Most use of my phone’s clock app usage is setting 5/7/10/15 min timers for various things and setting alarms to varying times when I need to get going to catch a train or whatever.
I’m looking for a watch that has an easily accessible timer complication so that I don’t need to get out my phone to do those things. An alarm complication (alert at absolute time rather than relative) would be nice too but is not required.
I am not looking for a chronograph or diver’s watch. Chronographs go up, not down, and don’t alarm me when the time is up. That’s the most critical feature to me.
Something like a diver’s watch could be workable (using a rotating bezel to set the timer/alarm would be great) if they alarmed me when the time was up but that’s not how divers work to my knowledge.
I don’t need a luxurious watch or anything, a basic one is fine. I actually don’t want to spend too much. I’m not looking for “collector pieces”, I actually want to wear and use this thing.
Most of what I found online were either chronographs, alarm watches that are not convenient to set (might as well get out my phone if I need to fiddle with it for a minute) or digital watches.
I did find two candidates however:
- Timex Explorer Easy Set Alarm. It was discontinued a decade ago and they don’t appear to have been very high quality to begin with, so the remaining ones sadly don’t have much life left in them I figure. Also practically unavailable.
- Seiko “dancing hands” watches. They’re pretty old (1992) but appear to be rather high quality, so probably okay? I’d still prefer something a bit newer. Feature wise they fit the bill but the timer might be a little hard to set efficiently? Unsure how practical these would be for my use-case.
What do you think? Can you recommend a series or have pointers to look into?
The first two of your four objections to smartwatches don’t apply anymore, but the last two are certainly still issues. I love mine, but I don’t think they’re a good choice for a lot of people.
Here’s a link to a whole lot of Casio watches with countdown timers on Amazon. As is always the case with Amazon, some of the search results are incorrect, but the majority are fine and there are hundreds of them.
I haven’t found any way to get an equivalent listing for Seikos. A lot fewer of their watches have timers and no one seems to have a good filter for it.
Here is another Amazon link to watches with countdown timers of all brands.
Finding a used watch in good condition over the internet is tricky. There are some deals, but there are also a lot of ripoffs. eBay is about the only suggestion I have for that.
Best of luck!
Sorry, I meant analog watch face ones.
There’s obviously lots of digital watches with this complication and anadigis aswell as you mentioned.
Ah, sorry. I would start by putting something like “analog watch timer” into Amazon and see what you get. A lot of them will be wrong, but a fair number won’t be.
There should be a database for this kind of thing, but if there is, I don’t know about it.