The (Less intimidating) Watch Thread
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I'm going to buy a dedicated diving watch. I've been wearing a Seamaster for the last 10 yrs, and it's a great watch but a shitty dedicated diver (the bezel is not made to be easily rotated).
My criteria are:
- Max price $1,250 (some wiggle room for the right piece)
- Water resistance >= 20 ATM
- Well established, easily serviceable automatic movement
- Quality materials in terms of solidity & resistance (within realistic limits of course) to dings, scratches, UV, sea water, sand, etc (high grade stainless or titanium, sapphire, ceramic, etc)
- Unidirectional bezel with grippy profile that can be manipulated with fairly thick gloves
- Bracelet or strap useable on land and under water, with or without a dive suit (or easily swappable for aftermarket ones)
- High visibility dial & hands
- Must be wearable out of the water in a 'casual smart' setting (long pants, BD shirt)
- Near mint to new
- <=43mm (will make exception for the right piece)
Not required but nice to have:
- Second time zone
- Date
Not trying to optimize for:
- Minimal price
- Brand prestige
I'm just starting my search (and a new Excel sheet - I know, I know…) Preliminary list includes the following watches, some of which fall outside those parameters:
Seiko SBDC051 (the clear winner from a purely rational standpoint)
Halios Seaforth (lovely design, maybe too pretty to be a tool)
H2O Marlin 40 (infinite customization, a lot of watch for the money)
Magrette Moana Pacific Professional Kara (lovely Ti piece, but not available for several months)
Steinhart Ocean Titanium 500 Premium
Damasko DSub2 -
The Rado Captain Cook has an RRP of $1900, so a bit above your cutoff, but it's a lovely looking watch. Jason Heaton wrote a favourable review on Hodinkee. In fact, it was the watch he wore the most in 2017.
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That's nice ^
I feel like I want to comment a lot but my paucity of knowledge is preventing me. I just don't know what the different parts of a watch are called. I'm stuck on face, strap and hands. I know what a movement is now too and I think I have "crown" covered, but "bezel", I'm hazy on… It's a sad state of affairs I know. @Graeme do you know of a convenient resource/guide?
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@neph93 I'm in the same boat, but I'm forcing myself to talk about watches more to build my knowledge and comfort. I'm even forcing myself to wear my Maranez every day so I can quantify what I do and don't like about it, note how well it's keeping time, and plan for my first "well thought out" watch purchase later this year.
*So far I already know I want something that is more thin, that wears easily under a sleeve cuff… This beast I have now DOES NOT, so I find myself flipping up my left sleeve, or just taking my watch off after about half a day at work... I guess in the future, it will be a summertime/warm weather watch (Short sleeves)
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No worries @neph93:
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The bezel is the ring around the crystal on the front of the watch. On the Rado, above, it's the bit with the triangle, 15, 30, and 45 on it. It can be rotating (as above) or fixed.
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The crown is the winder, which is typically on the right hand side of the watch.
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The movement is the mechanical gubbins that you find inside the case.
Hodinkee have a Watch 101, which lists all the important terms.
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@UnTucked there are ultra-thin watches, which will slip under your cuff. This is the profile of the very expensive Bulgari Octo Finissimo, which is 5.15 mm (about 1/5") thick.
More sensibly, a dress watch will be slimmer than a diver. The Hamilton Intra-Matic and Tissot Ballade Powermatic are around 10 mm (2/5") thick.
A manual watch, where you need to wind the crown to power it, will often be slimmer than automatic, which is wound by your motion. These use a rotor, which is the semicircular piece of metal you can see on top of the movement, and this adds a millimetre or two to the thickness.
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I'll have to spend some time trying watches on…
My Maranez measures in at 13.7mm thick, and though I love the look of this watch, it's not "practical" with my long sleeves shirts. But, 5.15mm sounds like the exact opposite end of the spectrum, lol! The Hamilton that I'm leaning towards measures in a 11mm thick... I'll be sure to wear a long sleeve shirt when I'm finally ready to try it on one day.
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Trying things is good. If you read Hodinkee or other blogs and forums, you'll see a lot of comments along the lines of, "If only it was 38 mm, not 40 mm", or "I can't wear bigger than a 39 mm watch".
In my experience, you get used to different sizes pretty quickly, but it might look odd when you put something on for the first time. Provided the lugs don't extend past the edges of your wrist, you'll be fine, and the Hodinkee fans of small watches are wrong.
For example, I normally wear a Tender watch, which has a 36 mm diameter case.
But I could rock an Omega Ploprof, which is 48 mm, and definitely won't fit under shirt cuffs!
Weirdly, I never seem to get on with 39 mm pieces. No idea why!
The Bulgari is actually really comfortable, so going that thin isn't a problem.
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Of the ones you've listed, I like the Steinhart best. It's slightly thinner than most other dive watches, since it uses the ETA 2892 movement instead of the more common 2824. I'm also a big fan of titanium cases.
For that reason, I'd also suggest a Dievas Vortex. They're easily available on the secondhand market, too. The leather strap is meh, so I would recommend swapping it with a decent nato at the first opportunity.
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I much prefer the ceramic bezel to aluminum, and most divers I see still use aluminum (looking at you Tudor).
Seriously, there is no excuse for a watch company in that price bracket to still be using crappy aluminum bezels, especially when they have access to the Rolex parts bin.
