Sunon P90 Chinese Chronograph Movements - What's in a Megir Chronograph?

Recently, I found a Sunon P90 movement in a watch I purchased overseas. I did a few searches on-line and as usual the forum participants did plenty of guessing. Performing my own investigations as a business analyst usually produces different results than on forums. Even so, I enjoy reading the humorous comments on watch forums and many of the forum members have extensive expertise - especially with Asian watches.

Sunon owes its capitalization to Guangzhou Pearl Group Co., Ltd. (Swatch Group, Ltd.) For readers who have little familiarity of Guangzhou, we used to call it Canton. People still speak Cantonese there. The watch industry thrives in Guangzhou as it may represent the largest watch manufacturing center on the globe.

Most people with whom I'm acquainted refer to Sunon as a producer of "cheap Chinese movements". After all, the company located their corporate headquarters in  Hong Kong. They also placed their R&D teams in Wuhan and Hong Kong. The must be making cheap Chinese movements.

Maybe not. While they have a reputation as a decent quartz movement manufacturer, they also manufacturer mechanical movements in Biel, Switzerland.

Sunon runs eight factories. They are located in Guangdong, Wuhan, Enshi, Lichuan, Chongqing, Meizhou, Guiyang and Zhunyi. Their factories produce 50 models in six series with 100 assembly lines and 4,000 employees engaged in factory production. Their daily quartz volume runs around two million pieces.

Megir Model 3002 with a PE90 Movement
MSRP $200 market price $50 + or -.

Sunon is not a household name in the West, yet they rank as the top watch industry producer in China. Comparing apples to apples, Sunon will probably never compete with Sea-Gull since the later company produces mechanical movements. Still, in a stiff industry, Sunon has excelled since its founding in 2004.

From the dial side of a watch, many watch enthusiasts mistake Sunon movements for Citizen Miyota. The chronographs, for example, use a format similar to Miyota. In turn, the Miyota chronographs use a format similar to ETA.

Few of us realize that ETA produces their quartz movements in Thailand and China. Miyota also produces 80% of their movements in China. They both compete with Sunon.

I rank ETA as the best quartz movement manufacturer in the industry. Miyota and Seiko Instruments seem tied for second, but I don't know where to rank Sunon. I do know, they have a range of products and they have a strong performance record, both as a corporate entity and as a producer of watch movements.