Mancini. The Borat of wristwatches. #1

Let's start from the beginning.

Well, it wasn’t too long ago. Last year in mars I decided to make my old YouTube channel a wristwatch channel.

My wristwatch interest started around twenty years ago in my early 20’s. During the pandemic it accelerated from just having a couple of nice watches (Longines and Midos) to buying all types of Casios, Timex and more unknown low and mid-budget-range wristwatches.

Let's get to the point! My first so called “Unboxing video” was about the Mancini Arctic Space watch.

Yes! Of course, I knew Mancini was a crappy fashion AliExpress type of brand, but I just had to try it out, because who else would?

Another reason that I would try this brand is that my internet browser at the time was full of ads from Paul Rich watches (probably another crappy fashion brand I haven't tried out yet). I actually liked the frosted bracelet and cases on these wristwatches, and it made me look for a cheaper alternative.

I bought the Mancini from a legit watch shop, even though in my humble personal opinion selling these types of watches is a bit fishy.

It cost me 50 dollars for the wristwatch on sale, and I still think it was a scam. Imagine all the types of Casios I could have bought for the same price.

The watch came in a cheap and weird looking box, simple but weird. No tags, warranty cards or any of the usual stuff, just a piece of paper with instructions on how to set the time and date.

The watch itself looked like how I would have imagined it.

It has a 42 mm case it is 10 mm thick and 11 mm thick with the mineral glass.

It has an integrated bracelet so there’s no way of putting the case on a Nato strap or using the bracelet for another watch. 

I actually don’t know how they put the frost on to the wristwatch, but it looks and feels solid.

The dial looks like it's made of paper, but I could actually be wrong. There is no luminescence put on the markers or hands.

Well, the watch looked like cheap bling as I already knew it would, at least somehow it felt good on the wrist.

To be honest I never found any occasions to wear the Mancini, so It had to stay on the shelf. Within the first 24 hours it showed the wrong time by a couple of minutes. I was amazed, how could a quartz watch show the wrong time so early after setting it? Within a few weeks, it was off by hours. This was not just a cheap Japanese Miyota quartz movement.

At the time I was not curious enough to open up the “snap back” type of case back. Boy was I in for a surprise around one year later. Well not really a surprise as I figured it had to be a Chinese quartz movement.

It bothers me how the manufacturers of the quartz movement managed to make it so inaccurate.  It's almost like they had to do it on purpose or that this one quartz movement was a “factory slip”. It just feels impossible that a quartz movement could be so inaccurate.

Well, the name printed on the movement was LG32 from Langexin Co and it also says no jewels, just in case anyone was asking. The battery that I will replace with a new one is a sr621sw, a common battery that shouldn’t be too hard to find.

I could not find any reviews on this particular Langexin movement, so maybe it's just a factory slip and all the other Langexin movements works fine.

I wouldn’t recommend the Mancini Arctic Space watch if you want your wristwatch to tell the time correctly.

Yeah, and I'm almost sure it's not very much waterproof even if it says WR on the case back.