As someone who has both Swedish and British citizenship I really want to find a nice Swedish watch that I want to keep. I already have five British watches that I really like and consider keepers and would like to have at least one Swedish watch in my collection to complement these. I now have my Epoch Stockholm Deep Diver, but prior to that I had been unsuccessfull, and then I saw a good review of this watch on YouTube channel Just One More Watch, and thought I’d give it a try.

Specifications

• Diameter 39mm

• Thickness 10.5mm

• Lug to lug 47mm

• Lug width 20mm

• Case material Stainless Steel

• Water resistance 100m

• Screw down stamped crown

• Sapphire Crystal

• Display Caseback

• Automatic Sellita movement

Brand

Tusenö is a Swedish microbrand based in Sweden’s second largest city Gothenburg. The brand was set up by friends Johan and Alexander in 2015 and grew to being able to open a showroom in 2020. They say they get a lot of influence from being on the west coast of Sweden and that is visible in the watches they create with a large part of their catalogue devoted to dive watches and their logo, that is clearly stamped on their crowns, is a take on the lighthouse symbols on nautic charts.

The brand is getting a bit of recognition in the enthusiast community, having got recommendations from well known and liked youtubers such as Jody from Just One More Watch, Peter Kotsa and WatchChris, and are generally well thought of in the community.

They’ve not hidden the fact that their watches have been made in Asia, Sweden and Switzerland (this honesty no doubt has helped with Tusenö’s reputation), though they now create all their watches in Switzerland with the goal of moving at least part of their assemblage to Sweden.

The brand is also proud of being environmentally conscious, and you can see this in how they package their watches.

Positive Points

So I’ll start with the positives. The case is a very wearable size and feels slim on wrist; the screw down crown allows for a level of confidence in the stated water resistance that might not be there with a regular push pull crown; the case is a very attractive one, with a good mix of polished and brushed finishing, this watch has been compared to the luxurious and much more expensive Omega Aqua Terra and I can definitely see the similarities.

The dial has a small amount of text that will be pleasing to many, and the grooves in the dial create a pleasing 3d effect, however, I don’t think it works with this dial colour. Silver and clean white coloured dials, in my opinion, tend to look best on a flat clean surface, such as with the two Farer watches I’ve owned.

Negative Issues

If gradient on a dial is not done right it can make a silver dial look dirty and unfortunately I think that’s what’s happened here. When I bought this there were not a lot of different dial colours, if the colours they have now were available then I probably would have picked a different one, unfortunately the green and orange dials weren’t available when I bought this.

As well as the dial I am not a fan of the caseback. Don’t get me wrong I like a display caseback, but this is not a good one. The movement has not been touched even the rotor is undecorated, so I would have preferred a nicely decorated closed caseback over an uninteresting display caseback that looks like something you’d see on a cheap Seiko 5. Seiko are large enough to appeal to a larger market and the cheaper Seiko 5’s with completely undecorated movements are a good selling point to newcomers to the watch world; microbrands generally are marketed to watch enthusiasts, many of whom already have at least some idea about what a basic automatic Sellita movement looks like, and it seems that Tusenö do not differ from other micros in this sense. I can’t help but feel as though a trick was missed here and I can’t help but think that instead of a boring looking movement a nice bit of caseback art could have been used, such as on this E.C.A.

Movement

After complaining about how the movement looks it’s time to talk a little more about it. The movement is a Sellita SW200-1, one of the more common 3d hand Swiss movements that’s used today, and it is a perfectly serviceable movement. The date complication at 6 has a quick adjust system and the accuracy is right for the price of this watch. This may look a bit like an Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra, but the prices are at opposite endd of the price spectrum. Because of this you cannot compare the movements and the Sellita in this seems completely right for the price.

Conclusion

Now I’m quite happy to admit that if I had bought a different dial colour I might have a different conclusion, but I did buy the silver one and I just don’t think it worked. I am not opposed to giving this watch another shot in a different colourway but I can’t recommend it on the experience I’ve had so far, and I didn’t keep this one, do it’s not a keeper unfortunately and my search for a Swedish keeper continues