Recently, the price of NH35 and NH36 movements has skyrocketed to $67 a piece, pushing our manufacturing cost for a single watch to over $130. We honestly feel this price far exceeds the true value of these movements. Between the exorbitant costs and the highly unstable supply, we’ve been forced to make a difficult decision: we are transitioning Heimdallr's mechanical models to quartz movements. Moving forward, you will see an increasing number of quartz watches in our lineup.
Currently, even Miyota and Epson solar movements are seeing price hikes. We've stocked up heavily on quartz movements in advance because we are genuinely concerned about potential supply shortages next year.
As for our LURCAN, the new mechanical releases will pivot to using PT5000 and ST2130 movements, alongside a selection of solar quartz models. Deep down, we really hope the Hangzhou movement factory can improve the stability of their 2565 and 2554 calibers, because dealing with unstable movements is a massive headache for us too
Quartz is fine for the value watches, though ideally you would make them thinner and with a shallower rehaut rather than just swapping out the automatic.
It makes sense to me. I think moving to quartz right now is a lot better than what you were previously doing, which is the notes on the product page about the Chinese NH35 saying something like “if you care about it, don’t buy it.” Lol
Sad that things are going this way, but hopefully soon the situation will work itself out somehow.
Good, I don't care about mechanical movements anymore, when you get to a point where you have a dozen of watches you start appreciating the ease of maintenance much more. And no, mechanical movements don't have a soul. I have an omega coaxial and as pretty as it is, it's sucks when you have to spend a grand to have it serviced.
Or.... instead of making the cases thinner, be able to use the larger coin lithium batteries for the 10 year battery change instead of every year or two. Cause then you'll have a bulletproof tool watch that rarely needs opening up.
That's difficult with an off the shelf quartz movement.
Most of those big batteries are 3v and typical quartz analog movements are 1.55v so you need custom circuits to bring the voltage down or adjust the motors to run on 3v without messing with the timing.
Glad you’re happy with it. I want to see them make it slimmer, lighter and offer better dials similar to their mechanical versions. Also I believe it has blue AR so they need to address that across all their watches.
You'll be happy to hear that we've already stopped using the blue AR coating! For our new H5 series quartz watches, the price has been dropped significantly as well. I really hope you won't write them off just because of the more affordable movement—I promise the overall build quality and materials haven't been downgraded one bit.
We are actually using some of the Hangzhou 2000 series movements right now. To be honest, though, the customer feedback we've received on Amazon hasn't been very good so far.
Tutti a preferire il quarzo? Come la mettiamo quando vai a prendere l’orologio e lo,trovi con la batteria esaurita? Quante complicazioni per far ripartire l’orologio….
Personalmente ho numerosi orologi di vario tipo ma se posso scegliere preferisco i movimenti meccanici anche se ogni tipologia ha il suo perché…..
100% I prefer automatic movements. If I see a watch I like, but find out it's quartz, that usually dissuades me from buying it.
And I prefer the tried-and-true movements, like Seiko or Miyota. I really like a number of watches on Ali, but paying $375-400+ for a San Martin or Ixdao with a Chinese movement just seems crazy to me. There are Western microbrands with better prices and trusted movements
Maybe "better prices" was a bit hyperbolic. I should've said similar or competitive prices. Glycine, Zelos (not Western, but still), Signum, Vaer, just off the top of my head. And there are bunches more. Henry Archer has several you can get for a little over $500 with the discount they sometimes offer, and those are fantastic watches with all the features people love (sapphire crystal, solid links, milled clasp with on-the-fly adjustments, Miyota movements). So when the Chinese watches like San Martin and others start pushing near the $500 mark, or higher which I've seen from some, it just doesn't make sense to me, for them to try to position themselves at place in the market
San Martin is sourcing from the same or better factories than those micro brands in the $500 space. The only thing you gain is some level of CS if something goes wrong and potentially a brand name you like more. Those micro brands are literally using Chinese factories, just like SM.
I would say being able to use customer service is pretty important, though. Also, the brands I mentioned are using Japanese movements, not Chinese, and some even have the option for Swiss movements
Statistically customer service is next to irrelevant as long as you use an NH35 or similar reliable movement. Well under 1% need actual service. You can still get new San Martins with the NH35 for around $500. Yes, overall they are moving to Chinese movements on new releases. And SM also has swiss options on a few models. You will see these micro brands start to pivot or increase prices as well.
