I Bought 5 Highly-Rated Watches On Amazon – Are They Really That Good?
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Between all the sponsored listings and the weirdly-named brands you’ve never even heard of, picking a new watch on Amazon can be pretty overwhelming. Especially if you want one that doesn’t suck.
Now, I’ve already tried buying watches based on the ‘Amazon’s Choice’ or ‘Overall Pick’ label, and the results were…mixed, to say the least. I won’t be going near ‘OLEVS’ again, I’ll tell you that much!
So, like with many products, you may feel tempted to scroll to the top of the page and sort by ‘average customer review’ instead. I mean, how wrong can hundreds of people be, right?...right?
I’ve bought 5 of the highest-rated men’s watches on Amazon, to see if they’re truly worth the hype or are, in fact, overpriced junk that you should skip completely.
These watches vary from about $30 to over $200, and all sit at the top of the very first page of filtered results, with hundreds of five-star reviews for each.
If you’re into watches at all, you may have a few guesses about what you’re gonna see. I guarantee those guesses are almost certainly wrong. You won’t believe what some people are actually buying!
Casio W-218H
I suppose the only logical place to start is the lowest cost watch, which also happens to be the very first on the results page, the Casio W-218H.
Selling from about £25 to £45 on Amazon UK, and $30 to $40 on Amazon US, this model boasts Amazon’s #1 top-rated badge, with over 1,300 reviews and an average rating of 4.8 out of 5. So, in theory, it should be the cream of the crop.
And I lucked out here, as this is a watch I already own. Yeah, I bought this one back in 2021 for a large-scale video that never ended up transpiring, so I already know a fair bit about it. Mine is dark grey, which seems much rarer these days, but functionally, it’s still identical to the other colors you’ll find on Amazon, so everything I’m saying should still apply.
What you get here is pretty simple. It’s a fairly chunky digital watch that looks quite like a G-Shock, but is a good amount cheaper and a little more compact. A ‘wannabe-shock’, if you will.
Now, unsurprisingly, the 218H doesn’t have the shock-resistant properties of the proper G-Shock line, but its size and specs do still place it in a middleground between the G’s and the lower cost, smaller digitals like the F-91W, so I can see the overall appeal.
It’s fairly wide at 43mm, but has a comparatively tiny 44mm lug-to-lug, and it’s also reasonably slim at 10.9mm, making it probably the smallest-looking 43mm watch I’ve ever covered. Here’s a look at it on my small 6.25-inch wrist and…it kinda fits me, aside from the strap, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Overall, I think this one is fairly good-looking too, with reduced visual clutter compared to many other Casio digitals and proportions that at least give it a chance of fitting under a cuff or two.
The specs are a similar story, as while it’s mostly the same as the lowest-cost Casios, with full resin construction and a simple module with just the stopwatch and alarm features, it does have some obvious improvements, including a larger display, a slightly elevated 50m water resistance rating, and a strap that has G-Shock-like rear bumpers that ensure the strap always contacts surfaces before the caseback does, in the event of accidental drops.
The illuminator backlight in here is also pretty good, despite being a simplistic sidelight system. It’s much brighter than the similar setup used on many of the entry-level digitals, so you can actually read the time in the dark, rather than just the first number or two, which is helpful.
In general, the large display here is easily readable at a glance and doesn’t suffer from the ghosting that often hinders cheap digitals. Whether that rings true for the negative display version remains to be seen.
Previous inverse display Casios I’ve tested have typically had inferior visibility across the board, even when it comes to the backlights, so I’d probably steer clear of those unless you’re primarily wanting one as a stylistic choice. It does at least have a good 7-year advertised battery life, with my unit already exceeding the 4-year mark and still going strong.
As a practical option, this 218H is a commendable choice, and I expect it more than does the job for most people; however, there are some issues worth noting. Firstly, while the band is solid and has a great number of adjustment holes, the first three or four are effectively obsolete, as if you’re wrist is this small, you’ll be getting a massive amount of overhang on the rather long strap, which the keeper can’t contain. This looks sloppy, and you may end up catching it on stuff. So, if you’ve got a skinny arm, you’ll want to look elsewhere, even if the rest of the watch may fit.
