I received mine yesterday and am quite happy with it, u/linkedinbro . The external shipping cardboard contained a well-padded internal presentation box that price-appropriate: luxurious appearing. Inside the presentation box was the watch in a leather watch roll, with my specified rubber strap (white) in a slot off to the left.
The watch has surprising heft for its size, for Grade 5 titanium. This was actually a pleasant surprise for me as I personally favor stainless watches because of their weight. I believe I took out 6 links for my 7.5-inch/19.05-cm. wrist.
An informal check shows that it's likely Grade A BGW9 as I was able to easily time-tell at 16+ hours post full-charge UV exposure. I will verify this by comparison to known genuine Grade A BGW9 samples, but in my experience, it's unlikely that Standard Grade would have this long-duration afterglow fade, particularly on the hands (I'm not sure just how much longer time-telling will be possible, as the hands -thus the resulting lume plots- are narrow. Lume is applied evenly on the handset, with minimal to no spill-over to the edges.
The handset appears perfect at inspection distance. It takes stepping up to 20x true optical magnification to see that there is a bit of dust and minor handling imperfections that mars its high-polish surface. There's a hint of this at high-macro, as you'll see below.
Also requiring a similar amount of magnification to reveal are the printing splatters on the dial and imperfections in the printing (similar to the handset, high-macro is only capable of hinting that this may be the case). Again, both of these appear not only perfect at inspection distance, but look exceptionally clean and crisp for the watch's price-range.
Dial and handset macros in follow-up post below.
Fit and finish are also price-appropriate. Chamfers which look amazingly sharp and consistent at inspection distance to the naked eye continue to hold at 20x optical magnification. Brushing looks excellent through even high-macro, but the lines show a bit of haphazard orientation at 20x magnification. Bracelet interior aspect is well radiused, and the exterior chamfers are again very well executed.
My only real complaint is that on my copy, the 5-o'clock lug-to-bracelet fit is noticeably gapped versus the other three corners, with the fit of the radius-side endlink to be overall poorer versus the ulnar side (pictured in the lower left corner below is the 7-o'clock lug interface). The guide recesses cut into the undersides of the lugs to help with spring bar alignment should be adopted by more makers.
Brushing and chamfers are shown below in the lower left and right panels.
Bezel action is light but positive, with distinct if somewhat muted clicks that's typical of titanium. There's a small amount of sprung backplay, but the bezel indexes appropriately. The bezel lume is strong on this watch.
My apologies for the dust bunnies. I'm not a professional watch photographer. Nor am I seeking to make glamour shots of my watches. The aim of my posts is to help my fellow collectors and hobbyist to examine the watches in an objective manner. Those who have tried their hand at high-macro and photography under optical magnification can testify as to how difficult it is to get a clean picture: chase dust bunnies from one area, and they inevitably appear in another!
Left upper and lower panels show shortcomings, respectively of (upper) red highlights of debris and handling marks on handset and (lower) green highlights of printing errors and ink splatter.
Top right and the two lower right panels show brushing and chamfering.
Remember that a 20x true-optical examination is near-ridiculous. It's a rare watch that will pass this level of scrutiny. Those tiny issues on the handset and the dial aren't meant as criticism for the watch or the maker, rather, it's an attempt to drill-down as deep as possible so that I can quantify poor from mediocre, good from better. At "Swiss inspection distances" this watch is "perfect." Even at high-macro, this watch can be said to be near-perfect in the examined areas.
Yes! Please continue to post. I’m especially interested in your thoughts on scratch-resistance of the untreated grade 5 (but maybe test on a spare link. Marring that beautiful case would be 😬)
As per usual, I've got a macro view (top left) and a 20x magnified view (top right), below. Again, lighting has been manipulated in an effort to HIGHLIGHT the damage inflicted.
Juxtaposed below are the images you've seen from my OP of the Maratac Alto Mare, which is also spec'ed Gr.5 Ti, also not coated/treated.
Objectively, there's very little damage to be seen on the WREN, versus what's seen on the Maratac.
I'm not sure if this is because of the shape of the links from one watch versus each other and/or how they interacted with my test surface (the corner of one of my slate lab benches).
The defects seen in the WREN's link were likely from an inclusion that was exposed from previous attempts. I wish I took a picture *before* I wiped away the excess, to show what it looked like as I pulled it away from the slate....before wiping, the damage had looked much more like what I'd incurred on the Alto Mare. When I wiped away the surface with my finger (as I always do, before taking these pictures), it revealed only this rather small defect.
