Rolex Explorer 214270 - Full Review

hey YouTube thanks for tuning into the just bluefish Channel I'm guy and today we're going to take a look at the Rolex explorer if you saw my previous video on my first impressions of the Rolex explorer I said I would be doing a full length full featured review on this watch in the coming weeks so here it is today on the table and ready to go ahead and dive into that now this is very likely going to be an extremely long video so buckle up and get ready to hear a whole lot about this wristwatch the Rolex explorer referenced to one four two seven zero is usually described as a rugged sports watch it has a heritage that goes back to 1953 with the mountaineering expeditions of the Himalayas and the summit of Mount Everest now coming in at sixty-five hundred fifty dollars MSRP you might ask yourself does the quality match the sticker price I'm not sure if I can answer that for you but certainly the Explorer is a high quality watch with the 31 32 caliber Rolex movement and it's advertised plus or minus two seconds per day of precision it's an incredibly accurate watch the 904 L stainless steel and sapphire crystal are considered to be some of the most durable materials on the market and with the addition of the para chrome hair spring and para flex shock absorbers added to the movement in a recent update we get excellent resistance to magnetism as well as shock absorption now without even bringing a bracelet with oyster lock safety clasp into the discussion on paper this is a very high quality sports watch however whether or not the quality matches the sticker price is going to be up to you to decide now hopefully with this review I will be able to help you with making that decision for yourself so yeah what we're going to do is we're going to dive into this review video we're going to talk about overall specifications first just get all the numbers out of the way consider in regard to the size of the watch and the measurements and all of again after that we're going to talk about the movement quite a bit then we'll talk about the quality the design features and functionality after that I'll give you my closing thoughts and feelings on this watch in general and you know that'll basically be it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and pull this watch out of the box here zoom in a little bit closer so you can see it a bit better and get the ball rolling all right guys be right back so the general specifications on this watch are as follows it is constructed of 904 L stainless steel and is built into an oyster case with a smooth bezel the overall diameter of this guy from side to side is coming in at 39 millimeters and the lug width from a little bit of dust they are sorry the lug with here is 20 millimeters the overall thickness comes in at about 12 millimeters on my calipers and the overall height from the top to the bottom of the lugs comes in at roughly 47 millimeters so overall I think a very well proportioned wristwatch now this watch does feature a Rolexes screw down twin lock crown it has a scratch resistant sapphire crystal over the black dial which features a highly legible freehand analog display with chroma light luminescence we have a water resistance of 100 meters or 330 feet and it is powered by Rolexes 3132 perpetual self-winding movement now speaking of that movement I'm going to go ahead and start the discussion with that and we'll get into the overall design features and functionality in a little bit the perpetual caliber 31 30s UN house Rolex movement runs at a rate of twenty thousand eight hundred beats or vibrations per hour and it features a forty eight power power reserve the self-winding mechanical movement is powered by their perpetual rotor now Rolex developed that perpetual rotor technology in 1931 you have a Halfmoon shaped oscillating weight which spins inside the watch at 360 degrees around and round automatically powering the movement as your wrist moves it's also fit with their red reversing wheel to enable bi-directional winding and what they like to call optimal efficiency I think that's a pretty standard feature in all watches now so none of this should really be news to you other than the fact that you know 1930s Rolex was pioneering this technology now in a more recent update they equipped the movement with a blue pair of chrome hair spring that new hair spring is made in them combination of materials to create the out as made of an alloy of a combination of materials including niobium zirconium and oxygen and that makes the material insensitive to magnetic fields and temperature variations so what this means is that you have 10 times more precise watch that is more resilient to shock than a traditional hair spring in the end what this does is it makes it more accurate and reliable so you know that's ultimately what we care about the hair spring also uses an over coil which ensures regularity of the watch in any position now also added to this movement relatively recently is the para flex shock absorbers these are developed in 2005 and it improves the shock resistance by up to 50% the geometry of the spring ensures that it remains firmly positioned without the risk of deformation and this technology is undergoing extensive shock testing to prove its reliability now since we're kind of talking about the precision regularity reliability and ultimately accuracy and let's let's have a little discussion about this watch Rolex is kind of in general and accuracy the 31:32 is a cost COSC certified movement which means that Rolex sends the movements out for certification and that has to meet a standard of no more than minus 4 seconds per day to no more than plus 6 6 seconds per day the chronometer certification is distinguished by 15 days of testing at the facility wherever that is that they send these things to get tested after they're returned to Rolex further testing happens in 2015 Rolex redefined their quote unquote superlative chronometer certification so what that