Berny AM339 Review

Within the watch collecting world, people are drawn to watches for a variety of reasons. Some people are fascinated by the engineering that goes into the mechanical movements that power their watches, and build their collection around that. Others are devoted to collecting specific brands or different eras; I myself have a penchant for 2000’s era Seiko dive watches. Some people collect watches with pop culture significance, such as the Hamilton Murph or Coop featured in the movie Interstellar, or the Omega Seamaster Professional from the James Bond franchise. People collect budget homages, obsess over levels of finishing, or chase hyped limited releases. For this review, I’m going to be discussing something near and dear to me that helps determine what gets added to my collection: lume.

I’m a 90’s kid. As such there are certain things that have guided my aesthetic taste. Growing up, there was absolutely nothing cooler than things that glowed in the dark. The only thing that could come close to rivaling the cool factor of something that could glow in the dark was clear plastic covered electronics. For example, my clear purple gameboy, those transparent house phones that showed all the colored wiring - we were living in the future and could see it through items we used on a daily basis. I’m older and my tastes have evolved (my standard uniform now is scrubs instead of a hardcore band t-shirt and camo shorts), but as I mentioned in my last article, some of that inner child still guides my decision making to a certain extent. 

To tie this back to watch collecting, I will never get tired of seeing the rotor, springs, and gears through an exhibition caseback, but more importantly, I love when my watches glow in the dark. I love lume. I bought a UV flashlight specifically so I could charge my watches and watch them glow. I have balked at buying a watch due to sub par lume. I know for a fact that this obsession with things that glow in the night is not unique to me; there are others who are far more passionate than me on the subject.

That brings me to the Berny AM339. I bought this watch SPECIFICALLY because of the lume. This Berny model features not one, not two, but three colors of lume on the dial. I also had been on the hunt for a compressor style diver for a while, so I was killing two birds with one stone. Just to sweeten the deal, it had an exhibition caseback as well. The watch measures in at 42mm and diameter, lug to lug of 49.3mm, lug width of 22mm, and a thickness of 13mm, which is all case as the watch is topped by a flat sapphire crystal. There is no tapering aside from a thin polished bezel, so the watch wears like a puck and hangs off the wrist thanks to the long lugs. 

The watch is powered by the Miyota 8215 movement, which has a unidirectional rotor that is known for being so loud that watch owners have mistakenly thought there was a defect in their watch. The lugs angle down with simple line that fits with the uncomplicated roundness of the case. The case has a mostly brushed finish with polishing along the edges of the lugs. The underside of the watch reveals an exhibition caseback touting the watches alleged 300m depth rating. I wouldn’t say the finishing is poor but the underside of the lugs feel a bit sharp. The watch has two screw down crowns, with the one at the 2-o-clock position rotating the internal timing bezel and the bottom crown adjusting the time and date. The internal bezel operates smoothly and everything lines up nicely, no complaints. The bezel has orange lume for the first fifteen minutes and then is blue for the remaining markings. The indices on the dial and hour hand are green and the second and minute hand is orange. The orange lume fades rather quickly but the blue and green does have some staying power. 

At the time of writing this post, the Berny AM339 is available for just under $100 if you opt for the fitter rubber strap instead of the bracelet. I regrettably chose the bracelet, which now lives in my child’s “play watch work” box. The male end links on the bracelet extend its already large lug to lug length to comical proportions and not what I with my humble standards would consider wearable. Thankfully I have straps a-plenty, but having a fitted FKM rubber strap would have given the watch an overall better feel. They are available for purchase for roughly ¼ the price of the watch, which did not seem like a sound value proposition. Credit where credit due, Berny has put out a completely original design at a price bracket dominated by homages. While this is completely subjective, I happen to like it - but I have read complaints of the dial having a plasticy texture.

So, to put it all together: We have a watch that is awkwardly proportioned, has a notoriously loud movement, a bracelet that would have ended up in the bin if I didn’t have a child who needed fodder for a pretend toolbox, and has the quality of case finishing you would expect from a watch that costs $99 and some change. But we are keeping this watch because IT HAS THREE COLORS OF LUME and this makes my inner child happy. The noise of the Miyota movement is an audible reminder of the stacks of gears and springs that make this hulk of steel, tell time, and I love watching the BERNY branded rotor spinning like it's about to take off. So the AM339 stays in the collection even though it’s ugly as sin.

Look, watch collecting, especially when you get into luxury watches, is an inherently irrational, emotionally driven hobby. Not every watch in the collection has to be sentimental. So if a watch makes you happy when you strap it to your wrist, what else is there to do but wear it. Sometimes you need to let that inner child pick out your accessories.