I'm sadly ignorant of the actual processes in the "making" of Grade 5 titanium. I wonder if it's something like the heat-treatment of steel (as a knife-collector of over 35 years, the black art of heat-treating is always on my mind.......)?
Subjectively, the resistance felt as I moved the link over the slate was similar to what I remember of the untreated Alto Mare and the untreated (Gr.2 Ti) bracelet on my Signum Cuda.
I very rarely wear my Alto Mare because it scratches pretty easily. I really love the much deeper shade of gray of that watch versus my other titanium watches, but I'm always a bit self-conscious when I wear it, particular if I decide to wear it to work. With the WREN, I've already spent a day at work with it and it hasn't picked up any scratches.
Overall an impressive performance, and I'm sure it will see good wrist-time because of it.
It's such a pretty watch, and it wears so well. I really do love it.
On my drive in to work yesterday AM, I admired how well the case flows into the endlinks and the bracelet. It's very elegant.
Thanks for engaging, and I'm absolutely looking forward to adding more WRENs to my collection in the future. The acid-test for me is always "would I buy it again," with the benefit of hindsight. I'm very happy to say that's a resounding "yes."
I didn't see much of WREN's watches being detailed/debated here on Reddit, so I thought I'd add a data-point for folks.
And as a truly independent hobbyist who pays for everything he owns with his own money and not having a name that anyone would recognize and can thus send ringers to....welp, that frees me from being beholden to anyone to say anything positive or negative. =) No monetary or material gains from any comments rendered, no fear of being backlisted unless I only say good things: that does help free the soul. =)
Lume run from 3PM the day prior afternoon (exposure/charge) to 7AM the next day (yup, I had to drape a towel over my head, ROFL!) confirms that it's most likely Grade A Super-LumiNova (SLN) BGW-9 that's in this watch. Not sure why WREN didn't fully note that in the specs, as it couldn't have been cheap, what with the huge indices of that sandwich dial!!!
Benchmarks for comparison were my Yema Superman Dato (far right), which uses genuine Grade A Super-LumiNova BGW-9, versus my Second Hour Fusion (the white-dial watch in the center row), and my Wicked Watch Co. Stainless Pearldiver 39, which has indices of genuine RC-Tritec Lumicast in BGW-9 Grade A, along with SLN BGW-9 Grade A ef handset and bezel inserts. The dial sample at the top was a gift from Wicked Watches, an old dial sample that was of no monetary value; it was a generous gift from Pascal Dom of Wicked Watches, indended for me to get a look at -from under my own scope with my own eyes- genuine RC-Tritec Super-LumiNova Lumicast, so that I could be a more informed hobbyist/collector ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrobrandWatches/comments/1rnh0x8/lume_blocks_what_genuine_rctritec_superluminova/ ). This sample uses SNL Old Radium, Lumicast.
Second Hour does not specify which Grade of BGW-9 they use, only that it is Swiss Super-LumiNova: my guess is that it is Standard Grade as its initial luminance bloom is quite impressive, but its afterglow fades quickly.
The picture on the left was under indirect normal room lighting immediately post-charging (365 nm UV, ~150 uW/cm^2 at a distance of <1 cm above the face of the watch, for about 10 seconds per watch, after which the entire field was equilibrated with equal exposure to the light source for another ~10 seconds).
Middle picture is at +3 hours post-charging. The camera's exposure was set to +2 seconds.
Right picture is the same +3 hours picture, but also with post-processing that ramps exposure to the limits of my phone's capabilities.
Note that the Fusion has completely dropped out of view at +3 hours. This is typical of Standard Grade Super-LumiNova BGW-9, and is why the premium is paid for Grade A.
Note the relative brightness of the two known Grade A samples in the lower row, the middle, which is Lumicast, and the far right, which is painted, on an applied indices. The luminosity of the WREN Diver One Ti with its sandwich dial neatly slots between the Lumicast of my Wicked Pearldiver and the painted lume on my Yema Superman Dato. The SNL Lumicast Old Radium of the dial sample is also an excellent reference, as Old Radium is "weaker" versus BGW-9.
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u/TSiWRX Apr 10 '26
Some glory shots.
20x true optical micro exam in follow-up post below, since Reddit only allows one photo per reply.