Orient CDD00001W Pocket Watch Review

It's a pocket watch. It is also a nice pocket watch. Further still, it is a Japanese pocket watch, and from Orient Japan. Not what you expect to see these days, but there is still a market for pocket watches, and you might be one of those people who want one. Pocket watches have a sort of romance to them. Something from another era, when telling the time was a classy occasion. Back when not everyone could afford a watch - and having one meant you meant something.

Pocket watches today are admittedly rare, especially new ones. But here is an interesting one that is probably a good fit for anyone who might want one. Further, it houses the very first manually wound movement made by Orient. Until now, they have been making automatic movements (that don't feature hand winding). As far as pocket watches go, with Orient CDD00001W (which I will just refer to as the "Orient Pocket Watch") is relatively small. It is actually the size of a modern modestly sized watch at 40mm wide. A nice feature for those people who don't want to carry around large pocket watches. There is another reason for the small size. The Orient Caliber 48C40 movement is actually made to go into a watch. It just isn't in one yet (that I know of). It hearkens a future of more sophisticated movements made by the over 50 year old mechanical watch maker from Japan. Orient already makes a full line of nice mechanical watches, but I see them slowly moving up market a bit. The movement has a 40 hour power reserve, with a hour reserve indicator on the dial, and an escapement that beats are 21,600 bhp (beats/rotations per hour). Lastly, the movement features a hack seconds functions that stops the seconds hand when you full the crown out.

In the future, I anticipate that Orient will have a full line of manually wound watches, and then eventually watches that have both manual winding, and automatic winding (just as Swiss automatic movements do). Orient takes the time to decorate the movement with perlage polishing. Overall I am happy with the movement as it has nice operation and is made Orient themselves. It is a nice value for the money. Feels smooth in operation, and it is nice to wind via the top-mounted crown. It has all the feeling you want from a traditional style manually wound mechanical movement. You can see the movement through the sapphire caseback window. Lovers of this genre can't really go wrong.