means is once they get the movement back from cost with its plus or minus four to six certification it's put into the case and the watch is retested and adjusted to meet the new superlative standard of a precision of no more than plus or minus two seconds per day now that's pretty amazing accuracy for any mechanical watch be it a a Rolex an Omega Seiko anything you know I mean plus or minus two seconds per day is outstanding now that's one of the main reasons why I purchased this watch was I want not just something that's attractive to look at not just something that is a status symbol as a matter of fact I don't care about the status at all what I wanted or was most interested in is the engineering of this watch so accuracy is extremely important to me so I did a lot of testing on my own when I got this guy and here's what I found out first of all I do own a time Grapher so when I got at home I put it on the time Grapher and tested it in all six positions the sixth position being a little unnecessary but those positions are sitting dial up sitting dial down sitting crown up crown left and then also crown down now the sixth position that you can test it in is crown to the right in all of those positions my watch ran between +4 seconds per day being the fastest in the dial up position and - one second per day being the slowest in the crown up position now ultimately that really doesn't mean anything what matters is how does it keep time while you wear it on the wrist for me over the course of two weeks my watch was running about three and a half seconds fast per day and that was if I was wearing the watch on my wrist for 12 to 16 hours a day and then storing it in my watch case dial up for the remaining 12 to 10 hours per day I was gaining a very consistent 3 and a half seconds per day now having already put this on my time graph er I knew that if I were to store it crown up overnight it would probably lose a little bit of time but I didn't know how much so after my two-week long test I decided okay I'm going to do this test over and I'm going to instead of storing it in my watch case dial up I'm going to store it crown up well the problem with that is I don't really want to store the watch grown-up I can't put it in my watch case that way but for the purposes of this test I figured I'll go ahead and do it I found a place where I could rest the watch overnight in that position over the course of the two weeks in that configuration I was gaining about one and a half seconds per day so if I want to wear and store the watch the way that I want to I'm outside of their advertised standards for accuracy again at plus three and a half instead of being within minus two two plus two however if I'm willing to quote-unquote self-regulate it and set the watch on its side overnight like so I would be well within their accuracy ratings at plus one and a half per day again that's not how I want to store my watch I don't want to set it on top of my watch case like this every night I want it inside the case protected from dust and debris and humidity I live in South Florida it can get very warm outside and humidity creeps in the house so I want it you know I want to store it in an ideal environment which is inside my watch case but I really can't do it if I want to achieve the accuracy potential of this watch by storing it overnight in this position that's a little bit of an annoyance now I suspect that I could send a watch into Rolex and tell them these are my wearing habits and these are the results that I'm getting with this watch and I bet they would try at least to regulate it for me to slow it down nudge so that when I store at dial-up overnight I'm within that plus or minus two seconds per day I don't know if I want to do that though I'm going to be without the watch for a while I've heard on the internet people say that you know it might come back worse maybe maybe they don't do a good job I I mean you know that's hearsay I don't know that that's true or not but that would that would be awful if I sent it in and now suddenly it's running +6 seconds per day or something or - six or - for whatever right it's like I'm probably just going to settle on good enough and deal with the fact that if I wanted to be as accurate as possible I'm going to have to store it in a position that I don't prefer or just live with the fact that it's running a little bit faster than advertised if I want to store it the way that I would prefer now yeah so you know that's the look that's the moral of the story with accuracy I've heard of other people claim that their watch runs fractions of a second fast per day like over the course of a week they're saying oh I've gained two seconds this whole week I mean that would be awesome I wish mine ran that good but it does not it still is even with this highly refined and very expensive watch it is still to a degree luck of the draw I mean it's a much better draw than if you were talking about say a Seiko which is a watch that I love don't get me wrong I love many many many psychos but with a Seiko you get a watch that runs +5 seconds a day you watch that runs plus 30 seconds per day you know it is what it is you you're drawn from a much deeper deck with a Rolex I suspect that while it is still somewhat a luck of the draw I was probably on the bad side of the draw and getting a watch that runs a little bit faster than I would prefer but still it's not like I drew you know it's not like I drew a seven deuce I still got like a nice pocket pair if we're talking poker analogies anyway yeah so that's what you know I can tell you about the accuracy of this particular individual and what they advertise in general so you know if you're moving forward thinking about Rolexes and if accuracy is an important issue for you you know take that information as a data point and you know maybe it'll help you make a decision now since we're also talking about the movement here there's one other thing I do want to discuss when I first picked this watch up