Why Seiko might be my favourite brand of all time...

One of the things that I believe qualifies a brand as being someones ‘favourite’ is variety. Not variety like Swatch or Omega that have about a million different references and variations but more in the sense that across all the price ranges that they cater for, incredible value can be had.

Now one thing to note is that if you may remember, at Baselworld 2017, Grand Seiko, who previously fell under the Seiko family, split away from Seiko and now operate as a solo brand. I say this because my justification of Seiko being my favourite brand of all time is predicated on Grand Seiko still being part of that family. Anyway I digress…

Seiko is a world renowned brand, known by everyone from the Eric Ku’s, John Goldberger’s and Ben Clymer’s of the world, all the way down to people who have never worn a watch and are trying to get their foot in the door of this fantastic hobby. Taking away all of my other points, this alone definitely justifies my title of ‘Favourite Brand of all time’. Seiko is loved by watch veterans and newbies alike. There are many many models that are cult favourites, such as the SKX, Alpinist, Seiko 5, 62MAS and Sumo, as well as other less ‘culty’ models which are all equally fantastic.

Now some of you may be reading this and thinking ‘Hang on Felix, surely if Seiko make hundreds of different models, won’t they be spreading themselves too thin? And as a result wont the quality of their watches go down?’ Well the answer, as anyone who knows watches will tell you, is not on your sweet life. Seiko are a brand that are famous for their quality of construction across the board. Yes there are some instances where the ‘quality’ of some of their pieces may be slightly lower, but overall the quality is both dependable AND exceptional. One famous example of this is their chapter ring alignment on models such as the SKX and Turtle.

(As a side note to this point, this is an incredibly minor flaw in a handful of watches within models (like the aforementioned SKX and Turtle) but it would be deceitful to not mention it when talking about quality…)

Now, lets talk about Grand Seiko; on the assumption that they are still in the Seiko family. Now I, and many of my friends within the watch universe, will agree with me (I hope) when I say that in the price range of between £2,000 and £10,000, GS is a better value prop than Rolex, Omega, Breitling, Tag, and even brands such as Nomos.

Grand Seiko offer some truly stunning watches, as you can see below… Which take the core values of regular Seiko’s, quality, value, reputation, longevity, but take them up a notch. Carrying the values that ooze out of Seiko’s regular models, and elevating them to the standard of Grand Seiko, means that the quality of their pieces easily competes with; and in a lot of cases, outperforms, their Swiss counterparts.

People, I believe, overlook Grand Seiko when they have £5,000 in their piggy bank burning a hole, for one reason and one reason only. And it is this, people think that they are spending how ever many thousands of pounds on ‘Just a Seiko’. This is one of the reasons why GS split off from Seiko in the first place. They wanted to become their own brand with their own brand identity, in order to dispel the talk within the watch community that the price is not justifiable for a Seiko. Whilst still keeping that legendary name that is so synonymous with brilliant watches. Despite that fact, people really should not overlook Grand Seiko. Ask anyone who knows anything about watches and they will echo my point of waxing lyrical about how fantastic Grand Seiko are.

To sum up, Seiko are, in my humble opinion, the best brand of all time. They cater for anyone from seasons veterans all the way down to complete newbies. They offer quality whether you have £50 or £5,000 to spend, and the cult following they have built up as a result make them, in my opinion, the best brand of all time.

Now I appreciate that people may have other opinions as to who the best brand of all time is, with I would imagine a lot of Rolex’s and Omega’s being thrown into the ring. And as a result we would love to hear from you about which brand you think is the best?? So please drop up an email, or DM us on our Instagram.

Have a fantastic week geeks, and we hope that you are enjoying both our new website, and our more regular content, which is definitely here to stay!

Felix Arnold

Editor & Co-Founder