Orient Bambino vs Seiko Presage

The Presage wins on the three things that decide how a dress watch ages: a better crystal, a better water rating and a known service price. At 11.8mm it is also thinner than the Bambino, which matters under a cuff more than the diameter does.

The Cocktail Time dial is the other reason people buy it, and it is genuinely the best dial on this site at any price near it. 40.5mm is the compromise — larger than a classic dress watch.

A box-shaped Hardlex crystal, not sapphire — it will pick up scratches under a shirt cuff. Everything else about this watch is built to be kept, and the 4R35 sits on the same $176 service line as the 4R36.

38.4mm across and 44mm lug-to-lug is the size dress watches are supposed to be, and very few affordable automatics manage it. The domed crystal and applied markers make it read as a watch several tiers up.

30m and mineral glass are the price of those proportions. It is an indoor watch: take it off before the shower, forever, and expect the crystal to show its age before the movement does.

A 44mm lug-to-lug is genuinely small by modern standards, and this is the Bambino to buy if the 40.5mm versions never sat right. The domed mineral crystal is the compromise, and it is the one Orient never fixes on this line.

The small-seconds Bambino adds the one complication that genuinely belongs on a dress watch, on Orient's F6222, at the same 40.5mm as the Presage and slightly thicker.

30m, mineral and a 21mm lug width — the odd width is a permanent strap cost the V7 and the Presage do not have.

Small seconds at this price normally means a module bolted onto a center-seconds movement. Orient's F6222 does it properly. The 21mm lug width is the tax you pay at strap-buying time.