and of course I know that this is an automatic watch I know that it has the perpetual rotor inside of the watch that spins and that cell finds it but when I first picked this watch up if I didn't know that information and somebody handed me this watch and I just gave it a little bit of a wiggle I would say wow like there's nothing inside there spinning it was dead silent you couldn't feel anything I mean in comparison to other much less expensive automatic watches which you can feel and hear the rotors spinning freely this watch was dead silent however over the course of some weeks I started noticing a little bit of noise if I had the watch on my wrist and maybe I lifted the lifted my hand up to my head like if I was putting my phone up or if I just picked it up and gave it a little bit of a shake I could start hearing something inside there rattling around a little bit now is this a problem or not does it indicate that there's a problem I don't really know for sure I went back to the dealer the ad where I bought this and I showed it to him and said this was dead silent and now it makes a little bit of noise and he said I don't think it's a problem I also called up Rolex and told them the same thing and they said well it's probably not a problem but you can send it in if you want it to be looked at it'll take weeks and weeks and weeks to get it back to you it's up to you now what I can tell you is the watch is running perfectly it's not running out of power on my wrist it's not losing or gaining time any more or less than it has been since I've owned it so I'm going to err on the side of it's probably not a problem and maybe things just loosen up a little bit if becomes a problem I have a 5 year warranty so I can always send it in but I wanted to point that out that that was a little question mark that popped up for me was why did this watch go from being absolutely dead silent to making a little bit of a rattling noise is it just the rotor spinning around in there is it something else I can't say for certain but you know when you're talking about a watch that's plus or minus $6,000 and anything pops up for me you know I dress it like this might be a concern so yeah there's a little bit of a negative about this particular examples movement but I wanted to tell you guys about now moving along let's talk about the quality design features functionality portion of this review video this watch will start with the case this watch is a 904 elf stainless steel Oyster case beautiful beautiful almost jewelry quality case it is fantastic it is also a smudge magnet so let's try and clean this up for this portion of the discussion here sorry about that now the oyster case was created by Rolex in Oh dust all right the oyster case was created by Rolex in 1926 and it was as they explained it the first waterproof case the patented system works with the bezel case back and crown all screwing down against the middle case sealing it from water dust debris the elements because of this design all moister cased Rolex watches are guaranteed to a minimum depth of 100 meters in water resists of course the submariners and the sea dwellers and other watches in the oyster line are more water resistant but all of their oyster cased watches have a minimum of a hundred meter depth of water resistant resistance sorry this watch has a polished bezel so we'll zoom in here pretty close very very highly polished bezel and the sides of the case are also a highly-polished again it's almost like a jewelery quality level of finishing on these on this watch it's absolutely fantastic and outstanding the rest of the case features a sort of satin brushed finish and that includes the top of the lugs that includes the bracelet end links which not exactly part of the case but it's where the case and the bracelet join and of course the case back as a brushed finish the screw down case back is absolutely naked there's no branding no printing there's nothing on there I'm not being familiar with Rolex as you know six eight nine months ago whenever I started looking at these guys I was a little surprised when I saw because every other manufacturer sort of makes it a point to embellish and decorate their case backs but not Rolex they just leave it naked or virgin or however you'd like to describe that I think that's actually pretty cool I I like that there's no timer effort wasted on it it's just functional it's you know just there to be to secure the movement and to protect it from moisture debris or anything else now again this is made of nine o4l most of us are going to be pretty familiar with 316l if we have cheaper watches in our collection and we're looking at this as maybe our first luxury or high-end piece like I did now there's some information about 904 l that I'd like to share with you 904 L has greater amounts of chromium and nickel in it and because of this it has a better resistance to corrosion so you know in particular saltwater or water in general it's going to be much more corrosion resistance because of that 904 l9 o4l apparently also probably because the chromium and nickel has a very high luster compared to 316 L so you get a similar look that you could get from precious metals it has that same degree of potential to be shined up again like I said this just because of the I guess because of the quality of the steel and the amount of effort that they put into polishing this watch it does it just look like a beautiful piece of jewelry on all of these polished parts and the brushing is the brushed parts are equally as attractive in my opinion now 904 L also has a higher rockwell hardness than 3/16 so it should be more scratch resistant with the caveat that for me this is the biggest scratch magnet watch that I own I own several more affordable much much more affordable watches that are obviously just going to be made out of 316 and I don't baby this any more than I baby those or vice versa and this is really the only watch that I've had where I've picked up any sort of scratches