Seiko Sportura Aviation Alarm Chronograph 45mm (Model : SNAE97P1)

I just received this Seiko Sportura Aviation Alarm Chronograph today. It has a very nice shade of green as seen from the Net and retails for app £380 (RM1,900) on UK watch retailer sites. In Malaysia, it is listed for RM3,300 (!) on some sites; but the gimmick sales would have a 50% discount so you could bring this baby home for RM1,650.

At press time, this very same model is selling at RM1,755 nett at Swiss Time @ LCCT. The sales personnel informed me that the price is fixed given its' limited edition collectible status.

  
General impression out of the box was that this Sportura was very light- it was after all a full quartz model as compared to the mechanical watches in my collection. The 45mm dial with bezel looked a tad busy to me with so many numbers and words imprinted thereon; but the shade of green was quite enticing- hence my decision to get this model.

 

 

The shade of green continued to be seen in the parallel sewing on the leather straps, which enhanced the sportiness look of the Sportura. Heck, it reminded of the Momo leather steering wheel and Recaro seats on my fave Alfa Romeo rides- only those were in red stichings.

However, the straps had a curved disposition around the upper edges, which contoured nicely to the wearer's wrist but then made it harder to be placed on the table after taking it off. I took a spare Tag Heuer leather strap from a previous watch and changed that onto the Sportura in a min's job, and it could then be placed flatly on the table. 

However, the brown leather seemed to be a mismatch with the black-and-green design hues of the Sportura, so I may be getting a matching black-and-green Nato strap to enhance on its looks.  

Overall, I like the subtle built-in details to the Sportura. Check out the airplane silhouette on the second-hand for the stopwatch. Pretty cool, ain't it?

Generally, a nice Seiko example from the Sportura line sporting the in-house Seiko calibre 7T62 movement.

And the best part is that I currently have at my disposal 2 watches as listed in the Annual Wristwatch 2013 encyclopedia currently in my 2013 watch collection. And one of them is this inexpensive Sportura example!