Hands-on: MING Copper 17.06

by Adrian Barker July 26, 2020

I don’t usually talk about things I don’t like, but today's watch I don’t like however I can see why people do.

This watch was lent to me by @flywatch on instagram. He’s the same guy who lent me the Q Timex and a case full of Omega Speedmasters.

A bit of background around MING, they are a micro brand made up of 6 watch enthusiasts who collectively funded MING and lead by Ming Thein who by trade is a photographer, a very well accomplished photographer and he graduated from Oxford Uni having studied Physics, at the age of 16. Now he runs a watch company, MING.

Here are the specs on the MING 17:06:

The case is:

316l steel
38mm wide
10mm deep
43.9mm lug to lug
Sapphire crystal with AR coating on both sides
Non-screw down crown
WR 100 thanks to it having triple crown gaskets

Dial:

anodised brass to look like copper
Sapphire ring holding the the hour markers which are painted in super luminova to give the impression the hour markers are floating above the dial
The hands are coated in super luminova and are mounted as close to the dial as possible to reduce parallax, so the opposite effect to the hour markers.

Movement:

top grade ETA 2824-2
38 hr power reserve
25 jewels
Adjusted in 5 positions and tested over 250 hours
Movement has been modified so it only has 2 positions, closed winding position and hacking time adjustment. Many watches in this price range that use off-the-shelf movements have a ghost position which is the date change.

Although I don’t like it, I completely understand why watch enthusiasts do like this watch and MING. It feels like new watch companies are being created every day, and I know this because I, like many people on YouTube are contacted by these people wanting to “collaborate” which is their very soft term for advertise, or rather they want free advertising. Not something I get involved with, mainly because the large majority of these new brands that are being created are just re-hashing old ideas, old designs. Some try to make up some rubbish about skipping out the middle man and they imply their products are luxury but at a fair price, we’ve all seen that stuff. Some companies unashamedly jump on every hype train you can think of - but MING are different.

What MING have done is create a genuine product. Although I don’t like their design, it is their design, which is more than what a lot of new brands can say. As soon as someone pulls this micro brand watch out at a meet up, it’s immediately recognisable as a MING watch.

To create something so recognisable this late into the watch game is impressive. Also, there is a huge watch community around micro brands, I guess a sub community of the watch community. There are many people creating watches on kickstarter who are ripping people off, selling redialed crap, MING is different. This is far from crap, I might not like the look of it, but if you do, then you’re getting a huge amount of watch for £1,000. This has a decent reliable movement, and it’s really very well made.

So although the really isn’t my cup of tea, in fact I think it’s horrible looking. I do understand why it won the GPHG 2019 Challenge award, which best watch under CHF4000

Let me know what you think of this, funny looking thing.