nicks or damages and it's been very very minor but I'll show you what I'm talking about let's zoom in on the bezel here just below the 9 o'clock position over here on the bezel right there down if you see that I picked up a nick right on the middle there of the bezel I don't know how that happened I think I've never banged this watch I get anything and there's a very deep Nick right there it's tiny and on your wrist from you know three feet away when you just glance down at the watch unless you catch it in very bright light it disappears like that you can't even tell it's there really but if you catch the watch right in the right light it's like bang you see you see that nick in the bezel you know not a big deal it's not like I'm going to cry about it or anything but I just want to point out that like all of my other watches made of much cheaper metal I haven't scratched or nicked the material at all and of course I'm picking up more dust here and we get a little wipe on the side of the case I don't know if this will pick up very well or not particularly with all of the samajis I have picked up some scuff marks and maybe they're showing up there picked up several scuff marks on this side of the case again I don't I'm not hard I have not been like putting this through hard user abuse and these are minor minor little scuff marks don't take it as I'm complaining or crying or I need to polish them out or anything I'm just pointing out that while this is advertised to be more durable and scratch realist resistant because it's got a higher rockwell hardness and I'm not going to argue the science on that and say like oh the science is wrong I'm just saying in my case I'm not finding this to be overly durable or resistant to scratches very very easy on especially these polished surfaces to scratch the watch I also got a very big scratch on this link right here the one that my thumb is covering and you can't really see it anymore because I buffed it out but you can kind of tell I messed up the finish buffing the scratch out but I had a really nasty looking scratch on that and more or less I was able to clean it up zoomed in real tight here you can kind of see the inconsistency of the finish on that particular link but you know I just I walk this one I know like when I did it I walked past the door and just kind of scraped it but I was like holy mackerel that is quite quite the gouge so yeah all I'm basically saying here is that don't think that because this is 904 else stainless steel it's going to be impervious to scratches that's not the case whatsoever very easy to scratch this watch in my experience and I try very hard to keep the watch in the best possible condition again I'm like you know I have a two hundred whatever two hundred twenty dollars Seco skx there's not a scratch on that watch and I'd bang that watch all around you know I don't even I'm not even concerned about scratching that watch and I'm a little concerned about scratching such an expensive watch and this Rolex here but I you know it's like I can't scratch that so that's a go watch but I have no problems unknowingly picking up scratches on the scroll X so while the 9:04 el is a very attractive material while it probably is more corrosion resistant and while the statistics state that it has a higher Rockwell hard should be more scratch resistance in my experience so far over the last month it still is very easy to get minor Nicks and scratches on your watch so if that's something that concerns you just keep that in mind now moving on from the case discussion let's talk about the crown briefly this is again a screw down twin lock crown you can identify it as a twin lock by the little splash or - underneath the crown logo or the rolex coronet logo if it has one dot two dots or a dash it is denoted as being the twin lock as opposed to having three dots being the triple lock the twin lock crown is a piece of the puzzle that guarantees that this watch is 100 meters of water resistance because within the stem and crown here you have two seals rubber gasket type seals so that is what gives us in part the superior waterproofness of a Rolex watch I have gotten this watch wet several times like submerged wet no problems with leaking of any type I have a hundred percent confidence in this watch maintaining its waterproofness now the crown itself again it's screw down and unscrewing it is very very easy but it has a couple of minor idiosyncrasies that I want to show you guys when you're unscrewing this crown number one it's tiny it is a very small crown so I mean getting a grip on it's not super hard but I just want to point out that it is low-profile relatively so as you're screwing this crown out I want to show you watch when it pops out it's going to spring out here once I get it all the way on threaded right there but usually let's see if it does it it's not all the way out I kind of have to give it a little bit of another wiggle there I don't know if you saw that it popped out even further there that always happens with this watch it kind of when I unscrew it the screen spring pushes out it a little bit and then I kind of gotta give littlewiggle to get a come out all the way I don't know if that's normal or if that's a problem it would seem to me that that shouldn't be the way that it works if I'm being honest but it doesn't seem to be an actual issue it's just I get two little stages of it popping out so now once it's out I'm in the hand wind mode and I could spin the spin the crown to hand wind it and you know that functions flawlessly of course now I thought there was a couple of video sinker C's the second IDEO sequence the video sync recei is that when I spin this watch in the reverse brother crown in the reverse direction I can feel in here little click now the reason why that that's weird to me is because when I first got this and for again weeks after getting it that did not do that at all and the first time I noticed it's not like I spend a bunch of time winding this crown in the