Don't Think, Just Buy These Watches

whether you're spending hundreds thousands or even tens of thousands on a watch it's not always easy to take the leap I get it you want to make sure what you're getting is going to be worth the outlay but there are some watches where you quite simply don't need that thought process at all watches that if you like them are already the best version of that thing and so you should just save yourself a hassle and get them the last one follows exactly the same theme as all the others as price desensitizing as watches can be £500 is still a whole ton of money to spend and really merits at least some consideration before handing over that is unless that money is being waved in the direction of Citizen super titanium small seconds honestly I think this might be the best cheap watch you can get period we thought the siosa also from citizen was the daddy of affordable watchmaking that wasn't even a starter by comparison to the small seconds it was the chewing gum you stepped in walking to the restaurant don't get me wrong the siosa is a great watch and rolls off the tongue nicer than super titanium small seconds but in every other aspect the small seconds beats it with the power of a boiler's sandal aside from the Gillette Razer naming convention the super titanium small seconds is basically criticism proof think the titanium will scratch think again Buck if you haven't been paying attention this is super titanium Sheed in Durack for five times the protection something Charlie Sheen should have perhaps considered don't want the quartz Eco Drive movement unlike the slightly cheaper model this gets the automatic caliber 8213 visible through the sapphire case back and sealed to 100 m and if you get tired of looking at that the rest of the watch is hardly offensive where the ciosa was crisp and simple the small seconds is detailed and intricate combining an organic dial texture with a date complication and offs sent a second subdial fans of grand seiko's naturalistic approach to dial textures will be very pleased with their 500b outlay not least because gr Seiko asks a factor of 10 more the randomized foil-like texture of the small seconds gives me Christmas chocolate Vibes the fancy kind where each one gets its own dedicated slot and there's a menu attention to detail on things like the hands markers case and Crown are all as you'd expect from a company with the size and scale to automate the production of high quality Parts all in all there's little else out there to compete that matches both the price and the quality Seiko really needs to watch its back although if there's one watch Seiko doesn't need to worry its pretty little head about it's the prospect speed time of panda 100th of a second regardless of its price £760 since you're asking or its performance there's basically nothing else out there quite like it kit so if you want a watch that looks like a RW Shack test or more specifically the disapproving face of my father then I'm not sure what other option you've really got the design originates from a morbid desire to make you starkly aware of just how old you are an anniversary reedition of a wash from the early 2000s that wasn't even that long ago oh my God it was nearly a quarter of a century ago well the original watch was even more Bonkers which if you remember the 2000s being the time of the dancing baby length rainbow socks and Peak Nickelodeon makes perfect sense that's leaded fuel working at its best the original sportur sylon case is out with something a bit more standard in its place at 42 mm although the mad as a hatful of salad for dial display remains included in that is a later sportura Edition the 100th of a second counter which spins like an absolute bed over on the right being quartz is accurate to 15 seconds a month and being a prospect watch it gets 100 m of water resistance it combines seiko's solar technology as well which keeps the charge topped up chronograph seconds tenths and hundreds are all laid out on the dashboard up top but you might be wondering where on Earth the hours and minutes are well I hate to break it to you but this chronograph doesn't record hours minutes however take over the main time display when the watch is moved into chronograph mode with The Pusher bottom left the hour hand hiding behind the minute which can record up to a maximum of 60 so if you like your functions like you like your courses served on separate dishes then I'm pretty sure you're going to struggle to find another watch quite like it it's not often a watch emerges that does something completely different especially with a Bare Bones three-hander I mean there's probably a million new ways to make a watch here's one a watch that's almost entirely filled with opaque oil so you have to swill it about to read the time but then are very few that are actually any good new be's colloquium found inspiration for their actually good watch in the most unexpected of places designing it entirely around what it feels like to chew