The only other real downside is, well, competition. It’s not that this watch is bad or anything, but Casio simply has a LOT of other G-Shock-like options in this price bracket, many of which have tangible performance advantages over the W-218H.
The AE1500WH, for example, looks even more like a G-Shock, with a larger, rounded case, and can often be had for less money than the 218, despite offering objectively better performance. It’s got a more readable display, boasts double the water resistance, and also packs in a host of additional functions to boot. The W-800H, meanwhile, can also typically be had for less and packs double the water resistance into a slightly smaller footprint than the W218H, while matching its feature set.
If you can deal with its Frankenstein-like appearance, the DW-291H is also a much more robust choice in this price bracket. It offers a whopping 200m of water resistance, several more functions, mineral glass instead of plastic, and just generally feels much more substantial in the hands, making it the obvious choice if you prioritise durability above all else.
All three of those also advertise 10-year battery life, exceeding the 218, too. But even with these caveats, I think the W-218H is still pretty deserving of its highly reviewed status. While less performant than some rivals, it offers a cleaner look than most alternatives and is still durable enough for most people’s day-to-day usage. While it wouldn’t be my first choice, I can see why it fits the bill for many.
On the topic of billing, I guess we started with the cheapest watch, so we might as well work our way up in price order.
Eriksen
At £56, we have our next top-rated Amazon pick and something completely different; that being this square dress watch from a brand called ‘Eriksen’. Now, I’ve been a full-time reviewer for 7 years, and I’ve never, ever heard of this supposedly UK-based brand. Yet, this watch still looks awfully familiar.
It’s almost like I’ve seen this design before?
Now, they’re claiming that this ‘Chatsworth’ here is ‘British-designed’, and they also claim to ‘combine high-quality components with good design and superb craftsmanship’ to ‘create an accurate and robust timepiece’.
Now, the ‘accurate’ part is true, this watch uses a Miyota quartz movement, which is reasonable. But everything else? They’re straight-up falsehoods.
For starters, I know for a fact this watch was not designed in the UK. And how do I know that? Well, because the Cartier Tank exists!
Indeed, this Eriksen is in fact a blatant copy of one of the most famous watches of all time, first designed and produced by Frenchman Louis Cartier way back in 1917.
That’s not to say this design is ugly; the Cartier Tank is a really cool Art Deco icon, and this Eriksen rides its coattails, providing you with a similar-from-a-distance look for a lot less money.
Design deception aside, what about their claims of quality? I mean, this watch has an average review score that’s higher than the last one, at 4.9/5, and they advertise ‘high-quality components, superb craftsmanship and a robust timepiece’, so it must have some redeeming qualities?
Well, those claims are pure marketing jargon. My local chip shop exhibits more ‘craftsmanship’ than this cheap, but, ironically, still overpriced watch.
For starters, while it looks like a Cartier from a distance, the case is an immediate red flag for anyone with any experience with watches. Something about it just looks and feels ‘off’. It’s almost too shiny. And that’s because it has what they’re calling a ‘silver-plated case’, rather than the industry-standard stainless steel cases that are increasingly common even at this low price point.
Their choice of words here is highly misleading in my opinion, because I’m convinced this contains no real silver content at all. I’m pretty confident this ‘silver-plating’ is actually just ‘silver-colored plating’, as the metal exhibits the hallmark blue hue and excessive reflectivity of cheap chrome-plating, which typically contains rudimentary brass or zinc alloys underneath. You’ll notice that any real silver jewellery you’ve got has a much warmer tone than this bluish watch case.
To be clear, I’m not expecting the world for just £56, far from it. In fact, chrome-plated watches are still fairly widespread at this price and they’re not inherently evil or anything. But, to call a watch made from this a ‘robust timepiece’ with ‘high-quality components’ and ‘superb craftsmanship’ is objectively untrue.
