So the past few weeks I’ve been fortunate enough to have my mitts on the Paulin Modul D Quartz. 

And I think it proves to me that a boring watch can be a fun one. So this is a black dial field watch esque ETA quartz powered watch right – that sounds boring. At £450 you could consider it an alternative to a Hamilton Khaki Field Quartz or some such – good but boring watches.

39mm wide, 8.2mm thick, it’s thin and quite wearable. The 40mm lug to lug makes it wear in a rather interesting, almost tank like watch way. Which of course is what this is edging for, Paulin refer to this as a tonneau case – so think like you’d see with Cartier, Frank Muller or Richard Mille. 

On this mesh bracelet I’d call it enthusiast pleasing. With a sort of 70s esque neo-futuristic design it’s harking back to the past’s look forward to the future. Which is pretty cool. The tonneau case brings that classical shape but the font, the handset it’s modernism and minimalism colliding. If you saw this on the wrist of a character in the case of 2001 a Space Odyssey you wouldn’t be surprised.

The mesh bracelet is potentially the most comfortable I’ve worn in ages. So much so I’m considering picking one up for my 36mm Omega Seamaster 300m as an alternative to the classic SMP bracelet.

While for £450 you might be considering a citizen tsuyosa, perhaps even a seiko prospex of some sort or microbrand piece like a Brew metric or a Baltic. But this paulin modul has 2 key selling points up its sleeve.

Now the first is what’s going on with that dial. Paulin are the sub brand of anordain and as such they commit to producing amazing dials. So this watch has a lacquer dial, so just like the one that we raved about that came to the Omega Aqua Terra last year – another boring but brilliant watch. And when you say black dial, that could seem a little boring. But when it catches the light it is far from it.

Then Paulin go one further – hand painted hands and numerals – meaning this isn’t just another machine made microbrand watch. 

At an affordable pricepoint you’re buying someone’s time – which is the promise of luxury swiss watch makers provide. 

I’d just like to draw attention to the whole in the minute hand briefly as well which when it aligns with the yellow indices is just a chef’s kiss moment that you get 12 times an hour.

Now to be able to do this Paulin have done some sneaky things with the watch’s construction the modul case has a unique bezel where we can see that the movement, dial and sapphire are inserted into the case from the front in, meaning that the process of construction is a lot quicker. Thus Paulin can afford to do that time consuming hand made element.

Now there is the 2nd thing – the elephant in the room, which if you’ve seen my other video on the paulin modul discussing how it challenges the notion of luxury you’ll know about. And that’s the movement that this watch sports. Well it’s quartz, an ETA quartz piece that has laser etching on it. Turning this watch’s movement into something relatively unique. At this price point a uniqueish movement is pretty hard to come by I think we’ll all admit. Microbrand watches are full of NH35s and Miyota 9000 watches.

And that plays into a larger notion that the watch has. That’s turning quartz, which is often a boring and negative into a positive. Quartz is turned into a positive. The red seconds hand is sort of hypnotic in how it ticks across the dial. It’s not a mechanical sweep for sure but it looks cool and by not blending in with the dial it is more of a focus. 

I for one think that’s quite cool. Because as I often talk about on this channel quartz is only seen as a negative because of decades of luxury marketing making us value an archaic technology. That’s not to say you should have just one or the other, but if you’re looking for a cool and unique quartz watch to slip into your collection then this would be a pretty good one.