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Top Things to Look For In A Luxury Watch Part 1: Entry Level Luxury

Welcome to the first of three articles that offer an overview for watch newbies on what to look for when getting a new watch. Esteemed watch expert readers are going to be familiar with much of what I am talking about, and I encourage your personal additions to the list. For the rest, I hope to help guide your watch purchase decision and discuss information that many of us take for granted.  Too often am I presented with questions about what watch people should buy, or what makes a watch good. I simply cannot review the 100s of watch brands and 1000s of styles with each person – what I can give people is a general overview of what to look for and ask about given your budget.

In “Part 1,” I will discuss features you should look for in what I call an “entry level luxury” watch. This is going to be the $300 and above price point. I will not cap it because different watches simply give you more for the money and these features are certainly things you’ll want in upper range watches as well. The next price point will be $1000 and up, and finally we will have the price point of about $20,000 and up. This latter price point will include things at the $20,000 level as well as the $200,000 level.

For $300 and up watches:
This is a broad range of watches with probably the largest selection of watches in it. For some of you $300 is a huge sum for a watch, while for others of you, this is a paltry amount barely worth your attention. If you are in the former category, you’ll want to listen up as these are important things to look for. Again, this is just one partial list, and there are of course others things that go into a good watch.

1. Sapphire Crystal
A watch crystal is the transparent cover over the face of the watch. Crystals have been made using different materials over the years, but only a few major materials dominate the market today. Most of the watch you’ll look at have one of two types of crystals; mineral glass or synthetic sapphire crystals. Mineral crystals are cheaper and offer one benefit over sapphire – they don’t tend to shatter if stuck hard. Meaning they will crack, but not shatter. Shattered sapphire crystals are relatively rare and typically occur with a harsh impact. The better the watch, the thicker the sapphire crystal will be, and thus less likely to crack. Sapphire crystals are incredibly scratch-resistant though. You often seen well-worn watches with beat up cases but a “flawless” crystal. Thus, sapphire crystals are more desirable to mineral crystals and should be preferred the majority of the time.

2. Solid Metal Construction
To some people it might be obvious to get a watch out of solid metal, but you’d be surprised at how some cheaper watches cut costs. Steel watches should be make from grade 316L stainless steel almost all the time. Plus, the watch case and bracelet links should be solid pieces of metal rather than folder metal or anything hollow. it is easy to tell a solid bracelet by looking at the side of it and noticing it if looks like one solid piece. In watches at this level, cases are best made from the fewest amount of pieces and using the most metal possible. This means the least (or no) amount of materials such as plastic or otherwise.

3. Swiss movement or Japanese Movement (if it is a Japanese watch)
Switzerland is known for making high quality watch movements – you knew that. Japan also makes good movements, but not all movements are created equally. Most of the the time Swiss movements comes from ETA, or Ronda – especially if they are quartz movements (though this is not always the case). Japanese quartz movements typically come from makers such as Seiko, Citizen, and Casio. While these countries are not the only makers of movements, at these price points try to get movements from these regions as much as possible. Plus, if a watch is not Japanese, try to find one with a Swiss movement. You generally want to stay away from Chinese movements, though this is not always a signal of low quality. Japanese watches probably utilize Japanese movements the best, though you’ll find Japanese movements (often Miyota which is part of Citizen) in timepiece from all over the world. Lastly, at this price point don’t worry too much about finding mechanical watches – you are just fine with a quartz movement – even though there are plenty of mechanical movements available.

4.Solid Feeling Construction
You want your watch to feel well put together and solid. Check to see how well the strap or bracelet fits to the case. There should little to no wiggle room. Put the watch on your wrist and see how well the clasp or buckle operates, they should be smooth with a nice action. They should further not feel flimsy or poorly sized. If the watch has a rotating diver’s bezel, again twist it around and see how much movement it gives in a resting position. A good watch should not make too much or any noise when shifting around briskly on your wrist, and it goes without saying that it should feel like it is all assembled in tight fitting manner. It is also the case that a lot of the time Swiss companies (even at these lower price points), make better metal bracelets than other countries even Japan. it is true that a Swiss design bracelet might actually be manufactured elsewhere, but they take great pride in refinement of these areas.

5. Designed by Actual Watch Makers
Consider that two types of people are designing watches. Those that care about how well a watch functions as a timepiece, and others that just care about how they look. The best watches are designed using fundamental watch design principles that value function AND form. The alternative are “fashion” watches that might look nice, but actually have superfluous or vestigial design cues. Worst case scenario is a watch that is so poorly design it does not even function properly. Examples of this are missing chronograph subdials, erroneous markers on dial, inoperable measuring scales just placed for show, and my all time biggest pet peeve – hands that are too short or the wrong size. The last thing you want is your nice looking watch to function like a movie prop. So do yourself a favor and really take a good long look dial and all its features figuring out what each and everything function does, along with making a decision of whether it is usable given your standards. This is one of the biggest problems in the watch market today, and you’ll be proud that you took the time to find a watch that was actually designed to be a highly functional instrument.