These days, many higher-quality stainless steel watches can be had from about £35 on sites like AliExpress, and compared to steel, chrome-plated brass scratches more easily, is more susceptible to corrosion and rust, tends to tarnish faster, and usually looks cheaper, as it’s trickier to achieve fine brushing and high polishing with.
Unlike some brass Timex watches, this Eriksen isn’t a particularly well-done outlier either. This unit has numerous lumps, bumps, and imperfections around the lug area, which have a nasty habit of scratching your wrist because they’re so poorly manufactured.
Those quality claims are doubly false when you can pick from a plethora of near-identical watches on AliExpress, shipped to your door for around £10, or even less if you’re a first-time customer. And I truly mean near-identical. I ordered two of these just to compare against, and they really do offer the same core design and the same spec sheet as the Eriksen, for less than a fifth of the cost. If anything, the cheaper watches actually have better-finished cases, without the rough corners present on the more expensive model. You’ll notice they both share the exact same blue metallic hue, all but confirming my earlier suspicions about the case material.
Now the proportions can vary a bit, depending on which Cartier model they’re trying to replicate. This Eriksen is just over 30mm wide, by the way, but square watches always tend to wear much larger.
What’s more, the Eriksen can’t even be submerged, as the caseback offers no meaningful water resistance; so if you accidentally decide to, I dunno, ‘wash the dishes’ or something, it could be done for!
Oh, and I also popped the back off two of them. While the Miyota 2035 movement in the Eriksen is fine, it’s no better than the TMI PC20S, from Seiko subsidiary TMI, found in the back of the Sanda watch I opened; outside of slightly longer battery life.
The croc-effect strap is decent enough and should perform as intended, even if it’s strangely wide considering the shape and size of the watch.
But even with that considered, this Eriksen watch doesn’t deserve the hype in the slightest. On the surface, a £50 Cartier lookalike sounds pretty tempting. But when you discover how poorly built it is and that an arguably better £10 alternative exists…well, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a great deal, does it?
The £10 SANDA watches are the ones that actually deserve the hype. At that low of a cost, the obvious downsides of these watches become much more tolerable.
So how on earth has this very mediocre watch accrued such a high review score?
Well, I suspect it’s mainly due to a lack of competition. For whatever reason, there are very few Cartier Tank clones on Amazon and no sign of the usual budget players such as Addiesdive, Pagani Design, and San Martin, who tend to produce significantly better quality watches than this. Big brand alternatives, from the likes of Seiko, Rotary, and others, also seem to start past the £100 mark, leaving a sizable price vacuum that only this Eriksen currently fills.
That factor becomes doubly impactful if you’re unfamiliar with the original Cartier Tank. When there are dozens of identical-looking watches on a site like Amazon, you naturally begin to assume they all must be copies of something famous. But when there’s only one watch with that design on the site and you read Eriksen’s false ‘British Design’ claim, you may even be tricked into thinking it’s just a beautiful, original, vintage-inspired design, which might increase its perceived value to the owner.
Luckily, a comparably priced big brand alternative recently emerged in the form of the Casio MTP-B190D. It’s still a little tricky to find right now, but it offers a slightly more original take on this square design, with stainless steel construction to boot. Still not my favorite watch, but clearly better than the Eriksen.
Whether this Eriksen model is just dropshipped or a private label design remains to be seen. I couldn’t find a Tank-style watch on AliExpress or AliBaba with an identically shaped crown to this, but when something so minor is the only notable differentiator, such an outcome wouldn’t surprise me.
Invicta Pro Diver 20277
One watch that definitely hasn’t been dropshipped is our next highly rated watch, the Invicta Pro Diver SCUBA 20277. To dropship this, you’d probably require a fleet of space shuttles, as this thing is a planet in itself, at a goliath 50mm wide, with a 188g weight that far exceeds most mechanical watches despite only using a lightweight quartz movement and a silicone band.
So yeah, straight out of the gate, this isn’t for the ‘faint-wristed’, but Amazon does accurately state this size on the listing, so most people buying this watch are likely seeking out a huge watch anyway, which is fair enough. This one cost me just over £100, or about $130 USD.
