Heritor Ryder Automatic Skeleton Watch - full disclosure

[noahdjango]

Hi everyone.
Over the past several years, I’ve taken an interest in watches. I don’t know a ton, but I can at least speak as a casual hobbyist.

Today the BB Shop has added a kinda handsome skeleton-dial watch with a post on the site, a “Heritor Ryder”. they no longer enable comments on shop posts, so I made this thread after checking it out with the resources I knew to check.

First off: I do not consider this watch to be a rip-off at the BB Shop price of $150 US.
BUT, I do not believe you are given a very good overview of the pros and cons of this watch in its post.

For me, the biggest red flag is that this model is GIGANTIC. now, if you’re into the current oversized watch trend, hey, go for it. but if you’re looking for a watch that wears in traditional-ish proportions, you’d better have a wrist like Schwarzenegger.

The case dimensions of a Heritor Ryder are 44mm wide (which BB lists) and 13mm thick (which it does not.) to give you an idea of what this actually looks like, I took some pictures. Here is my watch on my wrist. the case diameter is 37.5mm. My wrist is an under-male-average 6.5 inch/16.5 cm circumference, with a width shown at just over 2 inch or about exactly 5.5 cm.

[NOTE: my camera lens is distorting these macro shots, which appear a bit larger than life. but it is distorting my watch just as much as the bottle cap, so the comparison is equal]

now here’s a bottle cap that’s 45mm wide and 12mm thick, very close to the Heritor Ryder’s proportions.

also note that my strap is 18mm whereas the Ryder’s is 22, so it will be in proportion to its overall dimensions and not so thin looking like my strap looks against the bottle cap.

Now, on to value. Being a company I’d never heard of was only a little unusual, but in combination with the listing not identifying the movement used, it became another red flag. I found a forum post by a member of the NAWCC who has ID’d Heritor watches as using Miyota 8215 movements. Over on Caliber Corner, the Miyota 8215 is described as a well-known and established “workhorse” movement that costs around 50 bucks US and has an accuracy of -20 ~ +40 seconds-per-day. which is fair for this non-luxury automatic movement designed in 1977 by Citizen that today costs $40-50 (and that’s singly, Heritor is getting a bulk rate below that.) But it is by no means anything to write home about. In other words, Heritor claims a ridiculous MSRP so that the sale price seems awesome. The BB price is about right for this stainless steel Ryder with its Miyota, 50M water resistance, a fun display back, mineral glass (called “sapphire coated” but this is not a thing AFAIK and in any event I would not expect it to be anything good) and a “genuine” (i.e. not full-grain i.e. compressed scraps) leather band.

You are made to believe that the Heritor Ryder is a luxury product that is clearance priced on BB. It is not.

If you’re OK with the size, adjusting the time a few minutes on your day off, and like the looks; I say go for it. IMO, this is actually a nice looking skeleton dial, which aside from the cool factor tend to be ugly, or leaning too much on the flagging steampunk aesthetic, and usually both. Also, the indices on them tend to be missing for some reason, or are often inadequately visible against the busy skeleton. the Ryder avoids all this admirably. but damn the beast is big.

[Faffenreffer]

@noahdjango

called “sapphire coated”

“Sapphire coated” probably means that a thin film of aluminum oxide has been deposited on the watch glass. Al2O3 is often used as a vapor barrier on electronics: I guess it might theoretically provide some scratch resistance, though depositions are usually in the 1 to 5nm range so any benefit is going to be pretty small.

[noahdjango]

@Faffenreffer

any benefit is going to be pretty small.

yeah, without looking it up my assumption was it was something ineffective just so they could legally say “sapphire coated”. your input seems informed, thank you!

[noahdjango]

made a few edits for clarification.

to add, for $150, your best accuracy and overall value are the quartz movements.

there are Chinese brands that give a great value with better automatic or mechanical movements, usually by cloning a swiss movement. but I’ve never seen a skeleton of theirs that I personally found attractive. and Heritor is also Chinese, in case there was any doubt.

[teknocholer]

I have that identical model of Citizen on my very similar model of wrist right now. You’re right, it’s one of the few watches you can buy under 40mm diameter. The fad for wearing a hockey puck on one’s wrist seems to have started about 20 years ago, roughly the time when many were abandoning watches for cell phones.

Ironically, in the mid-20th century a thin case was a selling point since it was hard to make a thin mechanical movement. Now quartz movements that can be made very thin are put into 12mm thick cases.

In purely practical terms, the best approach seems to be to go dirt cheap. I have a plastic Casio analog quartz watch, 35mm diameter and 8mm thick, $20-$25 depending on the model. It’s a pleasure to wear, and like my Citizen it gains about 1 second per week, performance that mechanical watches can’t hope to match.

Of course, people don’t buy watches strictly for practical reasons.

[noahdjango]

yeah, a 40mm case is the low-end on width for many current models, although there is some indication that the trend is ending and the pendulum is fixing to swing the other way (oh, hey, a watch pun. sorry.)
the worst is when a company reissues a classic model of theirs but then enlarge the dial and case to modern size which throws off the proportions that made it a classic to begin with.

a notable exception was the Timex Marlin reissue in the original 34mm case size, very small today but was one of the “trying to be as small as possible” models you allude to in its time.

I doubt the movement is anything too amazing, but very handsome watch all-around, decent price and classic size