Buy the Bulova Precisionist 98B316 on Amazon
Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Intro
hey guys welcome back to my channel dem crumley’s tech today i’m pretty excited i’m gonna be reviewing the bulova precisionist chronograph watch now this is reference 98b 316.
before i bought this watch i looked at a lot of videos and i noticed most of the videos were for the other chronograph which is with the yellow sweeping second hand you can see here this has a white sweeping second hand so the yellow version i’ll just call it in the rest of the video is reference 96 b 175 and that’s what i saw most videos on so i want to highlight this watch which is like i said the 96b 316 it has blue accents and the white sweeping second hand so i’m not a watch expert let’s get that out of the way first um however i do really like bulova’s watches and i think it’s a brand that doesn’t get a lot of recognition or appreciation so i really wanted to highlight that and you know just if anyone’s looking for a new watch you know this is a brand that i would seriously consider for the technology that you get in there and you know the price and the value one of the biggest draws for me to this watch was that smooth continual sweeping of the second hand similar to what they had in the beloved’s original watches which were the acatron line and if you know a bit about beloveda’s history when the acatron first came out it was the most accurate watch at that time and you know it did have that sweeping second hand and i do have another bulova watch which is an accutron that kind of got me started and i wanted to get something else that was a bit more rugged than the accutron that i have and when i saw this precisionist watch this pretty much sealed the deal for me okay so just a quick bit of information before we get started so below this acutron model of watches and precisionus model of watches they’re known for their excellence in timekeeping and accuracy now this is a quartz movement watch and most quartz movements they operate at a frequency of 32 768 hertz however this precisionist watch operates at a frequency of 262 000 kilohertz which is eight times more than a traditional quartz watch so these are not in the same league as you know any standard types of quartz watch you would buy this difference in operating frequency is pretty significant and that’s what makes these watches some of the most accurate in the world in fact the first acatron from bulova was the most accurate watch in the world for a while you know surpassing mechanical watches now this particular watch is accurate to within 10 seconds per calendar year which is really impressive most mechanical watches you know at the high end they’re probably accurate to a couple of seconds every day now this is for 10 seconds for an entire year so it’s significantly more accurate than most mechanical watches that you’ll find so both this model and the other yellow model that i referenced which was reference 96 b175 they typically go for 800 us or the equivalent would be around a thousand canadian however they do go a bit lower when you find them on sale now let’s get it out of the
Dimensions
way first this is a huge watch it’s big it’s heavy and those who value simplicity or you know having that feeling that you’re not really wearing something this is definitely not the watch for you if those are the things you value now getting into the measurements the case diameter on this watch is 46.5 millimeters wide now if you take into account from the crown to the side of the watch then it’s more like 49 millimeters wide from lug to lug it’s about 53 millimeters and the actual thickness of the watch is 17.5 millimeters so this is quite a thick watch in terms of the weight of this watch i believe when it ships with all of the links it’s about 262 grams heavy my watch currently is 251 grams and that’s because i’ve removed three of the links that it came with my wrist uh the width of my restory is 55 millimeters wide so to accommodate the watch for you know a comfortable fit i had to remove three of the links and again like i said that leaves it at around 251 grams which is pretty heavy if you don’t like wearing heavy watches thankfully that doesn’t bother me and i like feeling the feeling of wearing a heavy watch so this is great for me now looking at the front of the watch one of the things you
Exterior Details
first notice is or sorry are these large hex screws and there’s four of them one in each corner and these are removable actually although i haven’t tried i have seen images of it removed looking at the actual front of the watch now so this is a curved mineral crystal unfortunately it’s not sapphire so just keep that in mind now one thing to note about this glass is due to the curvature let’s see if i can show that to you so due to the curvature of this glass depending on the angle that you’re looking at it could be well it is going to be impossible to tell the time if it’s angled too much and that’s one common complaint that i saw mentioned by people who own this watch so you do have to have the watch facing directly um at your face or you know pretty much directly to be able to read the time now i do really like the curved the curved glass so it’s not something that bothers me but if you’re expecting to read it from every single angle just keep that in mind looking at the exterior of this watch it’s an all stainless steel