Now, as far as design goes, this watch and this brand as a whole are far from my cup of tea, but with an average rating of 4.8 from over 1,100 reviews, I may be in the minority with that opinion. What I will say is that, unlike the most popular Pro Diver models, which are rebranded Rolex copies, this piece at least has a unique, original design, which definitely counts for something. It’s a sort of diver-chronograph hybrid, as you can see.
For now, I’ll focus on the features and construction of this Invicta and let you be the judge on whether you appreciate the bold looks.
As you’d hope for a watch of this size and weight, it is indeed a solidly built watch. You get a nice stainless steel case here, no blue chrome effect in sight, and you even get a fully ratcheting steel bezel that may not sound the best, but does feel pretty good in the hands. Overall, the finishing is basic but sufficient, with plain, polished flanks and a simple brushed upper. While it’s nothing fancy, it does feel like a bit of a beast, and I’d expect it to last pretty well over time.
As you might expect, given the Pro Diver nomenclature and the screwed caseback, this watch offers a fair amount of water resistance too, at an advertised 100m, which is more than enough for most users. Though I will say the inclusion of both ‘Pro Diver’ and ‘Scuba’ in the name is pretty misleading, as despite the hefty appearance and impressive sounding rating, this watch wouldn’t survive scuba dives to even modest depths. That’s because wristwatch water resistance tests are conducted in static test chambers, which don’t simulate the pressure changes of real-life swimming and diving motions. So, while you’d have no trouble in a shallow swimming pool, at greater depths, this watch will struggle.
Lower-cost watches, like the Casio’s MDV-106 Duro, and even Invicta’s standard Pro Diver models, provide the full diver-standard 200m water resistance rating, together with screw-down crowns for added protection. This one instead has a standard push-pull crown, making water ingress a far likelier possibility. “Master of the oceans”? More like “paddling-pool professional.”
That’s not the only contentious terminology used on this watch. For starters, they have two branded ‘technologies’ baked into this Pro Diver, that being their ‘Flame Fusion crystal’ and ‘Tritnite’ night glow luminescence. Now, from what I can gather, these are essentially new names for generic products, rather than special in-house materials.
‘Flame Fusion’ crystal is one I tested extensively in a previous video. From what I can gather, it’s just a hardened mineral crystal, with performance roughly matching other hardened mineral crystals like K1 and Seiko’s Hardlex; only, this time, it’s been naughtily named after the ‘Flame Fusion’ process for creating synthetic sapphire, implying better performance despite falling well short of both sapphire and sapphire-coated crystals in my scratch tests.
It’s worth noting this still means it’s marginally better than the standard mineral glass used by some rivals at this price, and even this minor upgrade is appreciated on a £100 watch. It is possible to get sapphire crystals at this price, but those tend to be much hazier and often reduce legibility as they usually lack a good anti-reflective coating. So these hardened mineral crystals are a good middle-ground for budget pieces.
‘Tritnite,’ meanwhile, is just luminescent paint. Yeah, this watch has lume. You can see it briefly in the dark…but it lasts no better than the green stuff on most cheap Casio watches. It’s blank in just a few minutes. Now, to be fair to Invicta, this is a common cost-cutting area for budget watches, so its bad performance is actually on par with many other big brand offerings. But those other big brands aren’t marketing their bad lume as more than it is.
Indeed, Invicta’s again named this to sound like something it isn’t. They’ve made it read similarly to ‘Tritium’, a radioactive gas used by some watch brands, due to its permanent glow that doesn’t require a light source. Tritnite shares none of these distinctive properties. It’s just more bogus marketing slop. Many Chinese brands have cheaper watches with low-light performance that obliterates this Invicta.
The strap, that’s actually quite good, and wait for it…no don’t worry, there’s no stupid name this time. It does have a bizarre setup with two spring bars fitted to each strap, making it a nightmare to quickly change; but, it does make the strap feel even more secure once it’s in place, and the overall feel is decent with sufficient pliability and plenty of adjustment holes for all wrist sizes.
