Recently I've bought an H3 P6500 Navigator. I'm not going to do a full review, since there is already an excellent review out there, made by Crusader. I suggest you read that if you want to learn more about this watch. Crusader's review
What I will do, is show you a few pictures, and let you know my first impressions and experiences with this watch, and give you my personal view.
First of all, why did I buy this watch?
It's in most ways very different from my other watches. Nearly all of my others are classic or even vintage mechanical watches, most with chronograph.
However, I don't always want to wear an old and/or valuable watch. For working around the house, sports, or even when visiting places that have a higher risk of being robbed, I prefer to wear something that is not too expensive to replace, and that doesn't give me a heartache if it gets the odd scratch. The H3 P6500 looked like it would do all that, and more. It was also a true military/aviation style watch, that looked great in the pictures, and had a nice lighting technique for the hands and hour markers. And off course, Crusaders opinion on this watch helped a lot too.
I send Ernie from WatchUSeek an e-mail and within 24 hr I received the watch. It arrived in a very functional no nonsense package, very fitting for a watch like this.
Now this watch as mentioned before is quit different from what I'm used to. If you tend to judge watches by size, weight, expensive materials and complications then this is nothing special.
The case is polyamide, which I guess is a kind of plastic, and it comes on a nylon strap. However take a good look, and things are not quit what you might think. The polyamide case is very well finished, and looks just as good as a pvd metal case. It's light and in spite off what some seem to think, there is no way anyone is going to convince me that a high weight on your wrist is a good thing. This watch feels like it's hardly there. It's rather flat, and therefore doesn't get stuck behind things. In short a very nice watch to wear if you need to move your hands a lot, like in certain sports or manual labor.
The dial is simple, but easy to read, and in my opinion it looks great. Apart from the Arabic's, 1-12 in big font and 13-24 in small, it only shows "H3" and the sign for radio activity. I'm not sure that it needs it, but it sure does look cool. The hands are of a very classic design, but instead of having a recession in which the luminous material is applied, these have a small vial in them containing a gas. More on that later. Probably because of the thickness of the vials, the hands need to be relatively far apart, which means the minute hand and second hand are far from the dial. That would normally make reading the minutes and seconds more difficult, because of parallax, but the hour and minute/second markers are on a raised ring around the dial that is perfectly level with the second hand, and therefore they are very easy to read.
The only simple complication on this watch is the turnable bezel. It has a 1-12 scale, which I think is a good thing. This is not a divers watch, with a depth rating of 30m so a divers bezel wouldn't make much sense. This scale makes it possible with relatively cheap means to indicate a second timezone. The bezel is unfortunately only mono directional, but this is not really a problem since it doesn't affect the usability. And probably designing two different bezels, for this case and the divers case would have added to the cost. Again the bezel is a rather simple thing, but it appears to be very well finished, there is no play at all, and the ratcheting mechanism feels very solid. The alignment is not completely perfect, as you may be able to see in the picture it's of by one or two degrees.
If we turn the watch around, we find a metal case back fastened with screws, covering the movement, with a lot of print. MB Microtec AG is the Swiss manufacturer, and also the maker of the Traser permanent light system. It's obviously build to conform with some military requirement, but I have little knowledge of that, and if you want to know more, again I refer you to the before mentioned review by Crusader.
It has a quartz movement that runs well, hacks and is very accurate. I have no doubt that it will run for years without any problems. Enough said. The only funny thing is that the crown has three positions, which is one more then you might expect for a watch without a date. If you pull the crown to the first "click" and you turn it, it feels exactly like it has a date. You can even hear the date mechanism changing. I wouldn't be surprised if this is exactly the same movement as is in the date version, but without the date window, and possibly the date wheel.
Now for the most interesting part of this watch. The Traser Permanent Lighting System. I've made a close-up off the hands and part of the dial in which you can hopefully see the vials that are in the hands, and in the recessions in the raised ring around the dial.
These vials are little glass tubes, filled with a gas. This gas contains a small percentage of tritium, and apparently because the tritium is in the gas it gives a pretty good luminosity. Not only that, since it's fully contained there are supposed to be no safety risks related to the radio activity of the material. It makes me wonder why they put the radio activity symbol on the dial anyhow. What I do know, is that it works very well! It's quit different from Luminova, that is very bright immediately after having been exposed to a light source. Traser is totally independent from a light source, and will keep on working as long as the tritium is active. Apparently that means a useful life of at least 15 years.
I've made a few pictures that will show you nicely the difference between Luminova and Traser. I exposed the H3 and another watch that uses Luminova to a bright light source for about 10 sec, and then shut off all the lights. The first picture was taken immediately after the room went dark.
The second one after 5 min and already you can see that the Luminova is only a little brighter then the Traser.
The next picture was taken after 15 min and now you can see that the Traser is brighter then the Luminova.
The last picture was made only half an hour after the lights went out. Judge for yourself.
This is the only watch I own, that is readable under all light conditions, even after hours or days in the dark. I'm curious as to how it will perform in the cockpit during night flying. Luminova is pretty useless in those conditions, since there is no direct lighting on the watch to "charge" the Luminova, but there is enought lighting from other instruments and map lights not to let your eyes adjust to total darkness. The Traser should be just fine under those conditions. I think it's a great technology, and that alone makes this a good purchase.
So far, I'm very happy with the watch. It's functional, looks good, is great under poor light conditions, and it's cheap! Most watch aficionados have one or a few cheap watches for those circumstances that they don't want to wear their pride an joy. This is an excellent choice to fit that bill. And more then that, it's a very nice watch all by itself. Should you ever want to buy or suggest a watch for a relative or friend that is in the military, police force, construction or activities like that, this would be a very good choice. Hardly more expensive then a Swatch, but with all the style and credibility of a real military issue watch.
