Nivada Grenchen Super Antartic Owner Review : Comfortable, historical and disconcerting

It's a pretty watch, at first glance, with a perfect design and dimensions, especially for modest wrists, close to the original. Very comfortable to wear. The case back is also well decorated with a gold penguin engraving. However, it suffers from some critical flaws that give it a low-end appearance: overly polished case, not sufficiently crafted; font not very clear; insufficient anti-reflective coating. Added to this are the applied indexes, the watch generates a lot of reflections and can be difficult to read. The mechanism, a little-known Landeron 21, is well adjusted, but the crown is unpleasant: it's difficult to explain, but only a small part of the rotation seems to stick (noise and feel of the gears), the rest seems to spin sluggishly in a vacuum. It's odd and doesn't give an impression of solidity. Other surprises: - Swiss Made watch but shipped from Hong Kong (a real shame, with the risk of additional customs fees); Serious doubts about Swiss manufacturing given the overall quality, which is quite poor; - catastrophic communication with support: always polite but a real pain, generic responses, sometimes very slow (1 week), most of the time off topic. A lot of energy wasted trying to get them to do something. In short, it's a big disappointment. The finishing touches of a watch costing <€500, when it's selling for almost €1,000. Move on if you want a quality watch; it's really for die-hard Nivada fans who want a reissue and won't be too picky.