Buy it for life watches

Passes all four questions outright. The 6R35 is current production and Seiko publishes what an overhaul costs, so the twenty-year bill is $1,776 and you knew that before you bought it.

Sapphire and a 200m screw-down case remove the two cosmetic and structural failure modes; a 20mm lug width removes the third.

It is the most expensive watch on this page and it is also the one where the least is left to chance.

This is where Seiko starts publishing an accuracy figure (+25/-15 seconds a day) and fits sapphire. A 6R35 overhaul is $296 against $176 for a 4R36 — a real difference, and one you can plan for.

Passes questions one, three and four cleanly. The F6922 is Orient's own current-production caliber, it hand-winds and hacks, and any independent can service it.

Question two is where it stumbles: Orient publishes no US service price list, so the overhaul is a quote. Not a dealbreaker — the movement is conventional and independents will quote readily — but it is the difference between planning and hoping.

On paper this is the best value in the category and it is not close: sapphire and a hacking, hand-windable in-house caliber at a price where Seiko still fits Hardlex. Orient's three-year warranty is longer than Hamilton's or Tissot's.

The 4R36 is the safest bet in the category on parts availability, and $176 is the cheapest published mechanical overhaul on this site. Questions one and two answered as cleanly as they can be.

Screw-down crown, screw case back and a 200m diver's rating answer question four. A 22mm lug width answers question three.

Hardlex is the only real deduction: it will mark and cannot be polished. A crystal swap at service time is a modest job, which makes this a maintainable flaw rather than a permanent one.

Seiko rates this at 200m as a diver's watch, not merely water-resistant — screw-down crown, screw case back, unidirectional bezel. The 45mm figure is misleading: the cushion case has no protruding lugs.

A hand-wound movement removes the rotor, the automatic winding bridge and the reversing wheels. Fewer parts is a durability specification, and on a watch you intend to have rebuilt six times it compounds.

The Nivachron hairspring addresses magnetism, which is one of the few things that genuinely puts an affordable mechanical out of specification without any physical damage.

50m is the failure against question four. This is a watch you take off before swimming, every time, for forty years.

No rotor means fewer parts and a thinner case, and the H-50 runs 80 hours on a wind. This is the simplest genuinely good mechanical watch on this site, and simple is what survives.

The NH38A is Seiko Instruments' workhorse and it is the movement independent watchmakers see most often after Seiko's own. Question one is comprehensively answered.

Titanium, sapphire, 200m and a 44mm lug-to-lug on a 38mm case is an unusually complete package, and 20mm lugs mean straps forever.

BOLDR states no warranty term on the product page and sells direct, so we earn nothing here — and you would be relying on a small company for model-specific case parts decades out. That is the honest risk.

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.

This is the other legitimate reading of buy-it-for-life, and on running cost it wins outright: no winding, no batteries, no published overhaul interval from anyone.

Super Titanium is surface-hardened, so it resists the marking that plain titanium picks up. Combined with 200m and a 22mm lug width it answers questions three and four without argument.

It fails question one by design — the module is replaced, not rebuilt — and question two, because Citizen publishes no prices at all. Whether that disqualifies it depends entirely on which definition you are using.

Citizen's Super Titanium is surface-hardened, which is the point — plain titanium marks more easily than steel, and this does not. It is the closest thing on this list to a watch you can stop thinking about.