Best cheap watches that look expensive

Sapphire at this level is the giveaway that Orient is not cutting where everyone else does, and combined with applied indices and a sunburst dial it produces a watch that reads several tiers above where it sits. The in-house F6 caliber hacks and hand-winds.

The numbers are the thing to check: 42.5mm across and 50.5mm lug-to-lug, which is a big watch. On a wrist under about 17cm it will look like exactly what it is — a large watch — rather than an expensive one.

Domed sapphire at this price is unusual and it is why this one is here. The 50.5mm lug-to-lug is not — that is a big watch, whatever the 42.5mm on the spec sheet suggests.

The Presage Cocktail Time dial is a genuinely expensive-looking object: deep lacquer with a pattern that changes completely as the light moves, under a box-shaped crystal that distorts at the edges the way vintage watches do. Nothing else here comes close on visual quality per dollar.

It is Hardlex rather than sapphire and rated 50m, which is hand-washing rather than swimming, and 40.5mm at 11.8mm thick. Buy it for the dial, and treat it as an indoor watch.

A box-shaped Hardlex crystal, not sapphire — it will pick up scratches under a shirt cuff. Everything else about this watch is built to be kept, and the 4R35 sits on the same $176 service line as the 4R36.

Acrylic is what 1960s watches had, and it is why this watch reads as an heirloom rather than a reproduction: the dome distorts light at the edge, and when it scratches — which it will, immediately — it polishes back to new with a few dollars of paste, forever.

50m and a Timex one-year warranty that excludes the crystal, strap, case and battery. As a cheap watch that looks like an old expensive one, it is unusually good. As a watch to keep for twenty years, read the warranty terms first.

Acrylic reads as a downgrade and mostly is not: it scratches easily and polishes out with a cloth and a tube of paste, which sapphire does not. On a watch you intend to keep for decades, that is a feature.

The Bambino is the internet's standard answer to this exact question and the proportions justify it: 38.4mm across, 44mm lug-to-lug, 12.5mm thick, with a domed crystal, applied markers and an in-house Orient automatic that hacks and hand-winds.

It is 30m and mineral, which is why it is a pick here and a skip on our [automatics for smaller wrists page](/guides/best-automatic-watches-for-women). It looks expensive; it is not built like an expensive watch. Both things are true and you should buy it knowing the second one.

A 44mm lug-to-lug is genuinely small by modern standards, and this is the Bambino to buy if the 40.5mm versions never sat right. The domed mineral crystal is the compromise, and it is the one Orient never fixes on this line.