An inexpensive wristwatch resting on a concrete surface

Under $100

Best watches under $100

We looked hard and found one worth naming. Here is what that tier actually gets you, and why an extra $80 changes the answer completely.

By Sawyer V. · Published September 8, 2026

The short answer

Under $100 you are buying mineral glass, a 30m water resistance rating and a one-year warranty that usually excludes the crystal, the strap and the case. The Timex Weekender is the honest archetype of the tier. Spend $180 instead and you get sapphire, 100m and no battery to change.

This is a page about a tier rather than a list, because we could not honestly fill a list. Under $100, almost nothing meets the criteria this site uses — and pretending otherwise would mean either dropping the criteria or inventing specifications we could not verify.

What follows is what your money genuinely buys down here, the one watch worth naming, and the specific reason $180 is a completely different proposition.

On prices: we publish no figure we have not verified today, so the buy buttons read "Check price on Amazon" rather than showing a number. Which tier a watch appears in is our structural judgment of where it sits, not a price claim — check the current price before you buy.

What $100 actually buys

Mineral glass, or worse. Sapphire essentially does not appear at this price. Mineral scratches, and the scratches are permanent.
30 or 50 meters. Rain and hand-washing. Not swimming, not showering. This is the specification that ends most watches at this price.
A one-year warranty with wide exclusions. Timex's — the best-documented in the tier — explicitly excludes the crystal, the strap, the case and the battery. That is most of what fails.
Base metal or plated cases. The Timex Weekender's case is listed by Timex as brass and LLB rather than stainless steel.
No published service path. Nobody at this price publishes what a repair costs, because the answer is that it is not worth repairing.

How we picked

We have not worn these watches. What follows is what we checked instead, on documents you can open yourself — the same criteria, in the same order, on every roundup on this site. The full method is on the methodology page.

01Serviceability
A named, in-production caliber an independent watchmaker can rebuild.
02Crystal
Sapphire, hardlex, mineral or acrylic — decided at purchase, never after.
03Water resistance
The rating in meters, and whether a screw-down crown sits behind it.
04Warranty term
The stated length, and — usually more revealing — the exclusions.
05Strap standardization
A standard even lug width means straps forever.
06Published service cost
Whether the maker tells you what keeping it running costs.

Disclosure · Some links below are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not decide what goes on this page or in what order — here is exactly how that works.

Timex Weekender 38mm T2N647

Best for: Learning what you like, and swapping straps

4.5/10

Keep Score

Crystal: 1/2.5
Serviceability: 1.6/2.5
Water resistance: 0.3/1.5
Warranty: 0.35/1.5
Strap standard: 1/1
Cost-to-keep transparency: 0.2/1

Check price on Amazon

#ad Affiliate link · We publish no price we have not verified today

The Weekender is the most recommended cheap watch on the internet and, for what it is, deservedly so. 38mm, a 20mm lug width, and a slip-through strap that comes off in seconds — which makes it the cheapest way there is to find out whether you like leather, nylon, black or tan on a watch.

Then read the specification sheet honestly. Timex lists the case as brass and LLB, the crystal as mineral, and the water resistance as 30m. The warranty is one year and explicitly excludes the crystal, the strap, the case and the battery.

Buy it as a toy and it is excellent value. Buy it as a first proper watch and you will be replacing it inside five years, which is the definition of the thing this site exists to help you avoid.

A brass case at 30m, with a warranty that excludes the crystal, the strap, the case and the battery — which is to say almost everything that fails. Buy it as a strap-swapping toy, not as a watch to keep.

Manufacturer specifications for the Timex Weekender 38mm T2N647
Movement	Quartz analog, CR2016 battery
Power reserve	Not applicable
Case	38mm brass and llb
Lug-to-lug	Not published
Thickness	Not published
Lug width	20mm
Crystal	mineral
Water resistance	30m
Warranty	1 year

Timex's one-year warranty explicitly excludes the crystal, strap, case and battery.

Specifications read from Timex product page, T2N647.

What $180 buys instead, and why it is not a small step

The gap between $100 and roughly $180 is the largest single jump in quality anywhere in this category, and it is worth being specific about why.

	Under $100	Around $180
Crystal	Mineral	Sapphire on the Timex Field Post Solar
Water resistance	30m — rain only	100m — swimming
Case	Brass or plated	Stainless steel
Power	Battery, replaced every few years	Solar — no battery, ever
Warranty	1 year, wide exclusions	1-5 years depending on brand

Sapphire, 100m and no battery is a watch that can plausibly still be running and still look good in twenty years. Mineral, 30m and a brass case is not. That is the whole difference, and it costs less than a decent pair of shoes.

The two brands we could not assess

Casio is the obvious absence from a page like this, and the reason is procedural rather than editorial. Casio's US product pages do not serve their specification data to us, and this site does not publish figures it has not read on the manufacturer's own document. Rather than reproduce numbers from memory or from another site's table, we publish nothing — see the Casio brand page for the full explanation.

The same applies to several other low-cost brands whose specification pages are either absent or unreadable. If we cannot cite it, it does not appear here. That is a constraint we accept, and it is why this page is short.

The used argument

The genuinely best watch you can get for under $100 is very often a used one from the tier above. A pre-owned Seiko 5 on a 7S caliber — for which Seiko publishes a $137 overhaul price — is a fundamentally different object from a new $60 quartz watch, even accounting for the service it will need.

That comes with the usual caveats: buy from somewhere with returns, assume the water resistance is gone until proven otherwise, and read how to spot a fake first. But on a buy-it-for-life criterion it beats anything new at this price, and it is not close.

Where to go from here

[Best watches under $200](/budget/best-watches-under-200) — the first tier with watches genuinely worth keeping.
[Best watches under $300](/budget/best-watches-under-300) — where real mechanical watches with published service prices start.
[Best watches for beginners](/guides/best-watches-for-beginners) — if this would be your first proper watch.

Questions people actually ask

Are watches under $100 worth buying?

As a beater, a strap toy or a gift for someone who will lose it, yes. As a watch to keep, no — the tier is mineral glass, 30m ratings, base-metal cases and warranties that exclude the parts that fail.

What is the best watch under $100?

The Timex Weekender is the honest archetype: 38mm, a standard 20mm lug width and easily swapped straps. Understand what it is — a brass case at 30m with a one-year warranty excluding the crystal, strap, case and battery.

Why are there so few watches on this page?

Because we only publish watches whose specifications we have read on the manufacturer's own document, and because almost nothing at this price meets the criteria this site scores on. A short honest list is better than a long invented one.

Is a used watch better than a new cheap one?

Usually, for a buy-it-for-life buyer. A used Seiko on a 7S caliber — $137 to overhaul at Seiko's published rate — is a repairable object. A new $60 quartz watch is not, however well it runs today.

Sources

Every specification and figure on this page came from one of these documents. Where a manufacturer does not publish something, the page says so rather than filling the gap.

Several wristwatches arranged on a wooden table

Best watches under $200

Where sapphire, solar and 100m start showing up. Six picks, one to skip.

A person fastening a wristwatch onto their wrist

Best watches for beginners

A first watch chosen on checkable specs, with the jargon explained as it comes up.

Casio

Why we publish no Casio specs, and what we can honestly say about buying one.