Vostok is a Russian watch manufacturer. Founded in the Soviet Union in 1942, Vostok introduced the Komandirskie in 1965. There are lots of different dials and bezels and many components are interchangeable for these watches. 

Diameter: 39.9mm

Lug-to-lug: 46.1mm

Thickness: 11.9mm

Lug width is: 18mm

The watch has 20 meters of water resistance.

Looking at the face of this watch one can see the a blue dial with a stylized submarine and seagull towards the 12 o’clock position, and an anchor towards the 6 o’clock. Each hour marker is reflected with an Arabic numeral except at the 3 o’clock, where the date window appears, and the 12 o’clock which is represented with a red star. The hour and minute hands are pencil style and the watch does have a central seconds hand. The crystal is acrylic. The bezel is bidirectional and friction-based so it does not click. The bezel turns easily, in fact I have bumped the watch into things and moved the bezel. That said, it is smoothly textured so it actually is quite hard to get a good grip on to properly turn it.

The lume is pretty disappointing. Thin quantities of lume appear on the minute and hour hands. There are pips of lume around the dial at all the hour positions except the 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock positions, with two pips flanking the 12 o’clock. In my real-world experience the disappointment is really in terms of the duration… this lume just doesn’t glow for very long.

The case is chrome-plated brass though the caseback is steel. The crown is screw-down and features three positions. In position zero the crown is screwed down. Interesting to me is the watch was listed as having a water resistance of just 20 meters despite having a screw-down crown. That is a strange rating too that I’m not sure how to interpret. I normally construe 10 meters of water resistance to mean don’t get the watch wet, and 30 meters to be splash proof. So I guess 20 meters is maybe splash proof but best to try and keep it dry? I’ve seen others state the watch does seem okay with limited water exposure.

When the crown is in position one the movement can be hand-wound. Note that when unscrewed the crown wobbles on its stem. This is a design feature to protect the stem from damage and is supposed to be like this. However, it does make winding a bit odd as the stem does not pop out like it does in most other watches and it can be helpful to tilt the watch to help apply some tension.

Position two allows the time to be set, and again, the loose stem means you need to take some steps to provide tension. This watch does not hack. There is no date quick-set on this watch so you have to advance the time to change the date. There is a trick to speed this up somewhat, whereby after going past midnight you can move the watch back in time. You’ll see the date wheel give a bit of a move. From there you can go past midnight again to move the date forward. Rinse and repeat to reach the proper date.

The watch has a closed caseback. It came on a leather strap which I did try on. I didn’t find it uncomfortable but the leather is stiff and does have something of a plasticy feel. My bigger concern was the keeper on the strap seemed very flimsy and weak so I decided to put this on a NATO strap instead while I owned it (but the photos below are on the original leather).

This watch features Vostok’s 2414A movement. It is a manual-wind only movement with a 36-hour power reserve. It beats a 2.75 Hertz. The movement has an extremely poor accuracy rating of -20 to +60 seconds per day. On my timegrapher I got an average gain across six positions of 10.17 seconds/day, with a positional variation of 0 seconds per day to +20 seconds/day. Note that I have regulated this watch myself and I have a video of that process on my YouTube channel, and these readings are after my regulation. When I received this watch it had an average gain of 23 seconds per day across the six positions, with a positional performance range of +19 seconds/day to +31 seconds/day. Well within the movement's standard, but pretty bad for a modern mechanical watch.

My overall thoughts:

The positives:

• Extremely affordable

• In-house mechanical movement

The negatives:

• Acrylic crystal is easy to scratch

• Rotating bezel is too hard to grip and too easy to bump out of position

• Movement accuracy out of the box is poor

• Lack of a quick-date function

• The chrome-plated brass case looks cheap

• Limited power reserve

I bought this watch off eBay from a seller I’d seen repeatedly cited as a good source for new-in-box Vostoks, for roughly $41 dollars. So while I’ve noted a lot of negatives bear in mind this is an extremely cheap watch. A mechanical watch, with an in-house movement, and an interesting history all for under $50 is nothing to sneeze at. So, my negatives really need to be factored against that low price-point, as naturally you must give up a lot of refinements to obtain something this low-cost. Of all the negatives I listed the lack of a quick-set date is the one that really bothers me. I had to cycle this through an entire month so I know, even with the back-and-forth trick to move the date wheel it is extremely tedious. I think all the other sacrifices are reasonable given the cost but I’d rather have a no-date version to just avoid the whole date-set aspect. That said, if someone is looking for a mechanical watch with some character or something that can be beat around and no guilt felt I think the Vostok Komandirskie should be up for consideration. It is a serious watch operating at a price-point where jokes are usually in play, and that’s no small feat.