Lew & Huey Acionna Analog Classic Automatic Miyota Cal. 9015 Blue Dial Men's Watch

Hi World,So that waaaaaaay overdue review of my "recently" received black-dialled Lew & Huey Acionna. I put "recently" in quotes 'cos I received it weeks ago, but work, the annual family skiing holiday, and then back to work, all got in the way.Anyways, I'm here now, and so here it is.Ahem.First thing I need to say is that the Acionna is the best looking sports watch I have in my collection, and that's a box containing a bunch of photogenic beauties, the Vostok Amfibia 1967 and the Beijing ZunJue (I receive a monthly an email from someone asking me "if ever you want to sell the ZunJue...") being the obvious examples. I don't know what mojo juice the designer at Lew & Huey was drinking when he drew up the Acionna, but if there's anything left in the bottle then we may be in for yet another treat in the near future. Is it the dual crowns balancing up the right side? Or the depth of the dial? Or the chunk of brushed metal that makes up the case? Or that perfectly polished outer bezel? Or those retro numbers? The lume tubes? The fabulous hands? The fabulous matched bracelet? Erm, dunno.Seems to be a melange of the lot that somehow comes together to make the watch look like *that*. Seems to me that in this case the beautiful whole really is the sum of a set of very attractive parts.Right, what's next?Ah yes the inner bezel. It rotates nicely with a bit of a ratchety click, and stays where I left it. Purists will faint, but the feel of the crown that rotates the inner bezel is *very* similar to the Jaeger leCoultre Memovox alarm I tried on a few weeks ago (I know, I know, maybe next year). Very similar, indeed. What does that mean in terms of its bona fides as a true diver? Well, thinking back to my PADI diving days (sod that, prefer bobbin' about with a snorkle these days) I'd say it makes no difference at all; I'd buy myself a $80 Scuba Dude and wear it on the outside of my neoprene wetsuit. But actually the bezel is just as useful as any other desk diver for timing chicken on the barbecue or laps of my usual mountain biking loop. Look, the watch is good down to 200 metres, but do I really wanna immerse something as lovely as this in nasty salt water? Or risk knocking it against some scratchy coral? Or scrape it on sand? Nah. Bit like a fancy sports car, innit; yer want to know it can, but yer don't *really* wanna chew up its tyres on a sub-twelve minute lap of the Nürburgring, do yer?The bracelet is *great*. It's comfortable, doesn't strip the gorilla hairs from my wrist, doesn't add any undue weight, looks good, the clasp works nicely, it meets the sides of the case perfectly, and its even brushed in the *same* direction as the case. Read that again, folks. The alignment of the direction of brushing is a small detail that many $5,000 sports watches get wrong (cough, cough, Omega, cough, cough, cough). The Acionna gets that right.More details: the sapphire crystal is, erm, sapphire, and it's flat. The flatness is intentional to help minimise the height of the watch, its height quota being instead spent on the depth of that dial. Oh, that dial. It's three dimensional, that's all I can say. The inner bezel sets up the depth, and the polished outer bezel finishes it. The depth acts as an internal stage for those good looking hands, the applied markers and those lumed batons, each of which are likewise three dimensional. I tried to capture that depth and dimensionality on a couple of the pickies, but with mixed success. Go buy yer own and see what I mean.The lume is good, by the way. I charged it up using the brief winter morning sun on the way to the office, and it lit up nicely in the spooky underground parking especially the numbers which are pretty much all lume. Yeah, I could imagine a diver using this watch at 30 metres on a gloomy day.The dual crowns are nicely machined with the sort of grooves that you'd find on rally timing equipment from the 1960s. A nice retro touch, that. The winding crown has the Lew & Huey WiFi dog logo nicely and deeply etched. I like that.And the Miyota 9015 movement deserves a paragraph. It hacks (I *do* like a movement that hacks), it's accurate (mine currently gains about 5 seconds a day when worn continuously), looks great through the exhibition window at the back, and the rotor is way quieter than any of the Swiss auto movements in various watches I've owned past and present. This Miyota is an eye opener for anyone who still believes that that stock fare of ETA is superior to anything from outside of Switzerland. I *love* this movement.Lemme spell it out: stock Miyota 9015 equals yum.Where was I?What's left to gripe about? Erm, not a lot. The date window doesn't match the dail in exactly the same way as a $25,000 gold Rolex Submariner doesn't. Nor does a $300,000 black-dialled platinum split seconds Patek Philippe, for that matter. Should I go on, or should we leave it with the Patek? Any other gripe? Erm, can't see a single detail that's wrong. Nothing. It's a design classic that owes a little something to a bunch of 1960s-70s design classics, but nothing major to any one of them in particular. In terms of design, the Acionna stands on its own two feet. Erm, two crowns. It stands on its own two crowns.Ahh, we need to mention the cost. Is a smudge under $600 a *lot* for a fantastic looking diver watch with sapphire crystal, good down to 200 metres (erm, that's over twice the average depth of the North Sea, folks, so say hello to the codfish for me), has a rotatable inner bezel, fully lumed and applied markers, a great bracelet that matches it perfectly, an *excellent* movement that everyone should have somewhere in the collection, *and* a myriad of thoughtful design details that watches at ten times or more the price don't bother with?Personally, I think it's excellent value. Go buy one and report back here with pictures when yer done.Respect, Lew & Huey.Ric

This is a well designed, unique timepiece. Proportions are strong, but the watch is not too bulky. Compares very favorably to my much more expensive time pieces. The high beat movement creates a silky smooth sweep to the seconds hand. A must have. You won't be disappointed.