Watch Scoring System
Its only been in the works for 13 years. At least we know it will be thought through. And no, Nick, I have not gotten into watches. Not yet.
Watches are a fundamental part of a person’s daily carry. Even folks with smartphones generally wear a watch. And like with folks that use their smartphones as flashlights, I think it is a bad idea to use your smartphone as a watch. That said, I am going to bring my own perspective to watches. If you are looking for someone to fawn over hand winding watches, you can find that elsewhere on the Internet. If you are, however, looking for a more practical take, stick around. In many ways watches are more like pens than knives. They tend to be a bit fancier. Looks matter. And so I am taking the same approach here as I do there—if you want a pen person’s take a pens, you can find that on other sites. Instead I focus on daily use and carry of a pen. Same goes for watches—this is about finding the best watch for daily use and wear. Gilded lilies aren’t for me, though snowy fields might be.
Design
This is a core feature of any object I use or carry and so it is the lead category in every review system. As with everything else, this evaluates the item as a blueprint.
Fit and Finish
Similar to design fit and finish is a core feature as well and there this category looks at how well that blueprint was translated into the real world.
Ease of Use
I want a watch that is easy to use. I am not thrilled by the idea of handwinding a watch daily or having all sorts of dials for things I use once a year. Ideally, I could pick up my watch and it both is still telling the correct time and requires me to do nothing other than put it on for it to do its job the rest of the day.
Legibility
Watches are interesting in that how they look IS how they function. Ideally a watch can tell you the time with just a split second glance. Busy interfaces are just not for me. Faces crammed with dials, numbers, and the like might be useful for some, but simpler is better in my mind. In some rare instances, I can appreciate a multifunction dial, but generally, austere restrained watches are best.
Wearability
I had orginally intended for this category to be “comfort” but then it occurred to me that there are other things about wearing a watch than comfort. Some watches are so big, so weird, or so gaudy that they only go with a few things. If you are winning the NBA MVP, the Royal Oak is fine. If you are in your pajamas running for a bagel in the morning…its a bit weird. I suppose if you own a Royal Oak your probably not doing anything as mundane as running to get a bagel in the morning and your PJs are pretty fancy, but you get the idea. How does the watch wear? Is the comfortable? Does it look weird? Does it make you look like a diver that just came ashore? Obviously this is pretty subjective, but the whole system is subjective.
Strap
Like with a knife handle folks often overlook the strap in favor of the more glitzy and nerd friend parts of the watch, but has someone that sweats and has arm hair, I can tell you that a bad strap or bracelet has ended many a watch purchase before they start. Good straps shouldn’t pull or bite and they should allow you to wear the watch without discomfort for days.
Buckle or Clasp
If you have never bought a watch for more than $100, like I had until a few years ago, you didn’t even know that the buckle you had was a problem that someone had fixed. Now it is hard for me to look at my G Shock’s bare bones buckle and not be a bit disappointed.
Movement
This is the watch equivalent of the steel or the emitter for a knife or flashlight. Of course, I am going to take the same approach to this as I do to steel and emitters—I am going revel in the details and then remind you that generally they don’t matter. A Daniels escapement is nice, but my atomic G Shock keeps effortless PERFECT time. So, yeah movements are awesome technical feats, but I think that watch folks obsess over them too much just like knife nerds fetishize steel chemistry.
Additional Features
This is not really about the NUMBER of features, but the usefulness of them. Think of this like the implements category in the multitool scoring system. I want well-designed features not a bevy of them. Its why something like the Victorinox Bantam is awesome when compared to a larger tool like the Super Tinker. Two well designed implements is better than a slew of half-baked ones. So to it is with additional features on a watch.
Durability
I have owned a few watches that required a lot of tender care and while I generally don’t abuse my gear I do use it a lot. You won’t find videos of me batonning cinder blocks but I do use my fixed blades a lot when processing trees around my yard. Twee watches don’t hold my interest. I want something that can get dirty and still work.
I hope this approach is clear and different. There are so many watch sites on the web that for a long time held off releasing this and reviewing watches because I thought my voice would be lost in the hurricane of content. For the G-Shock crowd its all about features and toughness and while I like a tough watch, good design trumps everything else. For the Rolex crowd there is a fetishizing of classic watch things, a glorification of mechanisms even if the serve a watch that is less accurate and more cumbersome for the wearer. I am trying to stake out a middle ground. Still around to see if it works.
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