I got this watch as a real bargain, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting too much from it. I was indeed very wrong!
This is one of those few watches that really take your breath away when you open the box for the first time. I think the main things that did it for me was:
- It was much larger than I had imagined,
- The dial colour and pattern is exquisite, and
- The contrast between the white dial and the great shaped strap really make it stand out
It is very much an IWC Ingenieur homage, sharing the style of the case and strap shape. The strap is lovely, very comfortable and the wide lugs give the watch a very large presence. As it is a quartz watch, it is extremely light, very thin, and you hardly notice it on your wrist. Not many of my watches have the day complication, so it is nice to have it on the C2.
The face is lovely, with the vertical guilloche lines giving it texture, and the logo and “Swiss Made” print in black giving it great contrast. It has very nicely machined steel baton hour markers, which have a nice bevel on them giving them nice depth. The hands are in a similar design. They are very baton shaped, with a nice little arrow at the end. Not great lume though. There are tiny lume dots at 12, 3, 6 and 9.
I like the bezel, with its circles slightly sunken into the hour marker positions. The crown also appears to be very well machined, with the CW logo on it. It has a screw down crown.
The crystal is very flat, very large, and has a lovely anti-reflective coating. This really makes the watch appear even more expensive than it is.
The strap is the usual very good Christopher Ward quality leather, and the butterfly deployment clasp is also very impressive as always too. These are more or less the same on all their straps, and rightly so. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
The backplate has holes for the removal tool, giving it a very industrial feel to it. The CW logo and all text are nice and deeply engraved.
Some specs:
7 jewel Swiss made quartz movement – ETA 955.122
Diameter of 40mm
Case made of high quality 316L stainless steel (same as Rolex)
Convex sapphire crystal (sapphire is second only to diamond in hardness so nothing will scratch the crystal! Apart from an engagement ring…)
Crystal covered with anti-reflective coating giving it a gorgeous blue hue when you get the light right
Water resistant to 10ATM / 100metres
Quick adjustable strap with butterfly clasp
Day/date window
Beautiful retro styled guilloche dial – lovely vertical lines giving the face great texture
Screw in crown with cool “CW” on it
All in all, a fantastic watch! It is definitely one of my favourites. Unfortunately, CW have stopped making the quartz version, and now only make the C20, which is an Automatic. This is still a great watch mind you, but not quite as amazing bang-for-your-buck ratio as the C2.
So basically, if you have a chance to get one of these (now quite rare) watches, I would suggest you do so!
