This week, we at replicawatchreviews decided to give a compile an overview on watch covers.
Type of material used
Watch covers are usually made up of any of three materials.
- Plexiglass
- Mineral glass
- Sapphire crystal
Plexiglass is the least expensive of these materials, and though it is the hardest to shatter it is the most likely to become scratched.
Mineral glass is treated and hardened by a tempering process that renders it more scratch resistant. However, this makes it more likely to shatter upon impact, even more so than plexiglass.
Sapphire is one of the hardest substances on earth. It measures 9 on the Mohs scale, which is a system for rating the relative hardness of various materials, relatively speaking diamond measures 10 out of 10. Sapphire crystal is therefore expectedly the most expensive glass crystal material and the most scratch resistant of all three materials. This hardness often makes it very brittle and it would shatter more easily upon heavy impact than both mineral and plexiglass.
Watch crystals made of synthetic sapphire are often marketed as "scratch resistant", meaning they are very difficult - but not impossible - to scratch. Diamond can scratch them; so can man-made materials that incorporate silicon carbide, with a Mohs rating of between 9 and 10 it is, like diamond, harder than sapphire.
An interesting note is that it is not possible to tell if a watch cover is made up of synthetic sapphire or any type of crystal just by looking at it. The only method to tell would be to employ a “scratch test”. A stainless steel knife or screwdriver can be used to scratch the surface of the watch cover; a mineral or plexiglass would scratch easily but a sapphire cover would not scratch at all.
Anti-reflective crystals
This misnomer often refers to the material used to coat the crystal rather than the crystal per se. For crystals classified as “anti-reflective”, it usually just means that the watch crystal has been coated on one or both sides with a substance which makes it easier to read the watch face. One interesting feature of these crystals is that, viewed from the front, they are virtually invisible because they aren't reflecting any light. In some instances, the coating gives the crystal a telltale bluish tint, as it does on eyeglasses. This tint is easiest to see if a light dial watch with the AR coating is tilted to one side while reflecting light.
Cost of watch covers
Consumers can expect to pay anything from perhaps $20 to $25 for a plexiglass crystal to more than $100 for a shaped synthetic sapphire one. (At Baume & Mercier, for example, synthetic sapphire crystals range from $65 to $135.) The average cost of a round mineral crystal is about $30 to $60. An anti-reflective coating adds to the cost of any crystal. In general, the more expensive the watch, the more the consumer will have to pay to replace its crystal.
Online sites
We surveyed customers who purchased from online sites claiming to sell Swiss movement replicas with sapphire crystal glass to ascertain the real type of materials used for their watches. This is what we found:
Key for results:
Sapphire – 100% of surveyed consumers stated that their received watches have sapphire crystals
Mineral– Majority of surveyed consumers from these sites received mineral glass watches instead of sapphire crystal watches
Indeterminate - These sites have consumers stating they have received both mineral and sapphire type watch covers
Do you have comments on this article or a question to ask? Please email us at editor@replicawatchesreviews.com
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