wrong direction that would be idiotic but the way I noticed it was I was just feeling the clicks as I was unwinding it from the threads to to unscrew it and then I was like as weird as kind of like clicking as I'm unscrewing this from the threads and then it popped out and I gave it a few reverse spins and I was like huh I'm feeling a little like resistance or click eNOS reverse winding it that seemed to manifest at the same time as the noise from the rotor inside the movement which I would talked about a little while ago how I said that as the rotor is spinning I assume it's the rotors spinning I'm hearing it spin down whereas it used to be dead silent though that and this sort of clicking when I rivers whine the crowned manifested again at the same time I think roughly I had you know they're very little subtle things so I'm not sure exactly and again I don't know if this is a problem it doesn't seem to affect the functionality of the watch at all it's just something that I noticed recently as a you know as I've owned the watch so yeah anyway unscrewing the crown and re screwing the crown down very very smooth very simple the threading feels magnificent it's just butter winding the watch is also just buttery buttery glass smooth the other issue with the crown I guess there's a third one and it's not necessarily the crown it's to do with setting the time we'll talk about that and in a little bit when I actually discussed the dial in the handsets but there's kind of a third issue with the crown / handset so I'll tell you guys about and again these aren't major issues I want to make that clear it's just little things that I wouldn't expect in a watch at this price point you know I wouldn't expect the movement to be dead silent and suddenly start making noise I wouldn't expect the crown just start making this weird clicking noise out of the blue and the third things I'm going to talk about now before we talk about the dye on the handsets let's just talk about the crystal there's not a whole lot to say it is a sapphire scratch highly scratch resistant sapphire crystal it looks very nice looking through it with the exception of and I cannot find this out anywhere does it have a are coating I'm not sure does it's very reflective I you know I noticed that you guys can probably see in the videos I kind of rotate it around I'll get it towards the light very very reflective I've heard people on forums suggest that these crystals have an anti-reflective coating on the underside but not on the top I don't know if that's true there's no information in any of Rolexes literature to suggest that this crystal is anti reflective but it is you know sapphire crystals so it's going to be very scratch resistant also as you look at the side the crystal sits a little proud of the bezel so I would imagine if you're not a little bit careful it's going to be easy to kind of chip the edges of that crystal if you were to just Nick her chip the edges there I can see that happening relatively easily because of how tall above the bezel it stands you know if you have to replace the crystal I don't think that it's a hugely cost prohibitive proposition but you know be careful with it if you care about keeping your stuff nice and new if this is just sort of a beater watch for you and that gives you if you got that kind of money in that you can have a 6,000 plus or minus dollar beater watch then you know don't worry about it but I just want to point that out to people that might not be aware of how that is how that looks how that works but yeah a are coding kind of a mystery I've heard people suggest that it is coated on the underside but not on the topside but I can't find any confirmation from Rolexes website or literature to confirm that now moving on let's talk about the dial the handset and the rehab rehouse it's like the flange inside the dial let's talk about that first if we get in really close here you can see that wall and it says Rolex Rolex Rolex all around it that's called a rehaul tour reach out I believe another acceptable term for it is the flange up at the 12 o'clock position you can see that there's the crown or coronet logo on mine that is off-center from the 12 o'clock hash mark ever so slightly I've heard of other people have that same complaint going around from the one o'clock side the exes should line up relatively right on each our marker which mine are maybe off a hair but you know only at this Lake superzoom didn't level can I even notice it and then I'm after the six o'clock side you should have the arse all lining up on the hour markers which they do more or less again they might be off by a hair but but that little coronet or crown will go up at the 12 o'clock position is just to the one o'clock side in alignment and also on the crystal I don't know if I will to show up there is the etched crown logo you can kind of see it there are like above the six on the glass of the crystal I'm not going to be able to get a good picture of it but I did one also mentioned that there is this laser etched crown in the glass right there so yeah that's taking a look there at the flange will call the flange because I don't know how to correctly pronounce that word re ha to reroute I don't know now look the real featured presentation of this watches the dial we have this beautiful black dial with the three six nine indices the our markers are all baton style our markers with the exception of the upside down triangle at the 12 o'clock position the markers are all outlined there obviously applied markers and they're all outlined with 18 karat gold all of the batons the three the six the nine the triangle all have a beautiful gold 18 karat white gold outlines this dial is what you know when I saw this this dial is what just made me want this watch more than anything and for months and months and the better part of the year just was just like an obsession for me and I thought it was the most beautifully designed dial presentation that I had ever seen and I looked and looked