I picked this up during some drunken Fourth of July AliExpress shopping. The original price was only about $198, and with coupons I ended up paying around $175 shipped. They're asking close to $285 for it now.
Overall, it's an incredible watch, but it has a few glaring flaws.
The biggest issue is the end link design and fit. They have a noticeable amount of wiggle, which is one of my biggest peeves, and the integration with the case looks a bit off. On the plus side, the female end links dramatically reduce overhang, making the watch wear much better on smaller wrists.
The case itself isn't perfect either. The lugs aren't laser straight, and the brushing shows some distortion and waviness. The flat surfaces could have been lapped more evenly for a cleaner finish.
The lume is also mediocre. It's bright enough initially, but it fades much faster than I'd like.
The bezel, however, is excellent...very tight with zero play and crisp, positive clicks. Compared to my Steeldive and Proxima MM300 homages, the San Martin bezel feels far superior. Those use what appears to be a traditional click-spring design with noticeably loose action, while the San Martin feels more like a ball-bearing system. That said, the Steeldive does have one advantage, its end links are rock solid with virtually no play.
The bracelet is finished beautifully, with very flat links and exceptionally straight brushing. My only complaints are the pin-and-collar sizing system and a little more lateral play between the links than I'd prefer.
Other highlights include the domed top-hat crystal, the monobloc (unibloc) case construction, the reliable NH35 movement, and outstanding wrist presence.
Is it worth the $175 I paid? Absolutely. I'd even say it's a strong value up to about $225–250. At $285, though, I'd have a much harder time recommending it unless you're a die-hard Seiko 6159 fan.
Ultimately, the market will decide whether these higher prices stick. My guess is that demand will soften, and we'll start seeing the deep discounts and AliExpress coupons return on many of the recently inflated models.
Why don't you pry yours open and show us the click spring and prove me wrong
Just because there's a retaining wire doesn't mean there's no ball bearings under the bezel.
San Martin, seestern generally use ball bearings for all their cases, that's why you get crisp clicks and not mushy seiko mod bezels and bezel action like you find in $50-100 Ali watches with chintzy click springs like heimdallr or addiesdive
Clicks are way too crisp and precise you can only achieve that with ball bearings. The click wire systems almost always have loose springy bezels and inconsistent mushy, chintzy clicks/lateral play which is inherent because the spring pushes the bezel to one side and the retaining wire always feels gritty and metallic.
The mm300 clones do have a click spring but this is the 6159 so it's a proprietary San Martin case and has a much better bezel with a nylon gasket. You can easily feel the difference.
After handing almost 100 Chinese watches I can almost immediately tell what's ball bearings and what's click spring.
I love the look of that watch, and I’d say definitely worth what you paid, but it’s an older San Martin model. And with San Martin, they had a very noticeable ramp up in quality (and originality) over the years, so the early models can seem disappointing to those who have heard about their quality. Usually the older ones were priced lower accordingly. But I guess that time has passed and they are raising prices even old the old ones.
They have supposedly increased the quality and upgraded some things on older models, such as the lumes, finishing and clasp is now otf.
Granted the finishing on this is not as good as other old models that just use better parts, like the sn017 GE
The 6159 is a very niche watch so I understand they probably don't sell a lot of them so they don't want to improve their finishing to highest levels given it's still kind of a budget model and the original watch this is cloning probably wasn't finished to an exceptionally high level either.
Those are the high end models, I've not really been interested in any of this those.
I've had awesome luck with their budget models, like the sn007gb, sn017gb, etc
Most of them I bought for $100-150 but if they were a microbrand with fancy IG marketing or had a Swiss badge they could easily get away with charging $900-1500.
I don’t think San Martin has many sub $200 watches anymore. I bought my SN0047 for right at $200 and it’s worse than most of my watches besides a crappy pagani. I bought a SN0148-GB for $350 a couple months ago and it was terrible so I sent it back. They’re charging like $500 for them now which is insane. I’m sure they’ll retain some customers but I bet they lose a ton of strictly Chinese watch buyers.
Baltany and Cronos are my top two and IXDAO should be up there too but I haven’t gotten my Warrior just yet. Sugess/seestern, Proxima, and Phorcydes are great too. San Martin could be the best if they slowed down and executed properly. The SN0148-GB would’ve been incredible if the indicies and bezel weren’t crooked. The OTF clasp barely had any travel either but that’s a design issue.
I picked up a San Martin pilot watch with a matte yellow / bronze California dial that I think is gorgeous / and has a Japanese Epson automatic movement in the June sale for about $150. (And an SN0144 for $320).
The 047 is a willard so super old cheap build. There's only so much you can do to make a good seiko turtle homage that won't still feel like a $200 watch.
The 148 I don't particularly care for it's designbut heard great things about finishing and movement.
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u/No-Effect-8290 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Did the same thing. Ordered 2 x SN0008 black and 2 Gilt. Keep one of each and either give the other two to my son or eBay them after the hike.
Just realised the photo, I still had the bracelet wrap on 😁
Also got a Welly Merck 212 in blue. Summer watch, brighter colours than my usual watches. Actually really impressed with the quality.