design and you can see that the color tone here is a two-tone color so you have the stainless steel here and this part up here is darker maybe you can call it kind of like a gunmetal whereas when you look at the yellow version or the 96b 175 reference is just all uniform in terms of the color now looking at the side of the watch you can see that the main housing here you have this brushed metal which is really really well done and above that let’s see if i can grab focus here you have this top part which houses the glass that has really nice and detailed knurling on it one of the areas where i think bulova did a great job is on the watch band so you can see here it’s a very well made watch band take my word for it it’s quite heavy it feels very robust i know i’m not going to have any issues with this watch band but there’s a lot of detail that went into this watchman you can see here if i give you a side profile that the watch links they don’t just sit flat and there is some separation so you can see here that the very top is this polished polished metal here and then it leads into this brushed brush metal at the bottom and that just keeps cascading down to the end here now another detail is these this line this divot here that goes right through all the all of the watch the watch links so it’s very well made the sides are beautifully polished as well as you can see so it’s a really well made watch band really solid and it feels really good when you’re wearing it it’s not uncomfortable and so far i haven’t had any pinched hairs or anything like that looking at the clasp on this watch so you have a double press fold over clasp with a safety lock as well there is also a diver’s extension right there if you need it so when it comes to changing the batteries or getting service on this watch it’s a screw back style and at the back of the watch you can see there’s the precisionus logo there and you have to below the logo up there as well looking at the crown of the watch you can see that it has these ridges here which make it easy to grip the crown to loosen it or tighten it there’s also a bolova logo at the side of the crown so on this reference model you can see
Interior Details
that the sweeping second hand is white and then you have that precisionist logo at the opposite end of the swooping second hand as well the two hands up here to tell one tenth of a second and one one hundredth of a second those are two separate indicator hands one is blue and then one is white on the other watch which is the yellow model the 96 b175 the sweeping second hand would be yellow and those two indicator hands would be yellow and white another design feature to take note of is the hour hand and the minute hand so they have this skeleton design which lets you read the text or the information under them and this is something that has not bothered me i’ve been able to tell the time easily however online i have noticed some users they’ve mentioned that the skeleton design makes it more difficult for them to read the time now while this watch is great in many respects one of the downfalls of this watch is the power of the loom i’ve noticed that even on a bright day when i go into a darker environment the loom is really really weak so i would say if you’re often in dark situations or dark environments sorry that this loom is not going to deliver for you and if that’s a big factor you’re probably going to be disappointed with this watch one really nice thing about the face of this watch is all the dials are symmetrical so it looks really nice and i also like the font style chosen for the text it’s very easy to read at a glance there is also uh if you can see here a nice looking um pearlite on this side here which then leads into the carbon fiber back dial and there’s also the date feature which is located between four and five and when you rotate the watch you can see from the carbon fiber it gives off kind of like a little sheen it looks really nice same with that prolage if you look at the indicators for the hours from 12 1 2 3 you can see that they’re varying in terms of the length of them and that’s to accommodate for the difference in the dial diameters each indicator is a polished steel with a loom applied to the top but like i mentioned again i would not count too heavily on this loom so one of the differences between this watch and the other version which is with the yellow sweeping hand the reference 96b 175 is that this watch it shows um the operating frequency here which is the 262 000 kilohertz that i mentioned earlier on the other watch with the yellow sweeping hand that text is not there however it does show 300 meters water resistance on both watches looking at the dials on the swatch so this upper dial here lets you measure in the one tenth of a second and one hundredths of a second and like i said there’s two separate hands there’s a blue indicator hand and a white indicator hand it’s hard to tell but those are stacked on each other and the right dial shows the hours for the chronograph the left style shows the minutes for the chronograph and this bottom dial shows 1 1 000 of a second so in terms of the button functions this button at the bottom left here is the mode button and this puts the watch into chronograph mode so you can see once i press that the sweeping second hand is going to go all the way to 12 and once it’s at 12 that means you’re ready to use the chronograph mode so just keep that in mind that anytime you’re going to use that function you do have to wait for that second hand to go into the 12 position now one really cool thing about this watch is that the watch will maintain internal timing so that when you’re done with the chronograph feature is going to pick back up where it should be so you’re not going to lose any time which again goes to you know just the accuracy that’s put into these watches now i’m going to demonstrate how that works