five gum the 468 elevated pixels use height and diameter to draw your attention to the hours an optical illusion that cleverly gives the bulges the impression of being bigger than they actually are swimwear companies are missing a trick that means the 2390 project o1 as this colloquium has been christened is well proportioned at a surprisingly diminutive 40 mm wide by 11 mm tall making it an incredibly comfortable and surprisingly subtle wear despite looking like a digital infographic for targeted pain relief and it's filled with surprises that only really come to life in three dimensions first is the Box Crystal which sits in the case like it's a big button if it were actually a button it looks like it would be responsible for some sort of weirdly creative villain like like genocide like releasing a flesh eating nanobot swarm and because the crystal makes up so much of the watch's height it means the relief of those little dial nubbins can also be viewed in profile some say it looks like a miniature City others liken it more to the inside of a medicine cabinet that whole display encapsulated between equal parts Sapphire and steel is then cradled inside a cast frame that also incorporates the strangely biomechanical lugs there's a whiff of hip replacement about them but in a good way it's a cleverly efficient construction and even if the small crown is harder to turn than an overfilled shopping cart it all ties together in an incredibly satisfying way if you like the technical stylings of interior architect turned watch designer Alan Silverstein then there's no other choice but to buy a watch designed by Alan Silverstein anything else feels like the disappointment usually reserved for parents of the kid who won't stop eating dirt what is it that makes an alen Silverstein watch and alen Silverstein watch well take one part Crayola mix it with a '90s birthday clown make it watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest back to back with A Clockwork Orange and voila it's good oldfashioned Sinister fun like when a cute little puppet tells you the key to escape is behind your eye remember how The Wizard of Oz was somehow delightfully charming and yet equally terrifying like if you were to look away from it for even a second if even just to rubricate your eyeballs with a the quick blink that scarecrow would climb out of your TV and eat your skin this unhinged Vibe is achieved in an alen Silverstein watch through the use of shapes colors and presumably a packed with the Devil the colors specifically utiliz primary Reds blues and yellows the Tim Curry palette and the shapes are somewhere between Ancient Aliens and a soul bass shopping list Silverstein's prolific nature means you're hardly short of choice however with the £ 3570 Lou art by Alan Silverstein Smile Day white a happy medium on price and quality as well as those signature colors shared amongst an array of shapes for the hours minutes and seconds there's another complication that's uniquely Silverstein in place of the day display is a sequence of variously emotive faces each giving some clue as to the place in the week they belong to Monday for example is a frowny day Wednesday is a little anxious whereas Friday is filled with anticipation Saturday and Sunday are elated and specifically demarcated in red as those are the days that have been designated as positive days happy thoughts happy thoughts in the 40mm titanium case the whole thing comes together with an air of wily Wonka's medical alert bracelet a very specific achievement that simply won't be found outside of Silverstein's work here's a very specific set of criteria for you a watch that combines the looks of a Rolex with the quality of a Rolex plus the heritage of a Rolex and the price of a tutor by no great surprise the only answer to that question is a tutor there's been a lot of squeaky noises about the rather excellent black Bay 58 GMT Tudor's answer to the question will I regret buying the black Bay Pro but for my money it's the £ 3,910 black Bay in 41 mm that's the real no-brainer to be clear I mean the submarin looking watch with the black dial and dive bezel and not the Oyster Perpetual looking watch called the black Bay 41 A naming convention that has definitely caused at least one disappointing birthday is the black Bay in black and not the 41 in 41 mm an exciting watch if you find humus a bit too Punchy and exotic then yes but no it's not exciting there have been funeral wakes that Inspire more relation than this watch so why is it such an obvious choice because if you could have the Submarina you just have that this is the other watch the fallback this is the watch you call when everyone else has got plans already it orbits in close enough proximity to scoop up some of that precious Rolex Aura anything else is just a far in a tornado by comparison it's the watch chat GPT would draw if you asked it to sketch a Rolex it's almost there not quite but close enough to feel a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing but it it's fine for what you need it for and no one's going to notice anyway arguing against the black Bay is just futile really you'd be better off mastering Alchemy you may not like it but the black Bay status is pre-ordained god-given it's Harry to the Rolexes William the ginger Submariner whose lineage isn't entirely original and I suppose that makes you it's custodian The Duchess of Sussex when everyone decided that the snowflake was Grand seiko's best watch Ever gr SEO told us to hold their SAR and came up with this the sbga407 since we're not all at the commander data end of the autistic Spectrum an actual name like snowflake is preferable and since the sbga407 is a blue dialed snowflake of sorts they called it the Skylake the skyflake isn't a straight to VHS addition to the James Bond series it's a bestof compilation of all of grand seiko's greatest hits of The Thousands starting off of course with the incredibly divisive caliber 90065 Spring Drive is it mechanical is it quartz is it witchcraft or is it just magnets whatever the answers to those questions are one thing is clear that secondhand sweep is smoother than a marble sculpture of my brain and since this is old school with a K Grand Seiko then it wouldn't be a true Spring Drive without knowing how much power is left in that 72-hour automatic movement which is of course all the power because it's an automatic movement it's up there with a standby light on a table lamp the cas is switched from the snowflakes titanium number to the more elegant design from the Elegance collection but what everyone's really raiding their kids college fund for is that blue dial it gets the same pattern as the snowflakes icy white number but here it's in blue and not just any old blue but a pale powder blue that I'm sure looks just like the sky above the grand Seiko studio in November at 2: p.m. on fajita Friday it's an unexpected choice of color and one that's rarely seen in watchmaking so if that's what you're looking for along with that famous Spring Drive and Grand seiko's legendary build quality there's little else that's going to sharpen your pastels like this can have you ever considered what the world might be like without the Omega speed master moonwatch Snoopy would just be some cartoon dog Stanley cubrick would have never got his big break and Tom Hanks would have been lost forever all nonsense aside the idea of Stanley cubric faking the moonlanding can only be a suggestion by anyone who's never seen a Stanley cubric film it's been a while since I watched the Apollo 11 footage but I distinctly remember that Neil Armstrong didn't ride the Saturn 5 kick a moon to death and then turn into a giant space baby thankfully in this universe at least the moon watch is alive and well it's progeny spawning like like spiders but there's a problem despite there being more iterations of the Moon watch than I can count on my 11 fingers if you don't like black dials and don't have a budget for precious metals your moong goose is kind of cooked well praise be because Omega added a dial in white lacquer to the collection that's got a lot of watch collectors hot under the bracelet and with good cause you could say the coloration complete with speed master in a lurid red is a cheap attempt to leverage preference towards rolex's Li a dial daytoner but to that I say yeah probably but that watch is as real to you and me as a Minor's toothbrush so it's not really worth clogging up the brain cells for in isolation the moon watch looks absolutely cracking in white and perhaps always should have been from the start it's much more NASA by which I mean white with red bits rather than built by the lowest bidder it's not quite as NASA as the Alaska project a limited edition Moon watch that also got a white dial but since that watch sells for twice the price it's dead to me anyway I'll tell you why they didn't use white dials for the original moonlandings though it's because white lacer is impossible to light bright enough in a studio to make it look believable it would have given the whole game away so you've owned Rolex you've owned pek you got bored and now you're looking to the weirdest stff to get your kicks and that's how you stumbled across the Slick domage of the rent type 8 this isn't polished bevels and grain Bridges though this is Star Trek but if they forgot about electricity the £12,000 rence type eight is both incredibly simple and yet impossibly complex at the same time like getting two people to agree on a takeaway on paper the typ eight has just two hands hours and minutes not even seconds and in reality it's going to scramble your brain into strawberry milkshake first let's consider the watch in plan that is looking straight at it the hands aren't independent of the dial they are the dial the minute hand at least moves as you'd expect rotating about the center to point at the minute track around the outer edges then there's the hours which exist in a microcosm of their own a sub dial ringed with 12 hour markers here's the