Quartz is fine, but I’m skeptical about Chinese mechanical movement’s durability (lots of online complaints about soft metals in the movement) and my ability to find a watchmaker that can source a new movement for a swap.

They have really been stepping up their game on the design tho

Chinese watch is like hit and miss as we don’t know which brand makes good watches. One that I purchased from, it looks similar to the photo, but the details don’t look neat. Furthermore, regulation still needs a lot more work, even for one that use Miyota 9 series.

Chinese manufacturing gets a bad rep due to us pumping massive amounts of cheap product, but that’s bc there is a demand for it, that doesn’t mean China isn’t capable of producing great quality. a quick search would tell you that China’s manufacturing are getting better, some products exceeds western standards by lot, watches however are a big hit-and-miss. A big problem I’ve had with Chinese watches is their design, its rarely original and not that interesting, even big established brands like seagull have generic designs. Culturally watches are not a huge thing in China, however with the growing middle and upper class, people have a much higher chance of affording a watch around 3-8k USD(longines master series is deemed THE watch if you work in the Chinese government since its not obnoxious but also relatively expensive), and lets be honest, Swiss brands absolutely dominates that category. In other words there’s not much incentive for local established brands such as Seagull to innovate or even try to compete with Swiss brands in terms of design.

for the price of under 300usd, Chinese homages (some original design from seagull falls under this too)are prbly the best in terms of pure value(excluding casio) but lets be honest, watches are pieces of jewelries and ppl hardly care about value lol, that unreliable movement also poses a risk factor many wouldn’t take.

I’m Chinese and I haven’t bought a single Chinese watch despite being in this hobby for quite a while now, I hope we get better at designing and actually pump out some products that are memorable and unique

Disposable garbage imo

There are tiers in terms of quality even in the Chinese watch market. Being made in China doesn’t inherently mean a bad product it’s really all in how much they invest and care about establishing and maintaining good QC.

That being said it seems hit or miss for the most part and a pain to deal with when you get a lemon so personally with watches id much rather just spend more to have peace of mind and less issues.

Almost every watch case below luxury level is made in China. Ditto with dials, hands, crystals etc. Even Swiss Made. A $400 Tissot is not actually made in Switzerland, other than the movement, and even then it’s just assembly required, not all the parts.

There is a reason the FHS, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, Eta, and others have offices in Hong Kong.

The cheap quality ones with horrible names are just disposable trash

Some use Japanese and Swiss movements with sapphire crystals and are very affordable

I’d love to own a watch with an ST19 someday, best looking affordable movement

They churn out a lot of crappy stuff that the entire world buys, but they are capable of making very high end watches (many god tier luxury brands source items/parts from China ) . If you want to see a good example of quality check out Atelier Wen .