The Breitling Watch Source Forums

At the moment, I have two OfficialTime winders, one used by me, one by my wife. In about a year of use, I've had to replace both motor heads on the one my wife uses because they became extremely noisy. Dealing with customer service from OfficialTime was so-so, PM me for more of the story.

Now one of the motors on the winder I use is starting to die. So I'm thinking I might give up on these and try another brand. I'm also considering building one myself with an Arduino board(as a self-respecting MAKE magazine subscriber, I have to consider it).

But as for other brands, I know Orbita has a good reputation. Wolf has a decent one. What about others? I'd love to hear people's direct experiences.

Underwood are very good - but a little more pricey than Orbita. They you are in to the very high end stuff. Don't have much experience with the mid range ones so can't comment beyond that, but I'm sure others will.

Anecdotally, I have heard good things of Eilux

Not really building your oen, but Orbita sell heads only so that you can case them yourself - I think they are around $300 per head.

Buy a cheap one, either a double which would do both of you or two singles. I was buying my first winder a while back and was caught up in the dilemma of cheap v dear.. I decided on cheap Under 50Euro.. both do the same job and if, in your case, it brakes buy another... That said where
I keep mine one only myself will see it because it does look cheap. If it was in a place of prominence like a office of in the living room I would rethink.. Only my thoughts..
Regards
Breanach78

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Breanach78

A Few Breitlings.

I use Underwood winders, and I really like them. As said, not the cheapest one out there, but so far (the oldest have now been running the winding program for three consecutive years) not a single problem and that's worth a lot to me.

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Collection: http://s540.photobucket.com/albums/gg32 ... mview=grid

I've no vast experience, but I bought an inexpensice Belocia brand and it works great. I did put it on a programmable timer, recommended, so it doesn't run through it's own set on/off schedule.

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UN Maxi Marine Ti
B01, BEB
SOH
Aerospace Ti
Chrono SO
Omega 300 Master Co-Axial Chro
Omega PO Chrono.
AP ROO Diver
Titan Black Rolex DSOD Honeycomb Dial

Just a heads up, I don't remember exactly, but I believe that there was an Orbita and Eilux on Timezone yesterday for sale. They were both in excellent condition and offered at 50% or so off from retail.

*Disclaimer* They aren't mine and I don't know the seller!

Oh yeah, as a followup up to my previous reply. In my experience, even the best die or have problems eventually. I purchased this one a year or two ago:

http://mywatchmaker.net/winders.htm

It's much cheaper in price vs the competitors and has near the quality of some 4x it's price. Mine has been running perfectly with a couple heavy lings or pams constantly on the heads. It also gets rave reviews (although they may be biased) on Timezone and some other forums.

Wow, sorry to hear your OT winder is playing up. I've had no issues at all with mine in over two years, but I guess that just goes to highlight my oft made point that getting a decent winder from ANYWHERE is a completely hit and miss affair. In fact (and I've said this before as well) I personally think the whole watch-winder industry is a complete and utter rip-off.

Hopefully you didn't pay too much for your OT, dhallam - that way I guess at least you can consider them to be reasonably disposable. I'd hate to have spent something like Buben & Zorweg money, only to find something like that going wrong.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I'd like to add to it. I have an Orbita Sparta two watch winder. It seems to keep my watches fully wound. The question I have is this. There are two settings. 10 and 15. I think this relates to either 10 or 15 rotations per hour. The rotor / winder does not spin around in any direction. What it does is rotate around every 4 - 6 mins depending on the setting and the watch then "flops" around in both directions. Usually flops about 3 - 4 times in each direction before stopping.

The question is this. Is this unique for the Orbita winders or is this the standard?

R/

It's an approach that Orbita developed to reduce wear on the motor and save battery power (as Spartas are designed to be battery run) by using gravity to assist with the rotation.