6. Locking Deployment Clasp if on Metal Bracelet
Cheaper watches with metal bracelets still have what is called a single locking clasp. This is the type of bracelet that literally just snaps or clicks into place. The best metal bracelets have what are know as “double or triple locking clasps.” The image below has a bracelet with a double locking clasp (deployment). The piece on the left “locks” via clicking down when it attaches to the bottom segment. That is the first “lock.” The second is the little metal flap that “locks” again over the first piece to secure it being closed. A triple lock often features a push-button in the mix, or there are also “double locking clasps” with a push button instead of a fold over flap. The bottom line is that you want a watch bracelet that will stay secure on your wrist no matter you are doing or if you accidentally hit bracelet on something.

7. Weight
Watch weight is a polarizing concept. Some people (like myself) love heavy watches. Others want something very light. On more expensive watches you start to see materials such as titanium which are lighter than steel, but in this price segment weight is often times a sign of quality. Even though titanium is available at this price level, it most likely is not the higher (grade 5) quality titanium that is what you’ll want. At this price level, you are only going to get that nice crisp quality look with steel. Like I said, weight often signifies solid construction using a high quality steel. So feel the weight of a case and bracelet to make sure it is substantial enough to justify your investment.

8. Signed Crown and Buckle or Clasp
A good watch maker is more often than not a proud watch maker, and is fully invested in each watch they design. This means there are typically four places that you’ll watch to see the name of the watch makers. This is on the face of the watch, the caseback, on the crown, and on the deployment clasp or strap buckle. These are also known as “signed crowns or buckles/deployment clasps.” The manner of “signing” can vary, but at this price level are usually some type of light laser engraving. Higher priced watches have logos and graphics done relief (raised versus etched into the metal). Cheaper watches have bare crowns and deployments which make it too clear that these parts are taken from a parts bin and have no personal touch.

9. Good Dial Lumination
Not all watches are expected to have dials that illuminate in the dark for low light viewing – these are typically the more classic or formal watches. However, almost all sport and causal watches have some type of luminant that is applied on the hands as well as somewhere on the dial. The quality of luminant greatly varies. Some is so impractical that it should not even be there. An example being that you need to shine a bright light directly to the face of the watch for a minute or so, and then the dial dimly glows for a few minutes. Alternatively you have luminant that charges easily with exposed room or sun light and glows for hours. The Japanese tend to make the best luminant, but you get get Japanese luminant watches from all over (watches will never indicate the source of the luminant, but look for LumiNova, or better yet SuperLumiNova is possible). An alternative to luminant are watches that use tritium gas tubes. These tubes are made by just one company in Switzerland and glow by themselves for about 25-30 years. Tritium gas tubes are not tough to find as a few watch brands almost exclusively use them and can be had for reasonable prices. Still, most watches will have applied luminant. Look for large surface areas of luminant that is applied richly (looks raised up a bit).

10. Consistent Pricing
One figure attached to new watches that doesn’t tend to mean a lot is the retail price. Why? Because you are a sucker for ever paying retail price most of the time. After those of you from the watch companies stop cursing me, let me explain a bit. Retail prices are just number set so that even authorized retailers can show to the consumer that they are giving you a discount. It is true that some watches are discounted only a bit or not at all, but the vast majority of watches, especially at these prices levels, are sold below retail prices. That is good to know, but not my final point. Due to the fact that prices are often below retail, you want to pay the “actual,” consistent street price. Let’s say for example a watch has a retail price of $500, but most retailers actually sell it for $400. You want to make sure you shop around to pay $400 as opposed to $450. Here is the kicker though when it comes to assessing value of an entry level luxury watch. If a watch is being sold by authorized dealers for $400, but the unauthorized dealers (everyone else) is charging $250, then you know there is something wrong with the value of the watch. This is what I call “inconsistent pricing.” What you want to look for is consistency among retailers so that prices don’t vary wildly from seller to seller.

 

Top Things to Look For In A Luxury Watch Part 1: Medium Range Luxury

If you are going to spend $1.,000 or more on a watch, these are factors you’ll want to consider when getting a medium range luxury watch.

