From former Panerai Management: Anonimo Nautilo Vintage
I’ve always been quite taken with the design of Panerai watches, but due to the cost of them as well as the overly large size of the watches, I haven’t been able to get one of them yet. So when I discovered this brand set up by former senior management of Panerai I had to check them out. I did not take to the brand or watch and will attempt to explain why in this post.
Specifications
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 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.
Seiko Prospex Land Tortoise and Circula Aquasport GMT 2 watches with a similar case design
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.
After writing this review I another issue came up with the watch the crown and stem of the watch came out when I was simply unscrewing it, when I checked the only response I got was that I had probably pulled too hard on the crown when unscrewing and pulled the whole thing out which questions the overall build quality of the watch as I have had watches including ones with screw down crowns and not had this issue before.
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 looking watch and one I had thought I’d keep. However, I can't recommend you buying this watch at the retail price or to be honest the price I paid. 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. Also the issue I had with the crown makes me question the build quality of this watch, so I will not consider this a keeper.
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 looking watch and if the customer service was decent I might have considered trying them again.