It is easy to spot a man with style by the type of watch he wears. This is one accessory that speaks taste, influence and style. We came up with a brief run-down of the best affordable watch brands for men. See them below:
1. Tissot
Want a dress watch? Try its Tradition range. In the market for an oversized chronograph? Look no further than the Chrono XL line. You can even get an automatic powered by Swatch Group’s entirely machine-made movement, the Swissmatic. Everything is of such a quality you don’t feel like you’re making compromises.
2. Seiko
Given that this Japanese watch brand grows its own quartz for its battery-powered timepieces and prides itself on making everything in-house, that you can get any of its timepieces for under £300 seems like a bonus. However, Seiko excels at this price point. Each watch is also robustly made with an aesthetic sense way beyond its price tag, making it one of the best affordable watch brands out there.
3. AVI-8
Think pilot’s watches and the names that instantly come to mind are the likes of Breitling, Bremont and Bell & Ross; brands you’d need a pilot’s license to afford. This is what makes affordable watch brand AVI-8 so great – you get all of the aviation inspiration but without the sky-high price tag.
4. Casio
You may know Casio for its gold-plated digital bracelet watch that, for a period in the noughties, was the ironic wrist adornment of every fixie-bike riding, flat-white drinking Hackney dweller worth their E9 credentials. But to reduce it to that one signature is to seriously underestimate what this affordable watch brand has to offer.
5. G-Shock
Casio’s muscular cousin is over 30 years old but its charm certainly hasn’t diminished. When it was first created by Casio engineer Kikuo Ibe, its selling point was that it had a 10-year battery life, was water-resistant to 10 bar (100m) and would survive a 10m fall onto a hard surface (Ibe tested this by dropping 200 prototypes from third-story windows and rooftops).
6. Timex
Timex is considered the Everyman of the watch world. Historically it became renowned for a particular kind of all-American dependability – George Bush Jr wore one, presumably to distract US voters from his upper-class background – but recently it has acquired a certain retro-cool.
7. Swatch
It was created to be one of the most affordable watch brands on the market and has a name that is a portmanteau of ‘Swiss’ and ‘watch’ – not the best credentials for long-lasting success. But hey, it’s amazing how much mileage Swatch has got out of some injection-moulded plastic.
8. Tommy Hilfiger
As you’d expect, Tommy Hilfiger’s watches are a horological distillation of the preppy East-Coast American style that made his name. It is the kind of sports elegance embodied by the Kennedys, one that works best with a pair of crisp chinos and a sweater artfully draped around the shoulders.