1. Mechanical Movement
Save for limited circumstances, if you are buying a men’s watch for over $1,000 it will most likely have a mechanical movement. If it doesn’t you’ll want to make sure it is a pretty special type of quartz movement such as Superquartz (such Breitling’s thermoline quartz movement that is accurate to 5 seconds a year). Otherwise, the name of the luxury watch game is having the best possible mechanical movement possible. Why? This is not an easy answer to be honest because quartz watches are actually more reliable and accurate for the most part. Still, a mechanical watch movement never needs a battery, represents the classic way of making watches, and offers a certain emotion value that the “tick, tick, ticking” of a quartz watch simply cannot offer.

2. Anti Reflective Coating
The enemy combatant here in “glare,” and you want as little as possible when trying to read the face of a watch. Compare the dial of a higher  end versus less expensive watch in the light and you’ll see what I mean. Similar to the anti reflective (AR) coating on glasses, on watch crystals the coating really can improve legibility dramatically. There are two places that AR coating is applied. That being on the front and rear of a crystal. Preferably you want the coating on both sides, but you should at least want to have it on the bottom. One issue with AR coating is that it can wear or scratch off and may need to be reapplied, or a new sapphire crystal be required if you beat up your watch too much. Lastly, the more curved a sapphire crystal is, the more likely you are going to want full AR coating on it, which is often referred to as “double AR coating” (applied to both sides of the crystal).

3. Screwed Links in Bracelet
This is a pretty simple concept. Metal bracelets are made of links that are connected together. The two types of items used to hold the links together are screw bars or pins. Pins are small rods that come in various styles and qualities. They are pressure applied using a small hammer or device that inserts them in the bracelet. To adjust the bracelet a small pressure tool must be used to remove pins and then reinsert them. Alternatively you have small screw bars that go into a bracelet using a tiny screw driver. These are considered better because they are higher quality, look nicer and will last longer. Both types of link bars can be adjusted by you if you have the right tools. Sometimes a heat sensitive glue is used to hold screws in place which should be heated up to allow for unscrewing.

4. Chronometer Certification
This is something that not all mid range (or high range) luxury watches have by any means, but can add value and reliability to your watch. In fact, only a very small percentage of Swiss watches are COSC Chronometer certified. Chronometer certification is a process where a watch movement is sent to the COSC and tested over a period of days. The movement is running and tested in various different positions. This testing is specific to each movement, so it is more than simply a test of the movement design. During the testing a watch’s rate results are observed to determine overall how accurate it is. For a watch to be Chronometer certified, it must be within the  -4/+6 seconds a day accuracy on average between all positions. Meaning a movement cannot lose more than 4 seconds or gain more than 6 seconds a day. Just because a watch is not COSC certified does not mean it would fail the test, but rather that the movement hasn’t been sent to the COSC for testing. Learn more about Chronometer certification here. Having a movement that has been Chronometer certified helps you appreciate the reliable nature of the movement and add an additional part of the watch’s “life story.” Quartz watches can also be Chronometer certified, but have a different set of accuracy criteria.

5. Quality Case Finishes and Polishes
Do you remember what real chromed metal was? It was that super mirror polish on steel that was hard to achieve and needed to be constantly polished. It was hard, and it was beautiful. While the look of chrome was popular, its costliness was not. As at some point fake chrome was invented. My memories of fake chrome were from the 80s when you’d see it peeling and flaking off of cars. That was not real chrome, that was some cheap coating or surface over cheaper sheet metal. Take this concept and apply it to watches. Not all nice look watch surfaces are real, or even well done. At the highest level you have milled steel blocks that are precision cut and then polished by hand. On the cheapest end you have stamped or injection molded metal that is not as nice or durable. The better the metal underneath, the better the polish and finish can be on the surface. The reason I use two terms is because” polish” is often the term used for that mirrored high glossy look. While metal that is brushed or in a satin style is known as being “finished.” Just a slightly different of terminology, but they are often used synonymously or together. Like “polished finish.” But it wouldn’t feel right saying “brushed polish.” Some of the best cases have different types of polish on them. And not all polishes result in the same look. Say the sides of the case are polished but the top is in a brushed metal finish. A lot of this comes into place on higher end watches, but in a mid range luxury watch you want to closely inspect the metal to see how well done the edges are, and also make sure that whatever finish or polish that is on the metal is neatly and evenly applied, as well as directly on the metal as opposed to some coating that will peel or wear off. Anyone who has had cheaper watches can attest to how this can occur inside of a metal bracelet.  Overall a good polish will preserve its look for a long time, while a cheaper polish will fade fast.

