Tissot Le Locle 39.3mm T0064071104300: specs and what to check

Thirty metres is the number to lead with

Tissot publishes the water resistance as 3 bar (30 m / 100 ft).

Across every Tissot reference documented on this site, that is the lowest figure by a considerable margin — the PRX and Gentleman are 10 bar, the Seastars 30.

Three bar is a rating for rain and for washing your hands. Not a shower, not washing up, and certainly not swimming.

The problem is that nothing else about the watch signals that. It is a modern steel automatic with an 80-hour movement and a metal bracelet, and a buyer who has read "80-hour power reserve, Swiss automatic" will make reasonable but wrong assumptions about where they can wear it.

So put "3 bar / 30 m — hand-washing only" in the description in words, not just as a number in a table. That sentence prevents the single most common after-sale complaint on a watch like this.

Nothing on this page glows

The specification lists the indexes as Roman and lists no luminescent material at all — neither on the hands nor on the markers.

Compare that with the other Tissot references here, which all carry Super-LumiNova on the hands.

Two consequences.

Do not write "luminous hands." It is a claim the manufacturer does not make, and it is trivially disproved in a dark room.

Do not flag it as a fault. A dealer who checks the watch at night, sees nothing, and concludes the lume has died has misread a dress watch that never had any.

Printed numerals, and what to look for

Roman indexes on a dial of this kind are printed rather than applied, and printing fails in ways applied markers do not.

Get a loupe on each numeral and look for thin, broken or missing strokes, particularly in the narrow elements — the uprights of a III, the diagonals of an X. Look for ink that has spread slightly, which suggests heat or moisture. And check every numeral is the same weight as its neighbours.

None of this shows in a seller's photograph, because dial shots are taken at a distance and at a size where a broken hairline disappears. It is exactly the kind of fault that arrives as a complaint.

Photograph the dial close and straight, and say what you see.

A plain crystal and an odd bracelet width

The crystal is listed simply as sapphire — no antireflective coating on either face, unlike most of the range.

That is worth noting for two reasons. There is no coating to haze or to scratch, which simplifies grading. And it means you must not carry the "antireflective" phrase across from a PRX or a Seastar description.

The bracelet is T605014109 at 19.00 mm — another uncommon width, between the two sizes everyone stocks. This page lists no quick-release option, so a strap change means spring bars and a tool as well as a hunt for the size.

Hold the bracelet horizontally from one end and watch for droop. At 122.00 g complete this is a light watch, and a stretched bracelet on a thin dress case is immediately obvious on the wrist.

The rest of the sheet

39.30 mm in both directions and 9.75 mm thick — the thinnest Tissot documented here, and genuinely slim in absolute terms.

The movement is Swiss automatic with 80 hours and a patented Nivachron balance spring, driving a date. No calibre, jewel count, frequency or accuracy figure is published.

The case back is see-through, so use it: wind the watch and look at the movement under a loupe for oil, rotor marks and chewed screw heads.

Made in Switzerland, with a two-year warranty stated from new.