I don’t use chatbots to write either texts or code for me. For code, Gemini CLI wasn’t bad when I used it, and Qwen Code was very decent, too, but it discontinued its free tier. Claude in Amazon’s Kiro was usable but often drunk. I use chatbots to help me with everyday questions. And they’re worse and worse, both in reasoning or searching and in their limits for a free user (although Claude and Gemini recently had severe decreases in quotas for paying customers, too!).

Here’s how major chatbots failed to help me just now, some worse than others.

It all started with this prompt:

I’m looking for a watch I’ve seen on a teenager.

  • It had a small diameter, 35 or 36 mm, retro-style. Or maybe 38 mm?
  • It was bulky, with a domed glass.
  • It was not the Timex Q Reissue 1972 TW2V25400 Date 39mm Red.
  • It had a red dial like the Timex above, but not all the dial was red. It had a white (or off-white) ring around the red part of the dial. Maybe because the dial wasn’t entirely red, it looked smaller. Maybe it wasn’t.
  • Square-ish with rounded corners.
  • Again, Timex has some reissues in this style, but it wasn’t a Timex!

Bear in mind that none the following two watches are not the answer, but the second one is a closer match:

  • Timex Q Reissue 1972 TW2V25400
  • Farer Cushion Case Benham

I didn’t know of the second watch, which was only suggested by 3 of the 9 chatbots, and the third result came after a very long time. So 6 chatbots were further fed with this suggestion:

Farer Cushion Case Benham is very close to what I am looking for.
BUT: the watch I’m looking for has a more bulging dome, and it looked smaller in diameter.
Think of it: a teenager in a bus, no big money, but not a cheap AliExpress replica either.

The strap was leather, I guess, but I only fed this info to one chatbot that asked me.

Here’s what I experienced.

❶ Grok initially told me that even the Fast model (the only one available to free users) was under heavy load, and that I should try later. After a couple of minutes, it agreed to honor my prompt. Then, the verdict: “Farer Cushion Case Benham (cherry red variant) seems like a very strong match.” Further suggestions, even after a second prompt, weren’t helpful. They were actually worse.
🌐 https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_eec7c129-0cde-4002-a321-674a1623d044

❷ Qwen was the first chatbot to actually suggest “Farer Benham”! (Grok wasn’t available yet.) But then, just like it was the case with Grok, further suggestions, even after a second prompt, weren’t helpful. They were actually worse.
🌐 https://chat.qwen.ai/s/855102d1-18b4-4389-a923-d5570169531c?fev=0.2.54

❸ Claude gave up after 1 question, telling me to wait 4 hours and 40 minutes! Utterly useless as long as its suggestion was dumb! It was just a CASIO with red dial.
🌐 https://claude.ai/share/6dd5c24a-d29f-454b-bcb1-222038e24ae4

❹ Gemini Pro Extended was useless, even when hinted “something like Farer Cushion Case Benham”:
🌐 https://gemini.google.com/share/e8c6ce5bb598

❺ Le Chat Mistral was pathetic, even when hinted “something like Farer Cushion Case Benham”:
🌐 https://chat.mistral.ai/chat/086fe480-f3fd-4658-bfd3-27db4e76fe7c

❻ DeepSeek was useless, even when hinted “something like Farer Cushion Case Benham”:
🌐 https://chat.deepseek.com/share/7lgw4q45uoa4418klz

❼ Copilot was useless, even when hinted “something like Farer Cushion Case Benham”:
🌐 https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/qD6KQoBkdTLf6E3zAeXUr

❽ ChatGPT (free, of course) came with different suggestions, but not helpful ones. After hinting to “something like Farer Cushion Case Benham,” the results were even less useful. I even explored the links at the end, which included further suggestions. Nope.
🌐 https://chatgpt.com/share/6a0e3c86-d9f8-83eb-baf9-81205282ba95

❾ Kimi has a strong limitation with web searches. Yes, I’ve used it a lot with web searches in the past, but when it doesn’t have any other idea than to perform countless web searches, it gets stuck with this message: “This task paused because Kimi reached the maximum number of tool calls for a single message. Type ‘continue’ to resume the task.” After several calls to continue the task, “System is currently busy. Please try again later.” And “Capacity is busy. Please wait or upgrade.” OK, retrying. After a long time, it came up with two suggestions:

  • Thorn T017
  • Farer Benham

Well, at least these are what other chatbots suggested when they were close to useful.
🌐 https://www.kimi.com/share/19e47c25-f072-8538-8000-00009cb4b6e1

But the Thorn T017 doesn’t look like what I saw (it’s cheap, though: $80-$120!), and the Farer Benham is too expensive for a teenager in a bus in Romania (~$1,200). So the mystery remains unsolved.

🤖 The list of chatbots that offered something visually close enough to the description, meaning the Farer Benham:

  • Grok
  • Qwen
  • Kimi

Do whatever you want with this conclusion.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I consider myself quite knowledgeable in watches. Almost as good as in pharmacology, or even better.

Strangely though, I wasn’t aware that “squarish with rounded corners” is known in horology as “cushion case” or “coussin.” What I knew is that it’s not a version of “barrel/tonneau.” (One more reason it wasn’t a Timex Q Reissue.)