Best watches for the gym

100m is plenty for sweat and a post-session shower, and the 4R36 is the most widely serviced mechanical caliber in the United States at a published $176 — so if it does take a hard knock, fixing it is a known cost.

42.5mm across but only 46mm lug-to-lug, on a 22mm strap width that takes any rubber or nylon strap ever made. Move it off the bracelet before the first session.

Hardlex rather than sapphire, so it will collect marks from bar contact that cannot be polished out. That is the trade for a watch cheap enough not to worry about.

The 4R36 is the most commonly serviced mechanical caliber in the United States and Seiko publishes a flat $176 price to overhaul it. That single fact does more for a twenty-year horizon than any spec on the case.

38mm of titanium with a published 44mm lug-to-lug — the shortest and lightest mechanical watch on this site. Weight is what makes a watch slide during movement, and this has the least of it.

Sapphire and 200m: the crystal will not mark from bar contact and the case handles sweat with margin to spare.

Titanium is softer than steel, so the case itself will pick up marks even though the crystal will not, and BOLDR states no warranty term on the page we read.

The NH38A is the movement every independent watchmaker already knows, which is the whole serviceability argument in one line. A 44mm lug-to-lug on a 38mm case is about as wearable as a 200m watch gets.

Light-powered with 200m and Citizen's five-year warranty — no winding, no battery, no service interval, and enough water resistance that sweat is irrelevant.

A 20mm strap width, so it moves onto rubber easily, and nothing inside that a knock will knock out of beat the way it can with a mechanical watch.

44mm and mineral glass. It is the biggest watch here, and the crystal will mark permanently where the BOLDR's sapphire would not.

The strongest argument for this watch is the one Citizen makes on its own page: nothing to replace, five years of cover. The argument against it is the mineral crystal, which will scratch where sapphire would not.

36mm with a 44.5mm lug-to-lug — small enough to stay out of the way under a sleeve or a wrist wrap, with sapphire and 100m.

Solar, so there is nothing to wind and no battery to change, and it costs little enough that the gym is a reasonable posting for it.

An 18mm strap width rather than the more common 20mm, and Timex's one-year warranty excludes the crystal, strap, case and battery.

The smallest genuinely good watch here. Sapphire, solar, 100m and 44.5mm across the lugs — if you have a small wrist and want to stop thinking about batteries, start here.