just the brand name under the 12 and Sintra printed above the 6 and is very legible.

With it’s drilled lugs, 20mm strap width and simple lug construction, this watch is a true strap monster and can take most common straps and look pretty good with them. Add this to the reasonable case size and shape this watch should fit almost any wrist comfortably. And my favourite thing with this watch, the lume, is very generously applied and I love the lumed ’B’ on the bezel.

The 200m water resistance and screwed down crown give you a sense of security when swimming making this a great GADA (go anywhere do anything) watch for me.

Negative Issues

So I mentioned an issue with the bracelet before. When I first got the watch and started resizing it one screw got stuck partway out. I damaged a screwdriver trying to get that out and tried unscrewing it using a pair of pliers and the Stem would not budge, though the head came off. As I said I got in touch with Borealis and they immediately sent out a replacement bracelet. That bracelet was really easy to resize and I had no problems with it. I will say though that while the bracelet has female end links the articulation of the links was a bit stiff, and I swapped out the bracelet for a more comfortable strap quite quickly.

I am also not a fan of the crystal. I like that this watch has a scratch resistant sapphire crystal, but I’m not a fan of the boxed shape. I’ve always felt that a more sporty watch can take a flat sapphire crystal, much like my Vilhelm Prism, and I feel this boxed or domed type crystal both catches on things more easily and hinders the legibility of the watch. I also found that the crystal smudged very easily more so than I would expect, possibly because of the application if the AR coating, but it did smudge easily.

On the subject of smudges I have to also say that the case also smudged easily and the smudges showed up easily. At times I felt as though my hand just had to hover over the watch for huge smudges to suddenly appear. Also there are minor defects only really visible under magnification, I’ve tried to show some but have not been able to they really are that small.

Movement

This watch comes with the Miyota 9015 movement that comes with a 45hr power reserve, a beat rate of 28800vph, 24 jewels and a date complication. Citizen the makers of Miyota movements claim the watch has an accuracy of -10 to +30s/d.

I never got round to measuring the accuracy of my Borealis but I have always found the Miyota 9000 range to be on par with a Sellita SW200. Most of my watches come with third party movements and almost all of these just now come with Sellita or Miyota 9000 movements. I know a lot of watch enthusiasts prefer Swiss movements over Japanese, but I feel that this may be more because of a bias towards Swiss watchmaking over Japanese. This seems to be a form of watch snobbery to me as my Miyotas are just as accurate as my Sellitas and can be dressed up to look just as good. In fact my only issue with the movement is how it’s been covered. I would definitely prefer a display caseback, or failing that another design on the back. The Borealis mermaid seems to be used on all Borealis casebacks, and I just don’t find it to be all that interesting.

Conclusion

As you can maybe tell by how I have been writing about this watch, I no longer have this in my collection, but I feel as though I have to explain why. You can probably see by how I’ve written this review that I am a fan of this. Indeed, other than the bracelet, with all of my issues I was just nitpicking; the only thing I’d probably change is the caseback. Maybe make the water resistance 100m instead of 200, afterall this isn’t a dive watch, and fit a display caseback instead of what’s there just now. But it must be remembered that I paid less than €300 for this and it really does punch above it’s weight.

I got rid of this watch for a reason that has nothing to do with the watch itself. I got Covid in August 2020 and spent the next 3 and a half years going in and out of hospital; on and off different levels of sick leave until I received the correct diagnoses and medications. The worst point during this was one day when we were giving my kids a bath and preparing dinner and I just collapsed in pain in front of my kids. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and that my chest was being crushed and all I could do was scream in pain. My wife called for an ambulance and I was rushed into emergency. In total I spent a week in the hospital where they found out I had a chest infection, possibly aggravated by my illness, that was crushing my lungs. I was put on an antibiotic drip along with the morphine and eventually released with an antibiotic prescription. During that whole event I had on my Borealis Sintra, and while it handled itself very well not loosing or gaining much time at all despite all the tests I had to take, whenever I looked at the watch after that I couldn’t help thinking about that event. And with my other Covid related issues I just felt I had to find a new home for it.

Hopefully all of that isn’t something others will have to deal with and if you’re lucky enough to come across one of these I would definitely recommend buying it. Especially as Borealis seems to have stopped making them. This is a truly impressive watch at this price point, and I feel that it was a shame about what went down with Borealis’ alledged sales tactics as a watch this good can really speak for itself.