Maurice Lacroix Miros Diver (LE) review

[pompe]

A while ago I was looking to buy a watch with an eta 251.262 movement and where waiting for 2 auctions either a used tag heure or a brand new victorinox, I missed the tag so I went for the victorinox instead. But for some reason I hesitated while the mouse pointer hovered over the "buy it now" button, and I logged on to wus and did a search to c if there was any rewievs of the watch in question, that was when I stumbled upon this tread in the high end quartz sub forum.
There I learned about the 251.232 movement, same functions as the 251.262 but termocompensated and COSC certified!! That movement is usually only found in much more expensive Breitlings and the price on the watch was too good to resist. It is a Maurice Lacroix Miros Diver (LE) wich was ment for the German market, not that limited actually since they made 999 of each colour The different colours has some real fancy names to them
Silver Surfer MI1108-SS112-130
Blue Lagune MI1108-SS082-430
Black Pearl MI1108-SS042-330
Bronze Barrier MI1108-SS072-730


Borowed pic from seller


After searching for a while I found 4separet auctions all ending at the same time on ebay.de. Now my only problem was to decide which color to get. Should I follow the trend and go for a Brown and if I did would I still like it after a couple of years, the blue one did not speak to at all, the black would be a safe bet but I already have plenty of black watches, and the white I liked but it was a bit too white (white hands and white background). When it was around 8 hours left on the auction I sent my daughter a mail asking for her advice, but she never got back to me. Finally when it was 6 min left on each auction I had still not decided which color to get so I started to panic, but finally got the Silver surfer. The bidding on the white was intense the last 3 minutes, and it was the second most expensive of the 4.
Some comparisons on what the ending bet´s was for the different colors

Brown: 286 euro (410 $) 28 bids
Blue: 300 euro (430 $) 14 bids
White: 351 euro (500 $) 21 bids
Black: 352 euro (505 $) 15 bids

The seller with most buy it now auctions on this one had it for 549 euro (787 $)
Compare this to the original Msrp of 1200 euro it is quite cheap ! (i dont think it is an inflated msrp as many mushroom brands)


If u want one of these go to Ebay.de not the .com or the international portal! For some reason the search function on the .com don’t search trough the .de! When I searched with the model numbers on ebay.de I found plenty of these and all at much better prices then the ones on ebay.com! As I am writing this there are 4 more no reserve auctions up for each color.
After a long wait (Christmas weekend) and some negotiations with dhl about always trying to deliver the package when I was not home, it finally arrived



Nice box! And now to c what’s inside…



Watch and papers.

As stated before I was looking for a watch with a 251.262 movement, what I wanted was the chrono function of a lemania 5100 with the chrono minute and second hand both being sweeping (middle hands). This one has the 251.232 movement which is the same as the 251.262 But its thermo compensated and COSC certified which makes it a High end Quartz.



This is the certificate from Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (long name) and apparently it performed well whit in standards



The watch comes on a bracelet with solid end links and a wetsuit extension. It is 20mm wide and 3mm thin and held together with a pin and collar system so u need a special tool to adjust the length (or go to a AD). Unlike the pin and collar system on for example a Seiko monster the collar on this one is quite wide and sits in the middle of the links, it feels real solid and I think this system is better than screwed links. To me the bracelet feels a bit thin (c pic compared to a monster and watchadoo) but that might be just me being used to really thick bracelets. On this white version I felt a bracelet made the watch look to bright and blingy so I swapped it for a bund strap instead, I guess like every other watch I own I will swap straps and bracelets back and forth for a while until I find one that feels right.






I feel the watch is a bit thick and bricky, does it really need to be this thick with a quartz movement? I don’t know it might be the 30 ATM WR that demands such a beefy case at least it is not wide as a hubcap which seems to be the trend today. Crystal is sapphire with AR on inside.
Diam: 41 mm (+ crown 44 mm)
width over horns: 47 mm
Thicknes: 13 mm


Compared to an old Eterna kontiki with beveled and smooth edges




Things that could be better:
Oki I chose the white version so I guess I have myself to blame but I sometimes find it hard to c the hands, well not hard but it could be better. If I had designed this watch I would have changed 2 things. First of it IS a diver, so why not make the outline of the minute hand the same color as the chrono second hand ? I would also like a black bezel to match the sub dials; right now it is white/silverish dial, black sub dials, silver bezel, silver case and silver bracelet. A black bezel would look much better and break up all the silver. I’ll throw Maurice Lacroix an e-mail asking if it is possible to buy a spare bezel. The other mod is a bit harder and nothing I dare to try myself, but here is a (first try) pic I made in Photoshop showing how I thought it should look



And finally can someone guess what’s wrong with this picture???



No idea? Well… this IS a cosc certified chronometer, that means it is really accurate so u can tell the time down to the seconds but the sub dials for the seconds only has markings each 5 sec interval! Since the marketing point for this one is that it´s COSC certified they could have printed 60 markings and attached a smaller hand. However I don’t c this as a problem, if I need to tell the time down to the second I use my GW-9010.
Final thoughts: I am satisfied with the watch and it filled 2 holes in my collection. I was after a 5100 style chrono and got a COSC certified high end quartz also. The only problem now is that after surfing the HEQ forum for whileIsuddenly feel an insurmountable need for a Citizen Chronomaster J



Edit: trying on some new straps... here i notched an old MM strap and punched some holes to make it look a bit more "rally" fitting a chrono



edit 02/01 still trying out different straps, this one feels like a keeper. It is Dark brown calf with printed gator patern and a ss pushbutton deployant clasp. used to have it on another chrono and it is extremely comfortable



Disclaimer: Any gramatic errors is because english is not my main language ! well that and...



Cheers Friends and have a happy new year.

Pompe

[ka-boom]

That's pretty nice that it comes with a certification like that, very cool!

Did you know that there is a sub-forum just for reviews? It might help get it more exposure.

[pompe]

yes i do know that, and i have put a tread inthere pointing to this one already

[SOS]

Killer review and watch, now I want one.

[Redrum]

What a beaut!
Enjoy

[asadtiger]

lovely watch :)

[zippofan]

Awesome watch Pompe, congratulations on a great buy

Also, thank you for the info on the movement, I have a chrono with the 251.262 (Precista) and never knew there was an HEQ version. I also need to stay out of the HEQ forum before I get myself in trouble!

Cheers,
Griff

[Nick1016]

Nice pickup! I had always thought Breitling had exclusive rights to that movement. How nice it is to be proven wrong. It is not often that (1) HEQ and (2) Maurice Lacroix qualify for the Affordables Forum. So you've done well on this one!

[GregoryD]

Nice looking watch, thanks for the review. That's really cool that it's COSC certified, you don't see many COSC certificates for quartz watches. Wear in good health!

[pompe]

True there are not that many COSC certified Quarts wristwatches around but i guess that is because the COSC certifications for a quartz is much harder then the one for a mechanical, any quartz can stand up to those standards. But the specs for quartz COSC are set so that it has to be a thermo compensated movement and since a radio controlled r so much cheaper to make one don't c that many thermo compensated movements around. Atleast thats what i think is the reason.