and looked for alternatives that were more affordable I've tried many many watches but none of them really filled the itch of what this watch looked like so I just I love this dial design I think it's just downright magnificent now moving on we have the three handset Mercedes style also an 18 karat gold Mercedes style our hand the of course long minute hand and the second hand with the little lollipop hip out there towards the chapter ring and then a little bit of a PIP at the counter balance side as well the handsets on the previous generation of the two one four two seven zero were a little bit smaller and that was redesigned and in 2016 I believe to have the hour hand reach all the way out to the chapter ring and it also beefed them up so they weren't so thin and delicate looking excellent decision Rolex to do that I I think I might have I don't know I might have still wanted this watch but I'm glad that they made that modification to the handset it looks great now on the our chapter ring of this dial you have pretty pretty simple just hash marks for each minute or second depending on your perspectives with slightly thicker more embellished hash marks at every 5 10 15 20 and so on marker it's just printed on the dial it's not any sort of applied markers at all but you know it's very cleanly printed it's not the anything to you know be disappointed with as far as quality goes and then of course down at the bottom on the chapter ring you have the Swiss made I don't know logo branding it's probably not the right word tag whatever it says Swiss made down there at the bottom as well now for the actual branding on this watch dial up at the 12 o'clock side you have the Rolex crown and you have the Rolex name logo and then Oyster Perpetual my handset is sort of covering it but on the six o'clock side you have the Explorer notation with superlative chronometer officially certified underneath that on none of this branding is distracting or obtrusive it works with the flow and the design of the watch just fine it looks great the printing again is nice and clean and crisp you know some people particularly let's talk about psychos people complain that psycho started adding this pro specs branding to the dials of a lot of their watches that previously didn't feature it and they complain about it so I know some people can be a little bit sensitive about what's printed on their dial as far as branding goes I like everything about this dial personally to call it perfect would be an understatement for me and you know your opinion might be different but for me now the last thing that we did not talk about in regards to the dial and handset is the luminescence or glow-in-the-dark potential every single indicee from the triangle out to the 12 o'clock position and all of the square Bataan markers as well as the 3 6 & 9 feature Rolexes chroma light luminescent material and the handsets also feature it in moving the second hand tip on the pointer side the what can I tell you about the chroma light and I'm going to obviously roll in some footage of the chroma light in action for you so you can see it a little bit better but it's fantastic I mean very very bright lasts more than enough time it looks fantastic in that blue coloration I blows me away according to Rolex that stays luminescent two times as long as other standard phosphorescent coatings and you know also to note the previous versions some of the previous versions of this watch did not feature luminescent material on the three six and nine they were just solid white gold markers again with the change that they made to the handset they made the changeover to the three six and nine to have them feature the luminescence chroma light luminescence material just like the rest of the markers on the dial and I think that was a brilliant design design decision on Rolexes part it really brings it all together in my opinion now the next thing more or less I guess the last thing to talk about is going to be the bracelet on this guy I'm going to zoom the camera out slightly just so we get a little bit of a wider shot and see the bracelet better so be right back alright this uses Rolexes oyster bracelet which is used on several of their sports model watches I don't think they're all the exact same size but you know more or less the same technology right now this bracelet does have solid end links they're very very good if you ever want to remove the end links from the watch though you're going to want to get a special tool to do it a to not scratch up the lugs or the or the links or the bracelet or the watch in general and B because a normal little spring bar does not fit in there very good I bought a tool by Bergeron after get the model number off the top my head I'll put a link in the notes below if I remember but I'll do a review on that tool and how it makes removing the bracelet from this watch extremely easy but yes we have salad and links on this boy stur style bracelet the bracelet is brushed 9:04 l stainless steel and the brushing is a very very well done and attractive except for that one link that I sort of scratched a while back so I'll just give you kind of a look the brushing on the clasp also very good and the rest of the way around the sides of the links are polished and the side of the bracelet is also very highly polished which means that it's very highly smudged all the time if I'm being honest the bracelet starts out at 20 millimeters up here where it you know meets the case at the end link and something that nobody pointed out to me is that it tapers like in pictures you don't really see this too much it's not as apparent in pictures that is in person but the taper is very extreme it tapers down to 15 millimeters down at the very bottom where it meets up with the clasp I think that's too much if I'm being honest I would prefer it if it didn't taper down to such a thin measurement here 16 maybe maybe even as wide as 18 just a slight taper would be my proof you know your mileage may vary on that some