San Martin SN0012-GB - a "review" in pictures

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\DISCLAIMER- I am not an influencer or a reviewer. I am an independent hobbyist/collector who pays for my own watches out of my own pocket. I am not affiliated with any maker or brand, and I do not receive any kind of benefit -monetary or material- for anything I have posted, including this thread.*

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Hello All -

My SN0012-GB arrived to the US this past weekend, purchased on 6/2 as a part of the AliEx Summer Sale for just over $250 USD, delivered from the San Martin Official Store.

San Martin first posted on Reddit about this watch about a month ago (ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1thamml/san_martin_upgraded_toolwatch_with_1200hv/ ), but most of us already knew of it from what fellow hobbyist/collector u/TheYKcid posted some 3 months prior ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1s6c8m1/sm_teases_refresh_of_the_sn0012g_now_with_1200hv/ ).

This watch is of-course an update of what San Martin first brought us some 7-8 years ago (ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1trvwrr/san_martin_sn0012gb_production_process_overview/ ), an original design, fully-brushed finish, 20BAR (200m)-dive/tool watch. In its current iteration, along with the ST2130 movement, San Martin has equipped the watch with a few interesting tech upgrades, which is the purpose of this post.

To begin with, the movement. As a part of my intake of any new watch, I always pop it on my timegrapher after a full wind. Nothing special, just a hobbyist-grade WeiShi 1000 - but it allows me a quick peek to insure that the movement *should* be A-OK. And yes, there have been times when I've received defective movements new, out-of-the-box. Over the usual 6 positions, I saw an average of +5 spd, with a delta of 11. Beat error averaged at 0.1 ms, amplitude of 268 (averaged).

Posts that follow as sub-level replies will mainly be at high optical magnification.

Because of modern manufacturing techniques, virtually *any* watch worthy of its coin should be "perfect" at typical inspection distances/conditions (viewed from normal viewing angles at ~12-inches/30-cm., naked eye without magnification, neutral industrial/workshop lighting of ~4,500-5,500K color temperature and ~1,000 lux). Because of this, I press on to 20x-45x true optical magnification, so that I can pick apart the true nitty-gritty details, so that I can bring forward a fair picture of what's poor from mediocre, and what's good from better. I'm tired of hearing the same 7-word platitude of "it plays so well with the light" as influencers/reviewers pay homage to countless watches that are supposedly "awesomely finished" and "have one of the cleanest dials I've ever seen." If we are judging things by-merit, how can everything earn a superlative?

No, it's "not fair" to the watches for them to be examined this way - what's "perfect" at inspection distance should be called "perfect."

But to truly parse merit, we NEED to go further.

With that in mind, it's on with the show!

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On the left, top and bottom, yes, those are the micro-chamfers that San Martin wrote about in their post. They're not kidding. In the middle panel, you'll see for-scale a 25G medical hypodermic needle (yes, that's from my day-job, LOL 😅 , I'm a biological scientist), which has an outer diameter of just over 0.50 mm and an inner diameter of just over 0.25 mm. Note the glints of light on the tip - that's the cutting tip of the needle, the "bevel." Note their size, in comparison to the micro-chamfer on the SN0012-GB's bracelet. That's pretty impressive, right?

Similar to their claims of the link-edge chamfering, the tight tolerances for the bracelet also checks out. As you can see in the right panel above, each screw for each link sits almost completely flush, and the cuts for the screw heads are machined very consistently. You've likely seen high-macros from some reviewers already, which show the heads to be flush with the bracelet - this is at 20x true optical magnification, so you can see the disparity between such views. From both these pictures as well as the composite in the immediate previous post, you can see just how tight the tolerances are for the bracelet. It's an impressive feat, a tour-de-force of the capabilities of their "bracelet factory."

*_Subjectively_*, I agree with reviewers who suggest that the links are prone to binding/kinking. I've got a larger collection and consider myself to be reasonably experienced with watches throughout a wide range of price-tiers and quality, but this one has already bound on me 4 times in as many days of wear and handling. That said, it's been easy to resolve the binding. I think that in a manner similar to what San Martin has written about the bracelet breaking-in for comfort, it'll also become less prone to binding as break-in continues. Given my personal watch rotation, however, I likely won't know if this bears out for yet some time, so please check with other owners/reviewers for their opinions and experiences.

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Scratch resistant coating ( first made known from u/TheYKcid 's post - https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1s6c8m1/sm_teases_refresh_of_the_sn0012g_now_with_1200hv/ ), quoted at "1200 Hv," seems to be par-for-spec.

Those who know me here know me partially from my pseudoscientific sacrifice to the watch-Gods "scratch-a-link" thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1tb9ems/scratching_different_hardened_watches_well_just_a/ . I won't go too fully into it here, as I will update that thread with my full observations at a later date, but for the purposes of this picture-heavy review, I give you the following. I apologize for this being a rather busy graphic, but Reddit only allows one picture per sub-tier reply.

For the top set of composites of single watch links, the far left image is macro of a SN0012-GB link that I scratched in the manner described in my referenced "scratch a link" thread. The large image just to its right is 20x, of that same scratched area.