It’s also wide enough to offset the huge bulk of the main case, so the watch doesn’t bobble about nearly as much as you’d expect, and I imagine for someone with a bigger wrist, this watch could be quite comfortable, even if the giant 16mm thickness will prove troublesome for any long sleeves.
As for the functions, well, it’s using a Seiko VD53 quartz movement, so those pushers are fully functional. I emphasise that, as at first glance they may not appear to be doing anything, but if you look closely, you’ll see they actually operate the tiny chronograph hand on the lower sub-dial, rather than the bigger seconds hand that’s doing the rounds there.
Yeah, this layout is not too common and not my personal favorite, as you can barely see what the pushers are controlling, but it does sidestep one of the frustrations of many quartz and meca-quartz chronographs; that being that many look ‘dead’ when the chronograph hand isn’t running. This Invicta has a persistent tick, which can be quite assuring.
A minor functional gripe, though, as you may have noticed, is that the minute and hour hands are so close in size that you could misread the time at a glance.
Despite this, I think this Invicta is still a fine watch that definitely has some commendable strengths. If you’re just after a chunky, durable, loud watch, this will work, and it’s not got any huge downsides so long as you’ve got a wrist that can accommodate it. Does it live up to the huge review scores, though? In my opinion, not a chance, especially with all the weird clickbait naming schemes and overpromises surrounding it. In certain areas, this watch is still beaten by its bigger brand or Chinese brand competition.
The Casio Duro does pretty much everything this watch does, with nicer case finishing, double water resistance, and a more reasonable, but still large size, for around half the cost. It’s got a great reputation and also looks more expensive.
The Vostok Amphibia, meanwhile, sells for a similar price to this Invicta and offers an extensive military service history combined with legendary water resistance. It also offers extensive modding options and a near limitless selection of designs, including plenty that are nice and ‘bling bling’ if that’s what you’re looking for. I’d probably pick both of those divers before this Invicta, but it’s not necessarily a bad watch.
Maserati Competizione
On the topic of bling, bling, that phrase also applies to the next watch I painfully purchased for £218.78, or closing in on $300 USD; the ‘Maserati Competizione’.
This watch has an average review score of 4.8 stars from 85 reviews…and wow, some people must be very easily impressed, that’s the only conclusion I can draw here. This thing is utter garbage!
And that’s not me being snobby. Based on my experience, I genuinely can’t see a world in which this £200 watch costs more than about £15 per unit to manufacture. In fact, they may have allocated more money to the box than the watch, despite even that having a major shortcoming. Yeah, it’s got quite a nice leatherette outer and faux-suede lining, but it arrived completely mutilated by a flawed hinge mechanism that doesn’t hold the lid level and seems almost designed to cause such damage.
And really, that could act as a metaphor for this whole package. Designed to look flashy and luxurious from afar, but the second you look closer, everything falls apart.
For starters, the in-hand feel of this Maserati is atrocious. The bracelet is impossible to ignore with its stereotypical tinny, jangly rattle that’s the horological equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. This has no place on a £200 watch, with its folded, hollow link construction akin to bracelets found on most dirt-cheap watches; and even that is being generous. This sub-£40 Addiesdive, for example, has entirely solid steel links in its bracelet, with a much nicer clasp to boot. Zero rattling and a much more substantial feel.
Oh, and the clasp is a disaster, too. It looks ok on the outside with a generous four miroadjustment holes, but good luck getting it to fit when you’ll have a wrestling match simply opening it. This security flap was so fixed in place that I scraped my nail bed several times trying to remove it, and eventually had to resort to wrenching it off with a caseback removal tool. It seems ok now, but wow, are they some luxury-level tolerances.
It’s worth pointing out actually that, despite the name, Maserati (the car maker) has very little, if anything, to do with the manufacture of their own watches. According to Google, these are in fact produced by the Morellato group, who have a phenomenal reputation and also make other esteemed brands such as ‘Sector No Limits’, ‘Philip Watch’, and ‘Bluespirit’, just to name a few.
