The one watch problem, solved properly

The one watch question is usually answered with a list of references, which is the least useful possible form of answer. It is a brief problem, not a shopping problem, and once the brief is written properly the field narrows sharply on its own.

Writing the brief

The watch has to work in every situation you are actually in, which for most people is: a working day, a weekend, some contact with water, occasional formal dinners and travel. It has to survive thirty years of that, which means it must be serviceable by somebody other than its manufacturer. And it has to be worn daily, which means it must be comfortable enough to forget.

Notice what is absent. Nothing in that brief requires a chronograph, which most owners use twice. Nothing requires a rotating bezel unless you dive. Nothing requires a complication whose service cost doubles the bill.

The specification the brief produces

• Case 36 to 39 mm, lug to lug under 48, thickness under 12. It goes under a cuff and it does not dominate a wrist.
• Water resistance 100 metres with a screw down crown. Covers swimming and stops you worrying.
• An automatic movement in wide circulation, or a house movement from a manufacturer with a long record of parts supply.
• Power reserve above 60 hours, so a weekend off the wrist does not mean resetting on Monday.
• Lug width 18 or 20 mm, so straps are available forever.
• A dial that is legible at arm length in poor light, which rules out more watches than any other criterion.
• A date, or no date, but decide. A date window is genuinely useful and it is also the most common design compromise on an otherwise clean dial.

Bracelet or strap

A steel bracelet is the most versatile single option, it survives water, and a good one with solid links and a micro adjustment clasp is a substantial part of what separates watches at similar prices. A leather strap is more formal, will not tolerate swimming, and needs replacing every one to three years at 40 to 200.

The sensible arrangement for a one watch life is a bracelet on the watch and a leather strap in the drawer, with quick release spring bars so the change takes twenty seconds. That single accessory converts one watch into two and costs almost nothing.

The one watch that works is boring on paper and invisible in use. That is the specification, not a failure of it.

The trap, which is buying for the exception

The most common error is buying for the two per cent. A watch chosen because it would be perfect at a black tie dinner is a watch that is wrong on the other three hundred and sixty days. A watch chosen because it would survive a dive is carrying six millimetres of thickness for a dive that will not happen.

Buy for the median day. The exceptional occasions either forgive a watch entirely, because nobody is looking at your wrist at a wedding, or they are rare enough to justify borrowing, renting or simply not wearing one.

And the money

Everything in the brief above is available between roughly 1,500 and 4,000, and almost nothing in it improves above 10,000. What improves above 10,000 is finishing, materials and the pleasure of ownership, which are real and are not part of this brief.

The honest version: spend what the object is worth to you as an object, having first confirmed it meets the specification. A watch that fails the brief is not rescued by costing more, and a watch that meets it does not need to.

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