Traser H3 T100 Red Alert

Another excellent watch from Traser H3.
I've 4 Traser watches and this is by far the brightest.
It's relatively small on the wrist but looks massive in the dark. The bezel is particularly good. It's understated in terms of looks but if you need a watch that's visible in low light you won't go wrong with this one.

Never had a problem with mine. Been with me to Nepal, Namibia and Nuneaton! Still going strong

At first glance this should be an awesome watch. It's the first one that I've seen where the numerals on the bezel are all actually illuminated using tritium vials, as are all three hands. There are also small tritium vials marking the hour positions. Very, very easy to *estimate* what the time is in very dark or total darkness conditions.

I say *estimate* because the actual hour numbers are printed in very dark grey on a mat black facia. The minute tick marks are also printed in very dark grey on a black ring. This makes reading the watch *accurately* very difficult in anything other than bright light conditions, somewhat negating the purpose of having all those tritium vials mounted on the hands, facia and inside the bezel.

The pictures of the watch here on the shop are somewhat inaccurate - the metal is actually much darker than it appears in the photos and is quite clearly stainless steel with a black PVD coating. The quality of the PVD coating is excellent, as is the quality of the machining of the stainless steel.

One quite serious criticism I have is that the ring on which the minute marks are mounted isn't correctly aligned with the minute hand, second hand or the rotating bezel. It's not seriously out of alignment, but it's more than enough to notice and is frankly unacceptable quality assurance on a watch of this price. The watch itself keeps very accurate time which is good and is very easy to adjust.

My final criticism is of the strap lugs - unlike most true military watches this watch does not have fixed lugs but instead has spring loaded ones. These are I suppose more useful for putting a metal bracelet on the watch but the spring loaded lugs are nowhere near as strong as fixed ones would be. The spring loaded lugs are also completely unnecessary as the watch is obviously intended to use a "NATO" style watch strap which are specifically designed to be put on watches that have fixed lugs!

I do like this watch, I like its looks a lot and it's very usefully waterproof down to 200m. All that being said, the unacceptably poor dial alignment and spring loaded lugs mean that I would never consider using this watch for any serious outdoor activities or military missions, and it's squarely at these things that the watch is obviously aimed. It looks good, but I couldn't trust it to cope with what it purports to be for.

If Traser ever read this - sort out your quality assurance and replace the strap lugs with fixed ones. These changes would easily make this a 5 star watch and actually worth the price. As it stands though, this struggles to get 3 stars.