The first watch my parents bought me was a counterfeit Casio from Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It worked for less than 24 hours, but I cherished it. I suspect my parents thought watches were just another childhood phase. Think again. I've now owned seven watches, and if I wasn't so good at losing them, I'd probably have a collection. My current piece is a 'Brathwait classic'. It does the job and it matches my simple desire = classic face, no numbers unless they are Roman numerals and a comfortable leather brand.
When I first saw my old university mate, Edman Tam, post on Facebook about how he's joined the family business as a watch repairer, I was ecstatic. It was only a matter of time until I convinced him to compile a list of his favourite watches. (Shameless plug for the Tam family's watch repairer chain, Watch World. Head to the store in the Merrylands Stockland Mall to meet the maestro.)
You might not know that 'Swatch' stands for 'second watch'. This perfectly marks the intent behind Swatch Watches; they are designed to be inexpensive, reliable watches for casual, everyday wear. Many attribute the survival of Swiss watch brands (indeed, perhaps the Swiss watch industry) to Swatch.
If everyone exclusively wore Swatch watches, I would be out of business! Their bands and batteries are designed to be replaced with minimal instruction. Often, their watches are designed to be produced in-house, and the movement of the watch is integrated into the casing of the watch itself. I haven't seen this in any other mass produced watch. As such, they produce very good quality watches at a reasonable price point.
There is, however, many watches in the Swatch range I would avoid. Swatch has kept a lot of the design aesthetics from the 80s, when Swatch was founded, which doesn't appeal to me. Many of their watches use plastic for their casing, clasps, as well as thin silicon for their bands, all of which are prone to breakage. This is made worse by the fact that these watches are not designed to be repairable. As someone who works as a repairer, it is frustrating to throw a watch away because of minor damage!
However, the Sistem range is the exception. The Sistem Soliare sports a black leather band, stainless steel casing and clasp, as well as lenses on front and back allowing a glimpse of Swatch's extremely impressive Sistem 51 automatic movement. This watch is packed full of deft features (too many to list here!) and feels great. I can't say I adore the look, but for a Swiss-made, automatic watch of this quality, and less than $300, the Swatch Sistem range is an essential addition to your collection.
Released just before the turn of the century, the Seiko SKX009K1 is an affordable, Japanese-made, automatic diver's watch. Just those descriptors make my skin tingle! Yes, this watch is first and foremost designed for reactional divers, and yes, the calibre of movement is on the lower end of Seiko's automatic movements, but I haven't dived for years and it is still a Seiko-made automatic movement.
This watch also displays the date, has luminous hands and marks, has a 'Pepsi cap' style unidirectional turning bezel and can take a beating due to its stainless steel casing and thick rubber band. The retro, utilitarian look, with the blue/red contrast, is just stunning. I cannot understand how anyone who claims to collect watches (at this price point) doesn't own at least one of Seiko's SKX range.
In fact, I might look into getting another one for myself now...
My first watch was a digital Casio. My second was a Casio G-Shock. And I have been buying G-Shocks ever since!
Yes, G-Shocks are made to take a beating. They come standard with shock resistance, water resistance to 200m, alarms, stopwatches, timers, international time, light and so on. Certain models have specialised features, including GPS tracking, air pressure and temperature, moon and tide graphs, Bluetooth connectivity, mud resistance, and radio controlled time. G-Shocks are experiencing a resurgence over the lastolst few years, but most of the new styles don't appeal to me. I don't need the analog time, which is really hard to read, and I am not a fan of the size or the colour choices.
For me, the Casio G-Shock is all about nostalgia. A G-Shock needs that big ole button on the front so you can turn on the light with your teeth when your hands are full! It needs that bar across the front that doesn't actually offer any additional protection. It needs to look like the display panel of an old aircraft! The G-Shock GD400-9D in olive-brown encapsulates all of that for me. It has all the features that I need, with all the aesthetic flourishes that I love. Even the colour looks like it fell out of a sepia photograph. It's just perfect.
G-Shocks are also my travel watch of choice, and the model coded G-2900F with databank and ten-year battery life has saved my butt while overseas several times: sleeping in the back of vans, taking long-distance train rides, stolen bags, passports and phones, my G-Shock has helped me through! At around $100, however, the G-2900F wasn't fancy enough for this list. It is definitely worth looking around for the functions you would actually use on a regular basis.
So much about this watch makes it look like it was passed down to you by your beloved grandfather. The raised, rounded lens is reminiscent of the old automatic watches, where the hands are raised above the face of the watch. The face is ivory, the casing is faded gold as if both have been weathered through the course of time. And the alligator print leather band hasn't been in fashion since the 90s.
There is only one thing that makes it noticeably modern. With a 40mm diameter case, it is not too small to be considered a classic watch, but not as big as most modern watches popular today. Inside the watch, however, this Citizen houses the E111 movement - a solar powered quartz machine with the battery life to run for six months on a full charge.
When on sale, this watch can be found at almost half the price of others on this list. Citizen Echo-Drives also come with a huge five-year warranty and are made with consistently high-quality materials. This makes Eco-Drives, in my opinion, one of the most underrated and undervalued watches on the market today; making it easily capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the watches on this list.
To round off the list, I wanted to include a flashy watch. And that usually means a big watch with lots of little dials, protruding buttons and shiny bits. The problem with this is that buttons in conventional watches are generally used to operate the chronograph feature of a watch. The chronograph feature is basically a stopwatch, displayed on hands over two to three dials. Honestly, I can say that I have never used the chronograph feature! It seems a shame to pay all that extra money for trimmings you may never use.
This watch is gold and blue with a 44mm case diameter, which is plenty big and flashy. Pressing the buttons make the hands swing dramatically and purposefully. Although the purpose wouldn't be apparent for most observers, it is bound to impress.
The time and many other functions can be set by connecting your smartphone to your watch. The watch can also buzz to alert you when you have incoming notifications. Yes, you read that right! It even comes with a basic activity tracker, used to track your steps and the analog display will tell you how close you are to achieving your daily step goal.
So, am I ecstatic about this watch? Well, for one, it is a "smart watch", which means it is the enemy of horologists everywhere! As far as I am aware, this watch is perhaps the only on this list where the mechanics are not produced in-house. But this watch does round off the collection on this list quite well.