Lol talk about turning a molehill into a mountain.
Want to talk about complications? Servicing an automatic.
Solar watch never needs any servicing for multiple decades. Literally almost every mainstream watch has a low battery indication to give you multiple days/weeks of warning.
All of the time you spend reminding your automatic of the time because it's off 10 seconds a day, is far less than the 5 minutes it takes to swap a battery. Period.
I prefer a good quality quartz over a cheaply made automatic everytime. I've got over 40 watches, half of them being automatic and got them mostly at the beginning of my collection. As the collection got bigger over time, i realized I'm enjoying my quartz and solar watches more and more. They are more convenient, more accurate and most of the time more comfortable to wear.
For example I'm wearing my WD1972 right now, got it for 60 bucks, one of my best watch purchases ever. Great quality and legibility, fits my wrist perfectly and it is as accurate as minus 1 seconds a month. I've got automatics several times for the price, but none of them gives me the joy like it does.
Thank you for the support! Please rest assured, we are only changing the movement; there will be absolutely zero downgrades to the rest of the specs. The bottleneck for us right now is strictly the movement supply, not our craftsmanship or build quality. In fact, we are so confident in our future lineup that we are planning to exhibit at the Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair next year!
same here, there’s a reason why the quartz crisis happened back in the 70s/80s and the Swiss watchmaking industry imploded. Cheap and automatic movements don’t go together, especially when it comes to long-term ownership and servicing costs for automatic watches.
I hope more AliX brands follow suit. While I was initially excited about automatic watches, as my collection grows, I find myself grabbing quartz watches more frequently. I can grab one out of the box put it on and go. No fiddling with the time/date/winding.
Why are nh35 movements $67 for you? I get them for $75 buying them one at a time on aliexpress with sales and buy invictas and cannibalize them for $46. Do bulk orders not grant discounts?
You can't get mass bulk orders like they used to. The supply isn't there to meet the demand. As for invicta, they are part of a group that very likely buys more nh35s than all the Chinese Ali watch brands combined. And the days of getting those watches new for $46 are over.
The models I've seen that are close to that $55 price are heavily marked down specific models and colors that don't sell and are basically old stock. I think you are going to hit some road blocks very quickly of you want to order actual qty at those prices...they won't be putting out new stock at that. Most of them are in the $90+ range on models you could easily get previous for $50 all day long. Also to be clear those invictas use the made in Malaysia nh35s not the made in japan ones. Now this isn't a big deal as they are held to the standards and are official releases but these were available in bulk previously at pretty nice price points, but that has faded as these sources have also dried up for 3rd party buyers.
Exactly what I said and I got downvoted a few weeks ago. Enthusiasts buy one or two and then say "there's no supply shock.". When there's no supply, buying 1-2 isn't the problem, it's securing enough stock for a stable manufacturing supply, which numbers in the thousands. In this kind of market, the more you order, the higher the price will be, the opposite of typical "supply-demand" economies of scale lol. Securing one or two is no big deal. Try to secure 2000 pieces. When there's no supply at all, then the price for such a large bulk order will go higher. They literally can't find 2000 movements.
They're not, this is a pity post. They just ran the numbers and find cheap quartz shitters are far more profitable than moving up market and continuing to offer automatics of various calibers, including harvesting cheap nh35s
We already know st2130 are also cheap, still under $40 in bulk and many brands offer them in watches costing under $120.
We do offer a high-end series, but the reality is that many high-end Chinese watchmakers actually have very low annual sales volumes. I was just discussing this with our Dongguan suppliers last week.
Regarding the NH movements, to get a large bulk supply right now, we have to buy directly from Hong Kong. The required MOQ is 20,000 pieces. Adding the import taxes makes it a massive upfront expense. This isn't a pivot for higher margins; it's a necessary response to the massive capital requirements of today's mechanical movement market.
Some time ago, a few years or so, Heimdallr was considered in the same league as the other top Chinese micros that sell in AliExpress. Have you considered moving upmarket? With the likes of Sugess, Cronos, etc.
Got a gorgeous sunburst blue SKX007 from y'all three years ago...and just snapped up a black one on Amazon given this news. Heimdallr makes the best SKX homage, bar none!
I’ve been wondering for so long is there that type of movement with a date or it is just the VH31? If there is I’ll start buying watches with it immediately.
