I started to post this in the “What’s Your Deal!” section, but decided to put it here instead as it’s more a question than a bitch/complaint... so here goes.

Why do watch makers bother with “luminous” hands and dials when they are mostly useless??? I mean seriously, I just bought a very nice Citizen watch, and even after subjecting it to a very strong light right at bedtime (and wearing it all day in natural light), the hands are too dim to see by 1:30-2:00 in the morning... much less last all night! It seems to me that they could save money and hassle by simply offering a watch without that “feature”, or add a “backlight” if they really wanted it to be useful all night long!

Just thinking and wondering out loud. I really love this new Citizen watch, and will not part with it just because the hands don’t glow all night, but I have to ask the question after owning this watch, plus a Seiko and Pulsar with the same “feature” that ended up being useless. Why bother???

The lume on my Seiko 007J glows brightly all night long. Ditto my 15 year old Swiss Army Diver. I’ve found that dive watches generally feature brighter lume than many other types.

All-night luminance in my watch is important to me.

The lume on my Seiko (SKX013) is great. After a day on the wrist I can still see it in the wee hours of the morning when I check it.

Marathon makes watches that use tritium on the hands and markers if you want glow all night functionality.

Ball uses so much tritium, you can use it as a nuclear power source.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Ball uses so much tritium, you can use it as a nuclear power source.

Bill referenced exposing his luminous hands to very strong light, so I assumed he was talking about the glow-in-the-dark paint rather than tritium vials.

That said, there are certainly brighter watches than others. I currently have a Traser dive watch that is considerably brighter than my last Citizen Promaster.

-Rob

Some brands are better than others.

Seiko is generally pretty dang good.

Citizen is OK.

Some others just suck.

I work my Seiko Sports 5 last night, at 05:00 it was still going strong.

I prefer tritium and have 2 in my rotation.

depends which citizen. their chronomaster ( aka The Citizen ) has top notch lume. you don't have it for the lume though.

You can thank Rolex for switching to blue lume, from green, a decade ago. Everyone followed suit. They marketed it as not being as initially bright as green, but it would hold a charge longer. Not only has this not been my experience, but the blue lume seems more dependent on surface area to be visible than the green. Everyone just needs to go back to green.

I own a Omega Seamaster that I can charge the lumen on the hands with a flashlight right before bedtime around 12:00.
Six hours later when I get up it is dim but I can still read the time.
I am not sure if watch companies use the same type of paint or not. It might also depend on how much they use.

I have a Steinhart with “superluminova” that lasts all night.

Agree - it's been a gripe of mine for awhile that's driven a few unsuccessful purchases.

There should be some minimum industry standard for brightness and duration of luminosity for these watches. Otherwise, it's just lying and misleading.

ETA: Casio, in my experience, is the worst. I now have two Citizen's (PCAT and a Pro Diver) where the lume is sufficient in brightness and duration; although the hands on the PCAT are slim and so a little harder to see. That seems to be the tradeoff for now (for me) to get the additional features I want.

I hear Seiko and Ball are better but have not been able to compare (although online tests seem to suggests Seiko and Citizen aren't too different). At least that's the impression I got (depending on the models).

Had a 20 year old Luminox that still glowed sufficiently enough that I would be wearing now. I broke the glass and bought another from member Dave Truong which I would recommend for anyone needing a watch of quality at a fair price.

Eseaton

My Luminox is very bright.
Once my eyes have adjusted to a dark bedroom, I can use its glow to navigate to and from the bathroom.

my Omega, Seiko dive, Tissot, and a Sinn watch have good lime. My early Invicta 8926 and a Bulova Precisionist have poor lume.

Find one of the old watches with Radium painted on the face. It will glow for hundreds of years. Just like the girls who painted them.

Tritium

https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-...ite-ember-t100-watch

I'm sure it has a lot to do with what material is used to provide the lume.

I had a cheap Fossil that could be 'recharged' with a flashlight.

My Citizen is really bright immediately after coming inside (sun or moon light, interestingly).

Those are my only 2 firsthand examples, my Movado is super simplistic with no lume.

Back in the old days, when men were men, they used radium to excite the phosphor on watch hands. Radium-226 has a half-life of about 1600 years!

My old watch that I bought in the late sixties and took to the Navy was Radium.
I was able to read it on the low scale of my RM3 Frisker. Rad Con Team.

Seiko Luke rules! SKX fan here.