A Thai Microbrand That Didn’t Work For Me: Wise Adamascus AD9M
I was put on to Wise watches by a fellow cruncher as an interesting microbrand that sold decent watches at an affordable price, and found the idea of the meteorite dial an intriguing one as by their very nature meteorite dials are unique as each dial will be a one of a kind, however this watch just didn’t work for me and this review will attempt to explain why.
Specifications
Diameter 41mm
Thickness 11.5mm
Lug to Lug 48mm
Lug Width 20mm
Water Resistance 100m
Meteorite Dial
Stainless Steel Case
Push Pull Crown
Miyota 9015 Movement
Brand
Wise Timepiece is a Thai microbrand that was established in 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand and have been growing their reputation since then with many complimenting things such as their attention to detail, quality control, and use of lume.
The bulk of the Wise collection consists of dive watches, with a few others such as this AD9M, and have both automatic and quartz movements mostly from Japanese suppliers such as Miyota and Seiko. The brand specialises in affordable watches and are often complimented on their value for money.
Review
Okay so after having complimented the brand (and I would like to emphasize that most people who deal with Wise are very happy with their experience) I did not like this watch or the purchasing experience.
Starting with the watch itself, the case is well made, with nice finishing on all surfaces, making use of both brushed and polished steel. The crown is a decent size, for the size of watch and is nicely signed with the Wise W. My issue with this watch isn’t because of the case. The first issue I have is the dial. The meteorite dial on this watch was really too light reducing the legibility of the watch as a whole. The hands are a silver colour with a white lumed center that simply disappears in the dial. The text on the dial disappears a little, just enough to still be able to make out, but it’s too small and looks like it is trying to hide, and I just feel that it would be better to either make the text bigger and bolder or not have it at all.
I do feel that it’s possible to have a more dressy type watch with plenty of text, such as on my Certina, I just feel that makers of this Adamascus couldn’t quite decide what it should have and ended up going for a middle ground that pleases no one.
Movement
This watch comes equipped with a Miyota 9015 that is a high beat 28800vph movement with hacking, hand winding and a date complication. The movement comes with a power reserve of 40hrs and is generally well thought of. However, the rotor on my one was very loud, anytime I moved my arm I heard it whirring and it was a little distracting. I have had other Miyota 9000 movements and this has not been an issue. All I can assume is that something was not done properly when the movement was assembled. This is a shame because the QC otherwise is very good.
Customer Service
This is not a topic that I generally give a lot of attention to. I’ve generally found that most brands are very happy to get new business and will happily keep in touch with new clients, and while some brands may be a little slow to answer (for many smaller independents watchmaking is a second profession) they do answer. This was not my experience with Wise. I pre-ordered this, got confirmation that my payment had been received and then nothing.
When it got close to the time when my watch was supposed to get delivered I started to see discussions on my favourite watch forum that people were asking if Wise was still in business as they weren’t responding to queries. I quickly sent an e-mail to Wise and got no reply; I filled out the customer query form on their site and still got no reply. This worried me and kept going for a while and then I saw an advert on Instagram from Wise. I DM’d the account asking if they were still in business explaining the situation. Longer than I would be happy with they eventually replied that they were in business and I would still be getting my watch. Contact continued to be very sporadic and I remained unsure that I would be getting my watch untill I picked up it up.
Conclusion
Now it might be the case that the customer service experience I had with Wise soured me towards the watch, that can happen. It is also possible that I had unreasonably high expectations of the brand because of the good press I’d seen up to then. However, I consider these things all part of buying a watch. If you get terrible service from a brand I won’t buy from them again no matter how good the watch is, and unfortunately this watch just wasn’t good enough for me to forgive the poor service unlike something like my experience with Timefactors. Again not a great customer service experience (not as bad as Wise though) but my PRS58 is good enough that I may look past the bad CS and I may order another Smiths. However, the same could not be said for my Wise. The issues I had with the dial, rotor noise and bad CS meant that this moved on relatively quickly.
So this was not a keeper and I can’t recommend it, however I will say that this is not a common opinion among buyers of Wise Timepieces.