Dan's Watch Collection

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Hamilton Khaki Navy GMT

Date Purchased: August 3, 2004

• Hamilton Khaki Navy GMT model H776150

• Movement: ETA 2893-1

• Hacking and hand winding

• 11 1/2''' (25.6mm)

• Power Reserve: 42 hours

• Jewels: 21

• Frequency: 28,800

• Function: Hours, minutes, seconds, date, second time zone

• Case: brushed stainless steel, 42mm without crowns, 48mm including crowns

• Sapphire front crystal

• Case back: screwed down stainless steel with thick mineral glass

• 3 screw down crowns. The crown at 2:00 is the normal setting crown, the crown at 4:00 controls the inner rotating timing bezel, and the crown at 9:00 controls the city ring in the outer aperture at 9:00.

• Water Resistance: 200m

• Bracelet: heavy solid link stainless steel with solid end links and push button clasp.

• List price: $645.00 USD

Well, this is of course my new favorite watch. I've been wanting a true GMT, and I had thought of an Omega Seamaster, but I'm glad I held off and found this model. It's much more my style. I like the military influence very much, and I think I prefer the GMT time shown in an aperture instead of with a separate hand, as it interferes less with reading the local time. The watch came with an excellent quality bracelet, as you can see from the pictures, but I am wearing it on one of Terence Y's rubber deployment straps and I'm very happy with it. It makes it a supremely comfortable watch which sits exactly where I put it on my wrist and never moves around.

I'll start with the overall quality, and I have to say I'm very happy. I've examined the entire watch through a 10x loupe, and the only flaw I found is a tiny fiber at the bottom of the 6 on the dial. It's completely invisible to the naked eye, so I'm not in the least worried about it. The rest of the writing is extremely sharp, on the dial and the city ring. The case is perfectly brushed, and the watch as a whole is heavy and solid feeling, which is one of the attributes I liked best about my original Khaki Navy.

Each crown is polished signed with the Hamilton "H" in very high relief - much sharper and bolder than on my other Hamiltons. The deep wide knurls on the crowns are smooth and polished, and that makes it slightly difficult to unscrew the crowns. But once they're unscrewed they are very easy to use. I wouldn't change this feature, since the polished crowns with wide knurling add a lot to this watches bold and rugged look.

It's a little tricky to set the inner timing bezel and screw down the crown without causing it to move from the intended marking, and the usefulness of a bezel with a screw down crown that can only be used when a watch is out of the water is questionable. But let's face it, I didn't buy the watch to dive with, and I will probably never use the bezel for timing. I like the way it looks, and that's that!

The city ring crown does not suffer from that problem - it easily stays in place when the crown is screwed down. However, I'm a bit unhappy that it does not include a city from each possible time zone. For instance, I had set the second time zone to Bangkok time, and when I tried to set the city ring, not only was Bangkok missing, but there wasn't a city available from that time zone. So I've made a list of the cities on the ring and the time zones they're in, and you can see there are a few gaps. (times shown without DST):

London - GMT +0
Reykjavik - GMT +0
Azores - GMT -1
Rio de Janeiro - GMT -3
Cayenne - GMT -3
New York - GMT -5
Acapulco - GMT -6
Easter Island - GMT -6
Los Angeles - GMT -7
Juneau - GMT -9
Honolulu - GMT -10
Midway - GMT -11
Auckland - GMT +12
Noumea - GMT +11
Sydney - GMT +10
Tokyo - GMT +9
Hong Kong - GMT +8
Singapore - GMT +8
Colombo - GMT +6
Karachi - GMT +5
Dubai - GMT +4
Saint-Petersburg - GMT +3
Cape Town - GMT +2
Monaco - GMT +1

Overall it's a minor issue to me. After all, I really don't need or have much use for a second time zone. I just wanted one.

The dial is extremely legible in all conditions. The silver hands with white luminous fill stand out in sharp contrast against the dial, and the time can be read at a glance without trouble. The minute and second hand glow very strongly in the dark, and since this is really all that's needed to tell time, the watch is very legible at night, even after several hours. The dots at the hours, the Arabic numbers, the inner bezel markings, the tip of the second hand, and the arrow for T2 are also luminous, and all to different degrees. Although I sometimes find this annoying, it makes for an impressive display immediately after the lights are turned out. It reminds me of a starry sky.

The movement is a standard ETA with GMT function, but it's keeping fantastic time so far. I set it the watch to the atomic time on August 3rd when I received it. Since then I've kept it wound by wearing it every day. As of now, 11 days later, the watch has gained 16 seconds. I certainly can't complain about that.

The movement is also quite attractive when seen through the mineral crystal window on the case back. All of the visible components appear to be minimally brushed or polished, unlike the ETA 2824 in my original Khaki Navy, in which most of the visible components have a dull, matte finish, similar to the Seiko or Miyota workhorse movements. Although it can't be called a well-finished movement, it is very shiny and pleasing to the eye. On a side note, I have to add that the ETA 2824 in my Khaki Field watch, which I purchased fairly recently, appears to have a level of finish equal to that of the 2893 in this watch. This might be an indication that ETA is starting to put a nicer finish on all their standard movements from the start. If anybody knows please let me know. Thanks!

Overall I'm very pleased with this watch. It's everything I had hoped it would be when I saw the first picture from Basel World. The style is bold and unique. Although there are influences from other watches, there is no mistaking this as member of the Khaki Navy family. I'll continue to wear it for at least part of every day for a long time to come.

Thanks for checking it out!

Where I bought this watch:

Metals in Time