Power Wheels Magazine A Notch Above
If you’ve been reading the articles in our Timepieces section for the past 26 days, you might have noticed that all the Seiko wristwatches that we’ve featured so far come with metal case backs. The information inscribed on the metal case backs of Seiko timepieces that we’ve featured so far tell us the model of the movement and the case design, as well as the month and year that the timepiece was manufactured.
The Seiko field watch that we’re featuring today, Sunday September 27, 2026, will be the first in our collection to have an exhibition glass case back to view the movement. Our 2000 Seiko 5 Sports SNZG15 is powered by a 23-jewel Caliber 7S36 automatic mechanical movement that operates at 21,600 beats per hour (BPH) with a 43-hour power reserve. It would be fun to watch the 7S36 tick 6 times a second through the glass case back if only our eyes were fast enough.
Introduced around the start of the new millennium, the Seiko 5 Sports became quite popular as an affordable field watch, more so because of its mechanical movement, since people were especially fearful that computers, electronics, and quartz watches will all fail because of the Y2K bug. (Thank God, the Y2K bug was a fake news! – Ed.) Well, Y2K was 26 years ago and completely forgotten, but our Seiko 5 Sports is still alive and ticking!
With its 43 mm stainless steel case that’s 45 mm long lug-to-lug and around 13 mm thick, the 80-gram Seiko 5 Sports is a field watch that you can wear daily. Swept every 60 seconds by a spear-style seconds hand, its black dial features polished metal indices, luminous pencil-style hour and minute hands, and a day/date complication at the 3 o’clock position. A rotating dial with six 10-second gradients surrounds the scratch-resistant Hardlex crystal.
The Seiko 5 Sports is water resistant up to depths of 100 meters (10 bar), which makes its ideal for swimming and snorkeling. It is said to come with a black military-style canvass/nylon strap but ours came with a stainless steel jubilee-style bracelet, which we later replaced with a black leather strap to augment the black dial. With the leather strap, we don’t plan to wear our 1998 Seiko 5 Sports SNZG15 doing any kind of water sports. But we could, if we really want to…
Model: Seiko 5 Sports
Reference No.: 7S36-01X0 / SNZG15
Month/Year of Manufacture: May 2000
Type: Field Watch
Movement: Self-winding/Automatic
Caliber: Seiko 7S36
No. of Jewels: 23
Diameter: 43 mm
Thickness: 12.9 mm
Lug-to-lug Length: 45 mm
Lug Width: 22 mm
Weight: 76 grams