people probably love it other people probably hate it I'm sort of in the middle I have you know a preference of that I wish it didn't taper quite so much but it still works it's okay it's just a lot of taper now there's so that's negative number one about the bracelet negative number two about the very slit and I'm not in love with the bracelet honestly I mean it works it's high high quality don't get me wrong but I'm just not in love with it because of you know again we got the taper number two is the screws to resize this bracelet it's difficult to resize them and here's why you need a very particular screwdriver to fit these screws perfectly if you don't want to risk marring up the head of the screw potentially falling out of the slot and scratching your links you want a seven one point seven millimeter screwdriver with a hollow ground bit not a tapered bit so that it fits into those slots perfectly and evenly all the way throughout nobody makes such a thing really rolex has this little tool called the reference tool screwdriver reference 2100 that they used to distribute I guess with the sea-dweller a while back that does fit those screw heads perfectly that's the only thing available that is a perfect fit you can find 1.6 millimeter hollow ground screwdrivers from koryo tech I believe or you could use a taper bit one point six millimeter from Bergeron for example but my understanding is none of them fit perfectly and you are risking a you know deforming the screw slot be falling out of the slot and potentially scratching up the side link or you know just slipping out and scratching anything honestly so if you're the type of person like me that likes to monkey around with your watches and resize them yourself and have all of that capability at home you know on the secondary market those rolex screwdrivers to refer 20100 that I mentioned I can't find one on ebay or anywhere else for under 150 dollars which I have not purchased but the moral of the story is that you're going to spend a fair amount of money on that tool if you want the exact perfect tool and if you want to make that sacrifice or compromise and get a less than perfect tool you run the risk or more of a risk of potentially doing a little bit of damage to your watch so keep that in mind now the clasp this is of course the oyster safety clasp it has first of all the fold-over with the Rolex coronet or crown the whole thing is brushed it looks fantastic with the exception of the sides being a nice polished finish that is smudged to death the fold-over safety portion very easily folds and unfolds one thing to note about this if you were to manage to somehow catch the clasp on something under there you see how I did that you could accidentally unhinge your safety portion so keep that in mind that it is not locked into place you could still unhook it inadvertently once you open the safety fold-over you have this little lever and that opens the oyster lock clasp the folding elbow portion of the clasp is highly polished and a little bit decorated I mean it's got this nice-looking Rolex logo but again it is very highly polished the level of finish that went into this clasp is pretty impressive overall it's quite good with with a caveat the EZ link extension on this guy so the way this works is there's this little extension link right now I've closed it if at some point during the course of the day you needed a watch to be just a little bit bigger because you're hot and it's muggy out or your wrist swells up you can unpop this and then it folds out and adds five millimeters to the overall length of the bracelet in theory that sounds brilliant in practice for me it's borderline useless if I'm being honest five millimeters is too much I never need an extra five millimeters when I'm wearing the bracelet normally when my wrist starts getting a little sweaty and the bracelet starts feeling tight and uncomfortable I mean I need like two millimeters realistically now you can adjust this bracelet even lighter but you need a tool to do it if you get in here it's going to be difficult to illustrate on camera you can see on this and you probably can't see it but anyway you what you can do where the easy link thing mounts inside there you can use a tool to move it back and forth a couple of millimeters there's three slots in there that's enough for you know when I need a minor modification the problem is I don't carry a tool around with me to do that whenever I want to right so the moral of the story is on paper that easy link five millimeter extension is a brilliant idea again on paper but in practice I find it to be borderline useless if I'm being completely honest it's it's a swing and a miss you know it was a valiant effort it was a real good swing but ultimately in my opinion it was a miss now finally and you know I've had a number of complaints about this bracelet nothing major I mean I like it but I don't love it and here's the main thing the edges of this bracelet are the inside edges in particular and this applies to the case as well this edge here it's all very very sharp there's nothing smooth or rounded or dehorned about this watch so what that means is when it's on the wrist and you're wearing it all day if it's resting in one position because it does have a little bit of heft to it like if my wrist is like this and the watch is just resting there pretend this is the oyster bracelet and when I move it I'm going to have these deep imprints and it's not that the watch is too tight because I could go in here and just like this I could fit my finger through there the watch is not too tight it's just that the edges are very crisp and hard and borderline sharp and it really bites into your skin at least for me now if I make the bracelet a little bit bigger you know I can kind of rattle my wrist around and slide it around you know I'm constantly doing that and trying to like slide it back and forth just so it's not resting in the same spot all the time and this is only an issue when it's like