I’m wearing a 15 year old Timex Expedition watch. It’s beat up, scratched, the numbers have worn off the bezel, and I’ve had to polish the plastic face several times to keep it readable.
I would like to replace it, but I’ve never found another watch that does what this one does, in the form factor that it comes in. Here’s what I’m looking for:
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A small watch. I can’t stand these new gigantic timepieces. If I put one on my wrist, I’m aware of it all day long. Drives me nuts. So I’d like a watch with a 39mm face or smaller.
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Light weight. I don’t want to wear a pound of steel on my wrist.
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A leather or good cloth strap. I can’t stand metal expansion bracelets.
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Analog and digital display. I’m a usability freak, and can’t stand all-digital watches. I’ve always found that analog hands give me that ‘at a glance’ picture of the time that you just don’t get from digital. At the same time, I have occasional use for a chronograph and alarm and such, so I prefer to have an inset digital display in the analog face. I could live without it, though.
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A readable face. I hate sacrificing function for form, so no faces lacking numbers, or with roman numerals, or with blue lettering on a black background. I’d like a nice, high contrast face. My expedition has a white face with black lettering in a nice compact font. There’s no extra glurge all over the watch face - no ‘noise’ to sift through. Watches with complex ‘elegant’ faces bug me about as much as web sites with patterned backgrounds.
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Thin. My Expedition is 10mm or 11mm thick. The replacement for this watch is 13mm or 14mm. It’s just way too thick for my taste. The thinner, the better.
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A good backlight system, or highly readable glowing hands.
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Other fun features are a bonus. I like toys, so the coolness factor definitely plays a part. But the basic functions of the watch can’t be compromised.
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Waterproofing is a bonus - not ‘water resistant’, but waterproof so I could use it for diving.
I’d like to pay under $500 for such a watch. Preferably in the $200-$300 range or less.
Alternatively, I’d like a decent automatic watch - I like mechanical movements, and I’d give up the bells and whistles to have a good watch I never have to put batteries in. But I can’t afford a Rolex or a Brietling, and I find them too large anyway.
This shouldn’t be that hard, but every watch I look at is always missing some key feature or has one lame-ass design feature that’s a deal breaker. So I keep dragging my cruddy old expedition back into service.
Heres an example of a watch I wish I could like, because it seems like a good watch: Seiko Sportura. It’s got a chronograph, a leather strap, analog face, it’s reasonably thin, etc. But it’s hard to read - no lettering, and all kinds of visual noise all over the face of the watch. It’s huge - Something like 45mm long. I tried one on, and the watch actually stuck out over the edges of my wrist - and I have fairly large wrists. The band was also very stiff, and as a result wearing it felt like I had a plank on my wrist. Very annoying.
The Tissot T-Touch watch looks interesting - It’s got a zillion features, yet the design looks clean because it uses a touch sensitive face for user input, and the hands actually serve multiple functions (i.e. when in compass mode, the hands move to point direction rather than having a digital direction display or a little dial - keeping the face design clean). But it’s expensive, and no one around here carries them so I can’t tell if it’s built well or whether the touch features work well.
Any suggestions for a good watch that meets my requirements?