Fun water-resistant watches for less than £300
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
There’s a time for sporting the most elegant, complicated timepiece you can afford. And there’s a time for a fun, no-nonsense, beach-ready watch. Now is that time.
It should be something that you won’t have to worry about exposing to direct sunlight, lashing waves, rock climbs, pickpockets or midnight shape-throwing. Plastic and nylon straps triumph over leather, batteries score higher than hand-assembled movements, lightness beats heft and, of course, cheap beats expensive. Here’s my pick of the best of the season.
In spring, as part of a somewhat gimmicky advertising campaign, models worldwide were spotted stumbling out of Swatch stores, their clothes soaking wet. Each time, they were wearing a Swatch Scubaqua. It comes in five colours, all named after jellyfish and each with a see-through dial and glow-in-the-dark details. It’s an impressive dive watch, too, water-resistant to 100m and highly legible. The brand also offers the bluntly named but impressively subtle Metal Knit (£120). The case is only 4.3mm thick but comes on a stainless-steel Milanese band that the author and watch collector Gary Shteyngart once told me was even more comfortable than Rolex’s famously pleasant Oyster bracelet. And if you want to leave your phone and wallet behind when you head for the beach, the Swatch Sea Pay! (£91) uses the same contactless tech as your bank card and Apple Pay.
Still in Switzerland, there’s the Mondaine Essence, a rubber-strapped summer- and wrist-ready version of the official Swiss railway clock: regale your friends with the fact that your watch is designed by the company that last year helped Switzerland again rank first in Europe for rail punctuality, with a 98.7 per cent on-time rate.
Timex, meanwhile, has just revived its Intrepid series, a rubber-strapped, water-resistant stainless-steel sailing watch that was once the favourite summer watch of John F Kennedy Jr. It’s now available with a gargantuan 46mm case (£170), but the fun money is on the 36mm size coming out later this summer, in collaboration with the watch influencer Brynn Wallner (aka Dimepiece) and vintage site Foundwell. The smaller watch has Dimepiece’s trademark purple on the second hand, 12 o’clock marker and Indiglo pusher.
Casio MQ-24B-9BEF, £24.90
Marni x Casio G-Shock, £210
Further along the rugged axis, the Casio G-Shock has remained relevant for more than 40 years. A favourite of the adventure travel set – and US Navy Seals – the DW5600E-1 holds a world record for surviving a pass under the wheels of a 27.5-ton truck. A bright-yellow DW-6900TR edition (£99.90) celebrates three decades of a hulking version that launched in 1995, though if you are after something a little newer, Marni is offering its G-Shock collaboration for £210. For a true fraction of all these prices, Casio also makes the ultra-light, resin MQ24, always available for not much more than a tenner at Argos, and the chosen timepiece of Grammy winner Tyler, the Creator and the late Pope Francis.
Also worth looking at are pieces by these free-spirited relative unknowns. Take Blok Watches, a brand launched to help children tell the time, which then found its 33mm designs (from $189) so popular with adults that they now offer a 38mm variant with an upgraded movement (from $379). And on a recent trip to Tokyo, I discovered D1 Milano, whose Sketch watch looks like it was scrawled into existence. There’s also Picto, whose Danish design watches are a favourite of smart museum shops worldwide – a position that still doesn’t restrain it from occasionally going a little nuts and putting out a blazing orange Signal watch with just a minute hand and small, perky rotating dot to convey the hour. Shine on!
On the other hand
Money and practicality no object, what would be my ultimate holiday fantasy watch? I’d go for Rolex’s 36mm Oyster Perpetual, with a turquoise dial (£5,400). The movement has a 70-hour power reserve – but really, it’s all about that lacquer dial, which occupies the precise halfway point between artificial candy-bright and a natural, cloudless blue sky.
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