Frequently asked questions

A dive or field watch in the $300-500 range. That band reliably gets you sapphire, 100-200m water resistance, a named serviceable caliber and a three-year warranty. The Orient Kamasu is the clearest single answer on specifications.

$300-500 if you want one watch to keep. Below about $200 you are usually giving up the crystal; above about $700 the durability curve flattens hard and you are buying finishing, power reserve and feel rather than longevity.

Yes. Seiko recommends servicing about every three years, because the oils inside age and worn parts start costing accuracy. Skipping it does not stop the watch immediately — it makes the eventual repair larger, and it quietly lets water resistance disappear as gaskets harden.

It depends on the caliber, and only two manufacturers here publish the figure. Seiko charges $137 for a 7S, $176 for a 4R, $296 for a 6R and $373 for an 8R chronograph. Tissot charges $210 for a complete service of a mechanical two- or three-hand watch, with a 24-month warranty on the work.

Indefinitely, provided parts remain available for the caliber and the watch is serviced. There is no component whose failure ends a mechanical watch — every part can be cleaned, lubricated or replaced. The real limit is parts supply, which is why a high-volume caliber matters more than the case.

A solar quartz can run for decades with no winding and no battery changes, and will very likely outlast an unserviced mechanical. The difference is that a quartz module is eventually replaced rather than rebuilt, so it fails the strict rebuildability test while winning comfortably on running cost.

On a watch you plan to own for more than a few years, yes — it is the single most visible long-term specification difference. Mineral and hardlex collect scratches that cannot be polished out. Acrylic is the interesting exception: it scratches immediately and buffs back to new for a few dollars, forever.

Swimming and snorkelling. 30m is rain and hand-washing only; 50m adds brief accidental immersion; 200m and above is diving, and brings a screw-down crown and a screwed case back with it. Ratings are static pressure tests on a new watch and degrade as gaskets age.

Judge by lug-to-lug, not diameter — it is the actual footprint across your wrist. Under a 165mm wrist circumference, keep lug-to-lug under about 48mm. Diameter alone misleads: the Seiko Turtle reads 45mm and wears smaller than many 40mm watches because it has no protruding lugs.

On specifications, yes — sapphire, titanium and 200m at prices where mainstream brands fit mineral glass. The risk is not the movement, which is almost always a widely serviced Japanese caliber, but model-specific case parts from a company that may not exist in twenty years.

At these prices they win on warranty length, published service pricing and parts availability, and lose on power reserve and on sapphire being standard. Neither is more durable in a way that shows over twenty years.

Citizen, at five years, though it excludes the power cell, case, bracelet and strap. Seiko and Orient state three years. Hamilton and Tissot state two. Timex states one, with the crystal, strap, case and battery excluded.

The quartz and solar models are — there is little to go wrong, and the solar Expedition has sapphire and 100m. The automatics are harder to assess because Timex does not name the caliber, so you cannot find out what a service costs or whether parts will exist.

Because Casio's US product pages do not serve their specification data to us, and this site only publishes figures read from a manufacturer document we can link to. Rather than reproduce numbers from memory, the Casio brand page carries no spec table and links Casio's own pages instead.

No, and we say so on every page. There is no test lab, no drawer of reference samples and no watchmaker on staff. What we do is read the manuals, compile the published specifications and do the arithmetic — including what each watch costs to keep running for twenty years.

A number out of 10 computed from six published specifications: crystal (2.5), movement serviceability (2.5), water resistance (1.5), warranty term (1.5), strap standardization (1.0) and whether the maker publishes what a service costs (1.0). The weights are published so you can re-run it or disagree with it.

Amazon affiliate commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Commission is not an input to the Keep Score, which is computed from specifications alone. Several watches we rate are sold direct by their makers, where we earn nothing at all, and we say so on those links.

Because we publish no figure we have not verified on the day you are reading. Where a live price is unavailable to us the button reads "Check price on Amazon" rather than showing a number that may be weeks out of date. The retailer's page is always the authority.

Roundups are reviewed at least every six months, and immediately if a watch is discontinued, leaves Amazon, or has its warranty or service terms changed. A page's date moves only when its content genuinely changes — we do not re-stamp pages on deploy.

Email info@dialandlug.com with the page and what is wrong — a link to the manufacturer document that contradicts us is the fastest route to a fix. We correct confirmed errors promptly, note the correction on the page and update its date.