I’ve always been fond of supper-compressor watches, I was on a hunt for a vintage one for so long, I looked at Fortis, Benrus, Bulova, Hamilton as well as the Orient King Diver, but never pulled the trigger on any.
It seems that most of the well known brands did a super-compressor at a certain point of time, as if this was the fashion back then!
Then I came across the gorgeous Longines Legend Diver, which is a re-issue for a classic watch with a modern intake, but kept the vintage feel and look along the way.
The LLD became a grail for me for so long, till one day I came across the Landeron Super-Compressor; which I found on WUS and it was super affordable;
Then a different quest has started; I was trying to research this watch, but couldn’t find much information.
Landeron has a french website but again I couldn’t get much knowledge from there.
One day I managed to get hold of the owner by email, we exchanged a couple and in a week time it arrived safely to its new home.
I’m not sure what is the relation between these modern Landeron watches, and the legendary Swiss Landeron that was very famous for its Chronograph Movements. I inquired but the question was not answered; specially on their french website, they are selling some vintage watches as well; but this one was marked as New and not as “N.O.S”
Anyways back to this master-piece; the case is very well constructed, it measures about 40 mm width, and about 47 mm tall, lug to lug. All polished surfaces with nice curved lugs that really hugs the wrist nicely.
There are no details whether this is a NOS case with a modern movement, or a new manufactured case for this particular model.
The doomed acrylic crystal is very nice, sits well on the case, and it gives the watch a wonderful vintage feel.
It has 2 remarkably sized crowns, the 4 o’clock one is to set the time, the 2 o’clock one to move the inner bezel, and by the way the inner bezel movement is very smooth, not flimsy or loose by any means; just perfect.
The dial is very well printed, actually it is brilliant! I would say it has a little tribute to the vintage Omega Seamaster 300 Master as well.
This watch is powered by a simple Miyota 8215, although there is an ETA 2824-2 option, but for almost double the price; I went with the cheaper option, and I’m not regretting it at all.
I have Miyota’s powered watches and they are extremely accurate to the second; and this one no difference, it is very accurate.
The case back is very simple with nothing engraved but the WR rating, All Stainless Steel and a serial number.
The watch came with a vintage racing leather strap with a deployment clasp; which I’m not fond of, specially the racing theme which doesn’t really match the diver’s watch, but it was of good quality and I’ve got a deployment clasp that I can use with another strap, so no complains here.
The weakest point in my opinion is the lume, which doesn’t really exist on the dial, and a bit better on the hands. I would say this watch will be just gorgeous if it glows in the dark.
Overall I’m very happy with this watch, and it definitely gets a lot of wrist time.
To sum it up, this is an extremely well built watch with nice inner rotating bezel for a very affordable price, probably less than 1/10 of the LLD price.
If it has better lume, I would say this watch will be nearly perfect.
And now some more pics!