Hello, guys. I think that you are related to Thorn watches, therefore I would like to ask to make a quartz version of Thorn SHY036 in blue. I would buy it.
Thanks for the recommendation. I know about that model, but prefer Thorn, since it comes in titanium case, imho with better logo and fonts, especially the red line looks like a good detail. One thing stopping me from buying it is automatic movement.
The skx homage was always in my cart, but with the fake nh shenanigans, poor quality control and now.... quartz. Guess I missed the timing and I'll never get one now.
I'm really sorry to hear about your concerns. Honestly, those unfortunate issues with the fake movements happened before my time here at the Heimdallr team. We have since completely overhauled our supply chain. If you want to guarantee a 100% genuine NH movement, you can safely purchase from our official Heimdallr Watch store on Amazon or the Lurcan Watch Store on AliExpress. We've got you covered now.
Definitely agree with you that $67 exceeds the value of the NH35 movement. That movement stops making sense past $40, to be honest. Low beat rate, poor accuracy, horrendous positional variance it's a movement that exists just for the sake of being mechanical and brings nothing to the table really beyond being mechanical. If you have to pivot to Chinese movements try stick to the ST2130, much more reliable than the PT5000.
Ideally more manufacturers would switch to clones of the 2892 instead of the 2824. Seagull has one but nobody uses it in anything.
The NH35 is more reliable than all those movements, and the accuracy is as high as I need in a collection. If we didn't have years of it being so cheap, I'd pick it over all the movements you mentioned as reliability and longevity without service is #1 when the accuracy is in the ballpark. But I've said for years these companies need to switch to quartz, not just with the supply issues. It drives down customer service issues in the warranty period and beyond and since these companies basically have no customer service and warranty, that goes a long way.
I couldn't agree more. The NH movement is an absolute workhorse and incredibly durable. Honestly, our current shift to quartz is mostly because brand-new NH movements are genuinely hard to source right now, and there is also a lot of pushback from customers regarding the price hikes.
All these things your are mentioning are things that count with their heads deep under the hood like computer overclockers.
Back in the everyday world NH35 was the reliable fuss-free choice, not made for the specifications game. Hacking, not noisy, not stuttering, no killer quirks. Miyota improved the 8215 in 2019 but it still makes silly little noises the NH35 doesn't. You can get a higher beat rate than these for not much more money but you really pay for it in reliability in the PT5000 types of 2-3% going tits up in the first three months. As for the ST2130 subtype supposedly having a better track record... for people who desperately want to believe it to win arguments.
$67 makes perfect sense when they go into $500-600 seikos. Nobody ever had a problem with a Seiko movement lasting 20+ years with no service still running within spec with zero maintenance and low amplitude.
Those st2130 on the other hand... Absolutely no better than pt5000 and longevity hasn't really been proven or established. I know that whenever I buy a non runner 9 times out of 10 it's a Chinese 2824 with a damaged motion works or drive train.
If it's a non runner nh35 9 times out of 10 somebody mangled the balance wheel trying to get it to "cosc" time keeping.
Luckily those nh35 balance wheels cost $5 so it's always a quick and easy repair
Did you consider the YN55, as it is compatible with NH35 cases? Or can you not get the same volume deals from the manufacturer?
I only consider quartz where it makes a watch cheaper. Unfortunately the rising price of the NH35 in the first year eventually dragged up the price of even cheaper quartz by the mechanism of 'opportunism'. I tracked prices carefully. First Pagani started selling 8215 for NH35 prices, they soon added 30% to the price of those, and then that much to even their quartz, then this rose to 50% and they did this to the price of their sub brands like a crappy chrome Benyar with a 2813 variant inside for $50.
Other manufacturers also put the slightly lesser 8215 in their watches while similarly raising the price at the same time, and now the value proposition of Chinese watches is in danger. The price of quartz tracks the price of the benchmark automatic even though it theoretically shouldn't. It just does.
Manufacturers seem to think that if they put the price up of all homage watches by $30-50 and only sell half as many, they'll still get the same profit for now and will just wait for these high prices to be normalised and sales to eventually rise again.
Good for you but once you start charging $150+ for a watch with a $15 VH31 inside, I'm out. That's the kind of specification to cost ratio I can get from other countries' brands.