really warm and my wrist is starting to get a little bit sweaty and the watch doesn't move super freely because it kind of wants to stick to the spot that it's sitting in when I'm nice and cool and dry like it slips around enough just when I'm moving my wrist that it doesn't become an issue but in those cases where like again it's I mean I'm already uncomfortable I find that this bracelet makes me even more uncomfortable am I going to get rid of it I'm going to put it on a leather strap or some other NATO strap I mean I tried a NATO strap I didn't like it it did lose a lot of weight from that perspective actually I thought that was cool that it wasn't so heavy on the wrist but the the oyster bracelet looks great and it's only mildly annoying in those few complaints that I've had so you know I deal with it but at the price point I'm not super happy about the bracelet you know I mean I wish that it was more comfortable I think you know and maybe even look better given that I don't like the taper of it too much but anyway that's you know everything I got to tell you about the bracelet you know I forgot to show you that one last little problem that I had and that was with setting the handset so let me go back and kind of show you that since I sold the crown out so when you pull the crown out to the position to set the time you can see that the movement hacks and the second hand stops as you would expect but when you spin the hands getting it to stay where exactly where you want it like let's say I wanted to set it to a 46 after you can see in between 46 and 47 you see how and see how it moves and get a lot clearer there sorry like it doesn't it's difficult as I've released the pressure it kind of snaps back to where it was so you kind of got to just go to the marker and then even then you just stop it's difficult to get it exactly where you want it I don't know why there's such a large amount of spring tension you see I'm not spinning it right like I'm pressure and then I just release the pressure and it snaps back and forth not a huge deal it's just I like to go past on most of my watches and then and then come back to where I want to set it but often times it kind of just is a little bit difficult it's a little finicky to get it set exactly where you want it you know again very minor issue not something to write home about I also didn't point out when I'm talking about the crown but when it's extended it is quite a bit wobbly I have other watches that are way way with less wobbly than that I thought that was a little strange considering such a high quality watch that the Crown has a quite a fair amount of wobble in it when it's extended out but you know screwing it back in again as super super buttery buttery smooth and easy to catch the threads and I never feel like I'm at risk of cross threading it or anything so yeah sorry I forgot to mention that little bit tidbit of information when I was talking about the crown and the dial before so I mean backtracking there anyway that's more or less everything that we're going to talk about my closing thoughts on this guide you know the Explorer 21 or 21 40 to 70 is most certainly a great watch but it's not without some of its negatives first the price for the average person plus or minus six thousand dollars is a lot of money to go back to that original question does the quality justify the price for me I think so but you know only you can answer that for yourself you know like I said there are some negatives you know a number of minor annoyances for me that I've already discussed you know I like but I don't love the bracelet to achieve the advertised accuracy I have to rest the watch crown up which is a position that I would prefer to not store my watch in because it precludes me from being able to keep it in my watch case the polished portions of the 904 else you'll seem to attract scratches like a magnet for me despite the supposed to durability and overall rockwell hardness being higher than your average 316 oh and then there's the movement in the crown you know starting to make some weird noises that they never made when I first took them out of the box and that's a little bit of a question mark for me but you know I can't be certain if that's normal or not without sending it all the way into Rolex inspection but it is an absolutely beautiful watch in many ways it's you know a marvel of design and engineering and I could easily see it serve as a person's one and only watch for any occasion and I'm sure it would most lastly most likely lasts a lifetime but again can I say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this watch justifies the price I yeah for me it does I do I do love it even despite some of the very very minor negatives and nitpicky annoyances that I wanted to you know that I threw out there just to make clear for you guys my feelings on this watch I'm happy to have it in my collection I'm I feel lucky to you know be able to have purchased this watch and you know hopefully I end up keeping it forever well that's everything guys I appreciate you tuning in and watching this video I know it ran pretty long I hope you stuck around all the way to the end if you did my last little message for you is to help support the channel please down in the notes section below you will find links to my Facebook Twitter Instagram gram all my social media as well as my patreon account if you want to sponsor the channel and make a small monthly donation through patreon it'll help me out in providing more content coming forward in the future I will be back with another video next week and I'm not sure what we're going to look at yet but you know tune in and stick around and yeah we will roll out more content as I have products available to review thanks a lot guys bye

Channel: JustBlueFish Watch Reviews

Views: 258,905

Rating: 4.4960299 out of 5

Keywords: Rolex, Explorer, 214270, Review, 3132

Id: HLRq8IUiN8E

Length: 54min 59sec (3299 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2017