10 New Watches I'd Actually Buy at Retail
From $200 to $60,000—time to pop the champagne.
When someone asks me about a new watch, I often say something like, yes, that is a nice watch. But then I whisper, as if I don’t want the ghost of Hans Wilsdorf to hear me:
But you should probably just buy it used.
Luxury prices have become so luxurious that it’s almost a truism to point out their insanity. The problem isn’t price increases alone, but when the watches don’t really get better. Since this newsletter talks plenty about vintage and pre-owned, are there any watches I’d buy new for that glass of champagne and the promise of “building a relationship”?
Of course!
Before we get there, a few notes:
It’s a brawl under $1k. The entry level of the Swiss industry is mostly sad. But it’s a lot of fun when you look at Asian brands (Casio, Citizen, Seiko), or microbrands that mostly produce in Asia.
I limited my picks to one per brand, though I wouldn’t discourage you from a new Tudor Black Bay Chrono, 58, or 73. That said, if a brand makes one watch I’d buy at retail, there’s a pretty good chance it makes a few. This goes for Nomos, Tudor, Rolex, and plenty of others.
There’s not much from like $10k-25k. Nothing pulled me towards the classic “mid-tier”—IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Omega, etc. (Okay, one JLC and one Omega juuuust missed the cut.) I also put the question out on Instagram, and they didn’t get a single mention.
The brands subscribers mentioned the most, in order: Longines, Tudor, Rolex, Sinn, Nomos. A bunch of smaller brands also got multiple mentions, including: Frederique Constant, Farer, Serica, Baltic, Unimatic, Squale.
I’m not talking about indies or limited editions, though there’s plenty of reasons to buy these at retail. Collective Horology has curated a solid roster of indies. Today, we’re focused on watches anyone could walk in (or click through) and buy.
More important than the what is always the why. As much as I like vintage and pre-owned, I get that they can’t match the feeling of having your name on the warranty card and peeling those stickers off for the first time. As one subscriber told me:
“A watch I’m buying to mark a significant moment in my life I’ll always buy new.”
Subscribers get: (1) 2 newsletters/week; (2) 10% off in the Unpolished Store, and (3) $50 off any service at Watchcheck, and can access all comments and Q&As.
Anything ‘under a Few Hundred Bucks’
Let’s start affordable and work our way up. As another subscriber put it:
“I’ll buy new: (1) if it’s cheap (< $400 for me), (2) for a special occasion, or (3) if it trades close to MSRP.”
Once you get below a certain price, it’s not worth the hassle of pre-owned. Go forth, buy your Casio F-91W, G-Shock 5600, Swatch Gent, Citizen Eco-Drives, etc. fresh out of the box. These watches are, as Jack Forster recently wrote, “almost pure signal.”
Guilty pleasure: I picked up a MoonSwatch 1965 at an airport last year. For $265, you could do worse, though I’ll readily admit a MoonSwatch is hardly pure signal.
Timex Marlin Hand-Wound
Our first mechanical pick.
People are sometimes surprised that I like Timex, but I like Timex! It makes a ton of watches, and many of them are deliberately trendy.
But the Marlin Hand-Wound is a classic, a watch that looks more like something my grandfather would’ve worn while selling insurance door-to-door than some TikToker making ends meet on affiliate links.
When it came out in 2017, the Marlin was the first mechanical watch Timex had made since 1982. Timex says it’s $259, but the street price is more like $209.
A generous subscriber recently gave me a limited-edition Marlin for The New Yorker’s 100th anniversary. It’s got plenty of flaws: The small crown is partially recessed and hard to wind. It’s on time about as often as a flight out of O’Hare. The leather strap is only slightly better than what you’d get from a Canal Street knock-off.
But the seconds hand is capped with a bagel and isn’t that delightful? Sure, I fondly remember the days of getting a mechanical Seiko for $64.99—
But those halcyon days are sadly gone, a casualty of some cruel combination of inflation and brands “pushing upmarket.” The equivalent today is more like $250.
At this price, I wouldn’t recommend: Tissot PRX. I’ve owned a couple, and they never stick. Feels like it’s trying to be something else, and the fit and finish don’t match what some competitors offer. Check out some of those microbrands, maybe a Brew Metric? I almost forgot about Unimatic, but they just dropped their Swimming Pool capsule, which looks like more fun than downing a pack of High Noons.
Hamilton Khaki Field Quartz
The most basic of recs. The Khaki Field comes as an automatic, manual, and most recently, quartz. I have an automatic one, albeit a limited edition, but the Khaki Field’s not really about the movement, so I don’t have a problem going quartz.
I spent a bunch of time with a few Khaki Quartz samples last year—both 33mm and 38mm. I can pull off either on my 6.5in wrist. With new purchases, I usually say to go for the bracelet, but the Khaki Field’s an exception. Hamilton’s bracelet is kind of like an airport lounge in 2026—good in theory, underwhelming in real life. I also wish the Khaki Field Quartz had a domed crystal instead of flat, but it’s a solid field watch.
Sinn 544 RS
As a general rule, any website that’s as charmingly outdated as WatchBuys is worth buying from. That’s the site where you can buy Sinn and a few other German brands in the U.S. Sinn introduced the 544 this year, an update to the 244, but in steel.
The predecessor Sinn 244 Ti, made from 1994–2007, is rad. The simple Sinn for those of us who can’t pull off an EZM.1 The baby 344 (25mm!) might be even better. But pre-owned Sinns can be genuinely tough to find, and not many make their way to the States.
The updated 544 is 38.5mm, larger than the old 36mm, and I don’t really like hooded lugs, but a few watches get a pass. One is the Rolex Bubbleback, another is this Sinn.
Longines Spirit Zulu Time 39mm
The Longines Spirit Zulu Time is kinda like every Wilco album after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Longines today might not be hitting the same highs it used to (the 13ZN being its Yankee), but the music’s still good, sometimes even surprisingly so.
I’d almost forgotten that I covered the Spirit Zulu Time 39 for the Mothership in 2024. I liked it then, and I like it now, though I had a fair amount of nits. To be expected for a watch that’s $3,550.
Fun fact: that titanium Zulu Time, when sized to my wrist, weighs the same as my 80s Rolex Explorer with its solid-link bracelet (96 grams). When did stainless steel get so heavy?
It’s a flyer GMT with a ceramic bezel. The bracelet’s solid, though you’ll have to break out the tools for any microadjustment. Longines makes good watches at a fair price, sadly held back by the nonsensical boardroom strategy that it must be a mid-range luxury product, totally at odds with the brand’s historical significance.
Tudor
[Below: More watches I’d actually buy at retail from Tudor, Rolex, Cartier, and Lange.]