Most of those look to be built to the same tacky standard as this Maserati, which offers a pitiful spec sheet for a watch costing over £200.
It has got stainless steel construction, which you’d hope for as a bare minimum, and it also offers a 10-bar water resistance rating with a screw-down crown, which is good. But over the dial, you’re left with a flat piece of mineral glass, with no anti-reflective coating. You can get far more scratch-resistant sapphire crystals on numerous Casios, as well as other brands, that retail for less than half the cost of this Maserati.
Despite the appearance and the price, this watch isn’t even a proper chronograph. No, it’s a ‘multifunction’ watch, so despite the two pushers, this watch can’t actually time anything like proper chronographs can.
Under the hood is just a simple battery-powered quartz movement, in this case the Seiko Epson VX9J, which you can grab for under a tenner when purchased in bulk. This movement gives those pushers the ability to adjust the day and date displays, respectively; two functions that a simple date wheel can already accomplish in most movements, simply by using the watch’s crown.
I guess some of this may be a visual choice. Perhaps the designer wanted to show the day and date on those subdials, for whatever reason, even though it looks really similar to a normal chronograph.
Even so, the meca-quartz chronograph movements you typically find at this price not only offer the same look with the added timing capabilities, but also have much nicer-feeling pushers, as well as a smoother sweep to the chronograph hand that surpasses the usual once-per-second tick. Heck, you can even grab some fully mechanical chronograph movements at this price, which are another level of complexity entirely.
To me, this multifunction movement feels like an entirely cost-centric inclusion. The closer you look at those subdials too, the worse things get. Indeed, this Maserati gets massacred under macro, with barebones markers, flat hands, and the same basic tubular gold detailing that you find on watches at 1/10 of the cost. It’s not filthy at least, but it still looks very, very cheap, even compared to much lower-cost chronograph watches from other lesser-known brands.
Now, the blue undertone I actually quite like. It complements the gold-colored case relatively well, with a rather nice sunburst, but that factor alone can’t disguise its apparent grocery-store watch level of quality, observable even from a moderate distance.
Aside from that, it’s ok stylistically. It’s not hideous, but it does look a bit like an owl wearing eye makeup, don’t you think?
The lume on this watch, by the way, isn’t nearly as bad as I expected, but is still below par for a watch at this price. Again, it gets trounced by alternatives that cost the same or even way less.
Interestingly, many online commenters and even Google’s ‘AI Overview’ claim that these Maserati watches are either made in Italy or made in Switzerland, which certainly makes them sound prestigious. Personally, I think that’s bogus.
When a watch brand is Swiss or Italian-made, you never hear the end of it! They plaster that claim everywhere, including on the watch dial itself.
This Maserati has neither of those claims present, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over 6 years of watch reviewing, it’s that the phrase ‘Italian Design’ usually means ‘made in China’, or some other Far Eastern country they’d rather not mention.
Now, Maserati’s parent company, the Morellato Group, loves to talk about “in-house production of watches” on their website, and that sounds impressive… until you read their own 2025 company profile, which tells a very different story.
They proudly describe their watchstrap production as “Made in Italy” and their Philip Watch line as “Swiss Made” — but when it comes to everything else, including Maserati, there are no such claims.
Rather, the document openly lists Morellato subsidiaries in world-renowned manufacturing hubs like Hong Kong, Dongguan (China), and Bangkok.
So, their marketing might suggest you’re getting a slice of Italian craftsmanship, but they’re almost certainly made in the Far East, just like every other fashion watch brand out there, all while technically being able to call their production “in-house”.
And just like most fashion watches, this Maserati is a trash-tier timepiece with a fancy brand name and an insane markup. I can’t say I’m surprised.
That’s not to say all Chinese-made watches are bad. In fact, some Chinese-made chronographs obliterate this Maserati in terms of price to performance, such as those from Addiesdive and Casio Edifice.
At this price, it even gets trumped by other highly-rated watches on Amazon, that for some reason weren’t listed as highly as this hunk of junk. That includes the Q Timex Chronograph, which looks far more attractive and expensive, or some of Orient’s solar chronographs, which look higher quality and are higher quality in every manner, while offering solar charging functionality to boot.