Chronograph Feature
so with the mode button selected putting the second hand at 12 we know we’re in the chronograph mode the next button we’re going to press is this one at the top right here which is to start now if you look here i’m going to see if i can get you focused what’s going to happen when we press that is that these indicator hands in the dial to measure one tenth and one hundredths of a second they’re going to start spinning so let’s do that now it may be hard to tell but there’s actually two dials sorry two indicator hands up above there that are spinning and those will spin up until 30 seconds once it hits 30 seconds they stop spinning now they don’t stop keeping track of how much time has elapsed but i believe they do stop spinning maybe to save battery or maybe there’s a limitation with the watch keeping track of that plus that internal timing i was mentioning so you can see at 30 seconds they’ve completely stopped so let’s just say for example we finished our timing and i’m going to stop the chronograph here you can see that now the two indicator hands have actually gone to the correct reading so while they have stopped spinning they are now showing us the final time so you would read from here um how many hours minutes elapsed one tenth of a second one hundredth of a second and down at the bottom here at the dial above six if that blue hand shows um one thousandth of a second now to reset everything you would just hit this button here and it’s going to put the second hand back into 12.
now when you’re done with this mode all you have to do is to press the mode button again and you’re going to go back into the regular time keeping so let’s just pay attention what happens when i hit this to exit you’re going to see the the second hand sweep until it catches back up with where it should be so from where we started chronograph it won’t go there it’s gonna go to what the real time should be so let’s take a look at that there you can see almost around 20 seconds it just started that continual sweep again so it’s a nice fluid smooth motion it’s really a joy to use that function on this watch so now that i’ve explained how the chronograph feature works i just want to show a demonstration again really quickly so pay attention to the second hand and we’re gonna stop it at 25 seconds so i’m going to press the mode button right here at 25 seconds and that’s going to put us into chronograph mode and what we’re going to do now is we’re going to take a quick reading so let’s just say we’re timing something and it was just five seconds so let’s stop it at five seconds now when we exit chronograph mode here we did stop with the sweeping second hand at 25 so let’s exit and you’ll see where the swooping second hand stops there you go so because it’s maintaining that internal timing you know you’re not going to lose a second when you exit out of chronograph mode now i also have a bulova acutron 2 surveyor which is reference 96b 213 and you can see it has that nice continuous sweeping motion too so i’m just going to put it side by side so we can see if there’s a difference in the sweep movement and i’ve looked at both of these and i can’t tell if there’s a difference maybe you can but i do think you know for this being an older watch the sweep looks just as good as on the precisionist line i think a lot of
Summary
people sleep on this brainerd flies under their radar you know it’s not something i hear a lot of people talking about and it’s not a brand that i see that often so you know making this video i really just wanted to highlight and shine some light on this brand and if you’re looking for a new watch i really think you can do well with anything from below this aquatron line or the below the precision s line um like i said you know they’re very good you know they’re they excel in accuracy you know you’re only going to lose you know 10 seconds a year with this range whereas like i said high-end mechanical watches you could be losing seconds per day you know you add that up and you know easily you’re looking at a minute within a month so this is a really great watch to start with if you’re looking to get into bulova or even you know high you know high accuracy quartz watches if you have any questions or if i missed anything about the watch you know let me know down below in the comments i’m also super interested in hearing about your experiences with bulova watches like i said you know i’ve just kind of started collecting so this is only my second bulova watch so i’d really be interested in hearing from those of you who owned this watch or you know other precisionless watches or just really any bulova watch in general what your experiences were like you know longevity battery life things like that um just comment down below and i’ll see you guys in the next video thanks goodbye
Buy the Bulova Precisionist 98B316 on Amazon
Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.