Best dive watches for beginners

It has the three things a first dive watch should have and rarely does at this money: a sapphire crystal, a screw-down crown and a genuine 200m rating, around an in-house automatic that both hacks and hand-winds.

41.8mm across with a published 46.8mm lug-to-lug and 12.8mm thick, on a 22mm strap — a conventional size that suits most wrists and takes any strap you will ever want.

Orient publishes no US service price, so the eventual overhaul is a quote. It also does not claim the ISO diver's marking, and the 40-hour reserve means it stops over a weekend.

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 Turtle carries the ISO 6425 diver's marking, which the Kamasu does not — it passed the actual standard rather than a pressure test alone.

The 4R36 overhaul is $176, the cheapest published mechanical service anywhere, on the most commonly serviced caliber in the United States. For a first mechanical watch that removes the biggest unknown.

Hardlex rather than sapphire, and a 45mm cushion case. It wears smaller than that number because there are no protruding lugs, but Seiko publishes no lug-to-lug to check it against.

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.

Light-powered, so there is no winding, no battery change and no service schedule — the lowest-maintenance way into the category, with 200m and Citizen's five-year warranty.

For someone who wants the watch to simply work, this removes every ownership task at once.

Mineral glass, which marks permanently, on a 44mm case with no published lug-to-lug or thickness. It is the biggest watch here and the one whose crystal will age fastest.

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.