bit that's going to fry your onion the hour dial is always opposite the minute hand and always upright so the whole thing orbits the dial at one revolution every 12 hours and 12 is always at the top before you've got time to stem that nose bleed we bring the watch into three dimensions to also realize this display warps upwards at its Center the Dome display so close to the crystal it's almost like there's no Crystal at all if it weren't for the ultra high resolution of reality you could swear it was a screen but it's not it's a real mechanical watch Without a Crown because of course it's wound and set by turning the case back and you should see what's going on inside this thing to make all that happen it's a basic ETA movement which only raises more questions than it answers wrapped in a bun of parts that decode the motion of time into the display you see here there's gears meshing with each other across different planes and different angles and oh my God I think I've gone blind the more you think about Pink Floyd the weirder it gets one of the most successful bands of all time they probably have more albums you haven't heard of than you have alongside emblematic masterpieces that have become the soundtracks to our lives there are unlikely Ventures off the beaten path that only the most DieHard Floyd fans will have any clue about Dark Side of the Moon we've all heard of that haven't we Shine On You Crazy Diamond Another Brick in the Wall Part Two obviously how about the escapades of a man and his Cheerios Allan's psychedelic breakfast or a dog and his microphone in Sheamus and by no means forgetting several species of small fairy animals gathered together in a and grooving with a p which sounds exactly like you think it does without those wild and wonderful Ventures into the unknown the stuff we've never heard of we wouldn't get the stuff we have and for the odd few of us that's the good stuff the Mad stuff the stuff we could call the antidote to the Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheeran of this world H Mosin company is I think the Pink Floyd of this industry with the Streamliner small seconds blue enamel it's Another Brick in the Wall the toron skeleton its Dark Side of the Moon and the panda It Shine On You Crazy Diamond as for its pieces more obscured by clouds green is the color of the £ 24,900 Endeavor cenc concept lime green for such a simple watch it's been mad for years absolutely years over the edge it's working with enel that does it at the heart of the watch is a deep green fume enamel layered onto a hammered gold dial that forms a bed of metallic Moss unlike any anything seen in watchmaking before it set against the 40mm steel case and gray leather strap it's a monochromatic concept that either resonates with you or it doesn't when I saw it for the first time there was someone else looking at it that absolutely hated it it was really quite rude about it actually that gizer was cruising for a bruising or maybe not maybe I misremember I don't know I was really drunk at the time if you want your chronograph from a big three watch maker to have horns like a cow there's literally only one choice the vasher on Constantine K de Vash yes this 50s throwback abides by the say it as you see it code of naming things alongside the fireplace and scarecrow with a name that translates exactly to cow horns if this rule were applied to other watch makers we'd have the odmar PGA desperate octagon the rad meal why doesn't my mother love me and the hublo so that's what the smell of burning hair and dog turds looks like doesn't matter in French they'd all sound good anyway it's these Bine bulges that make the corn devash even at a whopping £ 45,800 in steel our last must have just by watch but it's not the only reason the other is it's the only chronograph left in the big three that hasn't done away with the L Mania caliber many would half and posture and say things like well good because a prestigious watchmaking outfit like Vashon Constantine should be making its own chronograph movements not buying them from a company that sounds like an event at the Camden Palace but this watch is about Heritage and just like the out of favor horns that straddled the case the lania movement inside is an unfashionable throwback to the time the Upper Crust of pocket watch manufacturers got caught out by the introduction of the wristwatch by comparison the wristwatch required a chronograph caliber for ants and was just too small to create that's why the watch brands relied on specialist movement manufacturers like L Mana who'd already figured it out today that's just not needed anymore and most collectors want their crazy expensive chronographs to be thoroughbreds however for those who want to remember the way things were the condash is in a class of its own and remember if your worldview doesn't align with everyone else's just make a load of money selling payment software buy a dominant social media platform and then just force everyone to conform see you next time