Tissot PRX 40mm quartz T1374101104100: specs and what to check

Four numbers tell the two apart

Put this reference and the 40 mm automatic side by side in photographs and most buyers — and plenty of sellers — cannot tell them apart. Same case, same width, same bracelet reference, same clasp.

Tissot publishes four differences, and they are the whole basis for describing either one correctly.

• Thickness — 10.40 mm here; 10.93 mm on the automatic
• Weight — 130.00 g here; 138.00 g on the automatic
• Caseback — this page lists none; the automatic lists a see-through caseback
• Crystal — sapphire here; sapphire with one antireflective coating on the bottom side on the automatic

The caseback is the one you can check without instruments. Turn the watch over: if you can see a movement through the back, you are holding the automatic.

And there is a simpler test still. Watch the seconds hand. A quartz three-hand movement steps once per second. An automatic sweeps. Two seconds of looking answers the question that the case, the bracelet and the dial will not.

Getting this wrong in a listing is not a technicality — the two are different products, priced differently, and a buyer who ordered one and received the other is entitled to send it back.

The EOL indicator is a feature, not a fault

Tissot lists EOL (battery end-of-life indicator) among this reference's functions, with a battery voltage of 1.55 volts.

An EOL indicator works by changing the seconds hand's behaviour when the battery is running down — typically by making it jump in multi-second intervals instead of ticking once a second.

A dealer who does not know this diagnoses a broken watch. A dealer who does knows the watch is telling them it needs a battery, which is a trivial service and not a deduction worth arguing over.

Check for it at the buy, and if it has triggered, put a fresh battery in before you photograph the watch. A listing whose video shows a seconds hand lurching in four-second jumps will not sell, whatever the description says.

The bracelet is still the expensive part

Everything true of the integrated bracelet on the automatic is true here, and the reference is the same: T605046447, 12.00 mm at the case, stainless steel, interchangeable quick release, closed by a butterfly clasp with push-buttons.

Check it for stretch by holding it horizontally. Work the clasp a dozen times and confirm both wings release and latch. Pop the bracelet off and refit it once to prove the quick-release tabs move.

Ask where any removed links are. An integrated bracelet cannot be substituted with a strap, so a bracelet that is too short for the buyer is a real problem rather than an inconvenience.

Rating and provenance

10 bar (100 m / 330 ft), with no screw-down crown described on this page — so the rating depends on the crown being fully home.

316L stainless steel, 40.00 mm wide by 39.50 mm long, dial listed as blue with index markers and Super-LumiNova on the hands.

Tissot also publishes Country of manufacture: Switzerland and a two-year warranty from new. Both are worth quoting; both are things a buyer would otherwise have to take on trust.