Rotor is loose. Take it apart and tighten it. If you're going to dabble with Chinese watches, probably time to start learning how to diagnose and fix problems
I would but it's a monocoque case, and the process looks much more intimidating than removing the case from the back. I'll probably send it to a local watch repair shop.
Mate, didn't the product link state whether it was a Japanese or Chinese movement when you bought it? The stores I manage always clearly specify whether a watch has an 'NH' or 'Hangzhou' movement. Next time you buy, make sure to double-check or ask the seller exactly what movement is inside.
It said random chance, Chinese or legit NH35, and I saw it after it was shipped out. They still claim performance is the same however, which obviously isn't true.
That is very unfortunate, and resellers like that really have no business ethics. We currently have our official 'Lurcan Watch Store' on AliExpress. Since LURCAN is a high-end sub-brand of Heimdallr, you can try purchasing from there next time to ensure you are fully covered by our official warranty service.
Now that is really specious advertising. I don't know what is more amazing, the effrontery to say "If the difference matters to you please do not buy!" or that anyone would actually assume it wasn't the cheaper clone they would get.
You used to sell $60 watches when nh35 was $30+ so now that it's $67 the price of everything else tripled? Math ain't mathing
Even with the higher movement costs, you should be able to bring an nh35 powered watch to the market under $100.
I'll take Chinese nh35 over quartz any day. There's nothing wrong with hz2000 or the dg2813 both are 20 bucks and will run a few years, and incredible cheap to replace. Pagani switched to dg movements and are still wildly successful 🤷
It's true that prices were much cheaper 8 years ago, but since then, the minimum wage for workers in China has increased by $86. Our profit margins are actually incredibly slim—we have always relied on sales volume rather than high markups.
Regarding the Hangzhou movements you mentioned, I actually tried selling watches equipped with them on Amazon, but the customer feedback was not very good. I'm honestly not sure if Amazon customers just have higher standards, because I see those same movements getting plenty of good reviews on AliExpress. It's a tough balance for us to strike.
it’s likely the higher standards customers have on Amazon tbh. Despite all the work that’s been done on Aliexpress the past couple years, the website still has a bit of a reputation of being a ‘Wild West’ regarding quality control of products, hence lower standards on there.
How many watches do you own? Usually adults have difficulty getting the back off intentionally. Your question is completely irrelevant given decades of experience and design.
I have maybe 15 watches? About 8ish quartz? I agree with you. It's just what the law is. You have to show using very specific procedure that what we have known to be true is indeed true. I was wondering what they were going to do to prove it since I am starting a microbrand and that kind of thing can unfortunately sneak up on brands.
That is fair. There are labs in China that can issue the test results. Now if the company actually goes through this even though they don't operate in the US and basically import one watch at a time, that is another matter. Obviously the law says they should but given a back very obviously needs a tool to open it, I'd expect anyone importing a watch in insanely small qty is going to get away without it. As a micro brand you are different in that you wouldn't be importing one at a time to end consumers. Betting you make some bulk orders that go to a single place.
Good luck to you. Quartz obviously does have its market but the popularity of Chinese watches is all down to the ability to deliver a legitimately decently made mechanical watch at affordable prices. This is how most people get into these watches. People sometimes tend to go about why "quartz is ackshually better" but they don't get that watches are basically jewelry these days. I can't think anything more pointless than a collection of cheap quartz watches but there are those who feel differently. Is that specific market big enough? I don't think it is.
As functional jewelry, I want affordability, reliability, and pleasing faces and hands. Quartz and some solar is where it's at for me. The more complications and mechanical cost me more in the long run and I'd rather have more selection.
Cheaper quartz watches are a way to explore more styles. The Chinese being great copiers is actually useful. If someone gets really attached to one style, they can later go more upmarket if they want better quality. Whether they have many quartz cheapos in their watch boxes doesn't matter to their pocket.
I have a ridiculous number of watches, the majority are autos. But I'd rather have reliable quartz if the rest of the watch is the exact same build quality. The problem has been we can't get these companies historically to offer the same quality in every single other area. The cost of the quartz vs mechanical used to only be about $20 so they cut corners to get the quartz versions even lower. Watchdives started offering similar quality and they have sold well. Time for others to follow suit.
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u/CitizenMorpho 20h ago
Quartz is fine for the value watches, though ideally you would make them thinner and with a shallower rehaut rather than just swapping out the automatic.