6. SuperLumiNova Luminant
Just because a watch has a luminant compound applied to the hands or face, does not mean it will glow well in the dark. I’ve tested cheaper luminants that need to be directly placed in front of a very bright light source for 30 seconds to really shine at all. After that they glow in a dull manner for maybe 10 minutes as best. This is not how good luminant should work – and at $1,000 and up, you deserve a quality lume if you are getting a watch with applied luminant. Of the best luminants is SuperLumiNova. It is certainly the most popular quality luminant, but not the only one. Thus, if there is a luminant that is known to work well, but has a different name, they you are probably ok. Right under neath SuperLumiNova in terms of quality is just “LumiNova.” If the luminant has no special name like “SuperLumiNova” or something else that sounds fancy, it is probably cheap and won’t work too well. Having a good luminant compound is just step one. A watch should also have enough layers of the luminant and it should be on a large surface area. Testing a luminant is easy. It should not require bright lights to charge in, and simply cupping your hands over the watch should be enough to have the shine of the luminant pop out. So do yourself a favor and make sure you get a watch with a good luminant compound, if it has luminant at all.

7. Brand Pedigree
This is a bit of a though to explain topic, because you have all of those mainstream brands that people are familiar with, and then you have many less known brands that are sometimes much better than the mainstream brands. Because there are 100’s of watch companies out there, you can’t rely on name recognition alone to identify whether a brand is worth getting. Instead, if you aren’t familiar with a brand, see that it has at least some story behind it and perhaps has a story behind the designs as well. You may be thinking, “well if the price is right and the watch looks good, who cares?” You’d be surprised how important the “story” of a watch and its brand are. Just ask any collector about brand or their favorite watches. I promise you at least some of the lecture will go into discussing the history or unique construction of the watch or its design. So what I mean by brand pedigree is to look for either well-known brands familiarized for making good watches or iconic designs (“this watch is the ‘Audi’ of the timepiece world”), or a brand with a special story or interesting founder that themselves engages in most of the watch making and design process. If you aren’t familiar with a brand and unsure about them. Ask someone who knows.

8. Observable Dial and Movement Decoration
Mid range luxury watches should all have at least some manner of decoration, even if it is hidden on or in the movement and you cannot see it. This can be a simple as a special polished finish on an automatic movement rotor, or a textured dial on the face of the watch – perhaps just in the chronograph subdials (if there are any). These little features help make the watch feel more valuable, and are proof that effort went into the little touches. Consider this (even if you think Las Vegas is a joke). What makes Las Vegas hotels feel nicer than most standard luxury hotels? Because the Vegas hotels are much more lavishly decorated with many little details that other hotels either neglect or don’t consider. The best Vegas hotels have real character, not just up-scale genericism. That is what I am talking about here. Thus, look for things such as machine engravings on the dial, as well as a variety of potential polishes on the movement. Sometimes you’ll even have decorations on the case of the watch. Even your basic Rolex Submariner watch has some decoration on the movement rotor even though you wouldn’t know it from just seeing the watch on the outside. These features will make a watch more memorable to you.

9. Unique Design
There are essentially three types of overall watch designs looking above the mere genre. First are totally original designs that aren’t based on any specific watches from the past. These types of designs are often a mix between classic watch genres and the designers’ own interpretations of watch making. Then you have “homage” watches that attempt to strictly replicate an iconic, emblematic, or specific watch (e.g. all the Rolex Submariner homage watches, or “aviator” style watches). Then you have a mix between to two where a designer takes one or more well-known looks or styles and adds their own twist or two to the design execution. Pretty much every watch out there falls in one of these three types. While there are plenty of homage watches in the entry-level luxury watch range, at the mid range level you want to see as much originality in the design as possible. Above that, every watch should be almost totally original.  I mean that is part of what you are paying for right? You don’t want people mistaking your $3,000 watch for a $300 watch because they are both homages of the same style, even though the $3,000 watch is of a higher quality. Determining a unique design can also take a level of skill because if you don’t know about a lot of the watches out there, you might not know if the design is original or not. You can either ask around, or use your gut and decide whether or not the watch looks unique enough for your tastes.

10. Value Retention
This principle will really only apply to a few key brands, but you can do a lot to ensure your watch holds as much value as possible. The key factors in value retention other than having a watch from one of the major collector’s brands, Rolex, Breitling, Omega, etc.. is to have a watch that satisfies as much as the previously mentioned items to look for in a luxury watch. Having a good movement, attractive and original design, and high level of craftsmanship using quality materials will all keep demand for a watch healthy. Most of the time you are not going to be able and sell a watch for more than you purchased it, especially at this range, but you don’t want to be insulted at what the market will offer you if you plan to sell your watch at some point. Then again, if you are the type of person who will die with his or her watch collection, none of this value nonsense is at all important.