Field watch vs dive watch

The Alpinist is the watch that makes this comparison hard: it has a diver's rating and a screw-down crown, but at 41mm, 46.9mm lug-to-lug and 12.3mm thick it wears closer to a field watch than to a typical diver.

Sapphire, 70 hours, a published accuracy tolerance and a $296 published overhaul. If you want one watch that does both jobs, this is the one.

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.

At 41.8mm and 46.8mm lug-to-lug, the Kamasu is a diver that fits most wrists, and it carries the one specification a field watch cannot: 200m behind a screw-down crown.

Sapphire and a three-year warranty on an in-house hacking movement. Orient publishes no US service prices, which is the one thing a Seiko field watch below beats it on.

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.

100m is the most a field watch here offers, and it covers swimming — the Murph gives up only the diving that most owners never do, in return for a 38mm case that disappears under a cuff.

Sapphire, an 80-hour H-10 and an antimagnetic Nivachron hairspring. On a wrist under about 16cm this is the better only watch than any diver on the page.

Hamilton fits Nivachron across the Khaki Field line — an antimagnetic hairspring, addressing the failure mode that used to send affordable mechanicals to the bench. This is a watch designed around the twenty-year case.

The Seiko 5 field case at 39.4mm and 48.1mm lug-to-lug is the most useful shape Seiko makes at this level, and the 4R36 inside it has the cheapest published mechanical service there is.

Hardlex rather than sapphire, and 13.2mm thick, which is thicker than the Hamilton. As a field watch that costs little to own for twenty years, it has no rival here.

The 39.4mm case reads small, but the 48.1mm lug-to-lug does not — this wears longer than its diameter suggests. Measure your wrist before you buy on the diameter alone.