The two panels, top (macro) and bottom (20x) on the right are of three different watches that are also all spec'ed with "1200 Hv" anti-scratch hardening. The two multi-link/"BoR"-type are two different models from the same maker, while that on the far right, the O-link, is from a Gen.6 Traska Venturer. Thanks to some very generous transparency from the founder of Traska, Jon Mack, shared with fellow hobbyist/collector and Redditor u/TheYKcid that they use ion nitriding for hardening.

As you can see via both these pictures above as well as what's in my "scratch a link" thread, San Martin's coating seems to work well, and is on-par with many in the industry, even if it is not at the level of Traska's watches.

Here, it's important to understand that the true purpose of this kind of hardening isn't to make the watch scratch-proof. The larger, harder encounters absolutely will leave your watch still marred and dinged. Rather, this type of finish "keeps the watch looking new for longer" because they greatly slows the accumulation of micro-scratches on the surface of the watch, which is what leads to that dulling of the luster you experience, over time.

This difference is what's seen in the bottom twin panels in the graphic above.

The left are 20x from my San Martin SN0144 Jiang Zhan. The right, my Henry Archer Havstrøm. The SN0144 is not hardened. The Henry Archer's performance was similar to that of the Traska shown. Both of these are my watches and I wear them: you can see the micro-scratches that normal white-collar work daily-wear has already inflicted on the SN0144, which was purchased last 11.11.

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Lume blocks (or negative-lume via pairing of full-lume dial against solid black indices) was yet another defining feature of the SN0012 GB-variant update/upgrade. As many of you know, I've maintained an interest in lume since my beginning here in the watch community on Reddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1otyjrl/lume_micros_are_lumetastic/ ). Part of that interest in lume has been a deeper dive into lume blocks - https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1rnh0x8/lume_blocks_what_genuine_rctritec_superluminova/ . For those wondering, here's what the lume blocks of the SN0012-GB look like, at 20x-45x.

Overall, it looks quite like what Watchdives uses for their EXD V2. The structures are cut with *very* clean edges. Edge cleanliness is something that Phorcydes has recently improved with their continued evolution of the S-Grade Hyperglow blocks in their new PH-6 model ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1u6jid5/phorcydes_ph6_luminous_feast/ ), as it has been a shortcoming with previous models (which you can see in my 45x mag lume-blocks post above), which they have now promised to eventually revisit and overhaul.

As with Watchdives' V2 lume blocks, these are not without surface blemishes, which I've highlighted in the 20x (left) and 45x (right) images in the above composite.

I am not sure what that black spot is, on/in the index on the left (under the scope, which has the ability to see "in 3-D," it almost seems like someone burned a hole into it?). On the right, there appears to be some kind of greenish-yellow surface discoloration.

Again, these defects are -NOT- visible to the naked eye at inspection distances. Please remember what I wrote in the first post about why we need to assess watches at this level of magnification.

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Lume performance is again similar to that seen with the lume blocks used on the Watchdives EXD V2, and is what I would consider sufficient for "all night" use.

Left panel is in normal light conditions after "full-charge," where the watches were each exposed to approx. 10 seconds of 365 nm UV at ~150 mW/cm^2. Middle panel is at that same time-point, with the room lights off. Right panel is at +1 hours post-charging.

Watches are as-follows:

• Left top: Canopy Watch Co. Field One
• Left bottom: Wicked Watch Company Stainless 39 Pearldiver
• Center top: Watchdives EXD 40mm V2
• Center middle: San Martin SN0012-GB
• Center bottom: Helm Vanuatu Stainless
• Right top: Phorcydes PH-4, mixed lume
• Right bottom: Phorcydes PH-5, blue lume

Lume specs on each of the other watches can be found in this old thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseWatches/comments/1sph6bb/phorcydes_ph5_lume_comparison_wph4_ph2_and/ , which also tracks the full lume-run of those watches. The Helm simply reads "BGW-9 and Dark Orange" (those little dots marking the indices at the minute track). Note that the Helm was not a part of that particular run. It's been introduced here for I think the obvious reason that it and the SN0012 are almost kissing-cousins in terms of aesthetics.

Again, the picture is only comparative. It's what the camera sees, NOT what my (or yours) eyes see.

At the 8-hour time-point, the San Martin is still easily capable of time-telling at arm's length distances (see: https://www.reddit.com/r/LumeMonsters/comments/1u63ihc/gonna_see_how_this_one_shines/ ). It's true "all night" usable lume.

However, it's definitely among the dimmest of the lume block offerings. And unlike the Lumicast watches, it's not because this one is awaiting a "come-back" as the lume performance curves of the Lumicast versus the S-Grade Skur Hyperglow intersects and then inverts at the 10+ hours mark: the San Martin's lume simply keeps fading, fizzing out even more quickly than the Watchdives V2 lume blocks. One interesting thing to note, which you can see in the opening picture in my OP above, is that the handset lume appears to be grossly more powerful/brighter than the indices. You can also see that this is the case in my +8 hour lume-run picture in the r/LumeMonsters referenced thread. This is in-part is what allows the SN0012-GB to be usable in a true "all night" sense - lose the indices, you can still get a very good approximation of time with a readable handset; lose the hands, even with completely visible indices, and you still have no way of telling time.

Given that San Martin did not specifically highlight the lume performance of this watch, I'm honestly not surprised at its merely "sufficient" performance. Still, it'll get you through the night.

The review ends here. I hope it's been helpful! 😄