I mean, it’s crazy to me that you can either drop £220 on this Maserati or, for similar money, get your hands on watch nerd staples like the Orient Bambino and Timex E-Line, which offer much higher-end looks and mechanical movements that also give you an elegant sweeping seconds hand. You could even opt for some of Bulova’s Precisionist watches, which boast one of the smoothest second hands in the world thanks to their advanced movement technology.
Coach Elliot
Of course, you could go for the next watch on this list, the Coach ‘Elliot’, which cost me a comparable £207 or £232 including delivery. And was this watch worth it? Hell no!
Yeah, to be frank, the story here is pretty similar to the last one. It’s another grossly overpriced fashion watch, but presented in a much different guise.
Here, I think the appeal is much more obvious. It’s a thin, gold-coloured watch with a minimalist design and a shiny gold dial. I think that combination is always going to be popular, regardless of the level of execution, and this particular piece has an average review score of 4.9 stars from 61 reviews, so it’s clearly landed well with the general public.
And it does have some minor strengths. Outside of the obvious slimness, the steel mesh bracelet is better than that fitted to the Maserati watch, and thankfully doesn’t feel like an empty can of beans. It’s got the usual slide clamp mechanism for adjustments and also matches the tone of the case pretty well. The only trouble is that half-decent bracelets set you back about a tenner from China, and this watch costs north of £200.
Yeah, I have some alternatives coming up that boast all the same strengths as this Coach but offer you significantly more in every other area, so be sure to stick around for those.
To be honest, I knew what I was in for when I Googled Coach watches, and found that they were actually made by Movado, a conglomerate that also makes watches for other fashion brands, such as MVMT, Hugo Boss, Lacoste, and Tommy Hilfiger – brands renowned for their comically bad build quality.
This Coach is no exception, and while it is perhaps a tad better than that Maserati overall, it still looks like what it is; a cheap £15 watch with a Coach logo slapped on it.
I mean, here it is next to an £8 watch that I purchased from clothing retailer Primark a few years ago. You can see why I draw such a comparison. While the colors are different, you can see that the detailing and overall styling are remarkably similar. Some of the biggest giveaways are the flat, plasticky-looking markers and hands, and the overall plainness of everything, including the steel case that exhibits an entirely glossy finish, which is, coincidentally, the cheapest type to manufacture. It looks far closer to the Primark watch than to virtually any £200 watches produced by a proper watch brand.
Now, while I doubt people are really buying this watch for its specs or features, those factors do provide further context as to just how cheaply made this watch is.
Again, the crystal on this is just bottom-tier mineral glass, at a price where more scratch-resistant sapphire or hardened mineral crystals are the norm. This glass will scratch over time.
The back of the watch features an inscription ironically claiming this watch was ‘crafted with careful attention to detail, function and performance’ all while being lasered directly onto the back of a basic snapback rear, which fails to provide this watch with any meaningful water resistance. You can’t write this stuff!
Indeed, in watchmaking terms, 3bar is the lowest rating typically assigned to any watch and is pretty much a synonym for ‘splashproof’, meaning rain is about all it can handle.
This watch also has no luminescence, so you can’t read it in the dark, and while the bracelet is the biggest strength, like with the Maserati, there are no quick-release levers, which are a staple at this price point. So, you’ll need a dedicated springbar tool to change the bracelet, which, of course, you don’t get in the box either.
As you can guess, this watch is in no way worth the money or the high review score. If it were well below a hundred it might be reasonable, but to sell for north of two hundred is pure insanity. Their margins or operating costs must be insane if this is all they can offer. Thankfully, I have some absolute bangers to consider if you’re after a thin, stylish watch; all from much better brands than Coach.
A great direct alternative is the Sternglas Naos Quartz, which outright beats the Coach in every category, for the same amount of money. My image here is the automatic version, but the quartz offers the same award-winning Bauhaus-inspired design, just in a package that’s as slim as the Coach. It’s got an increased 5 ATM water resistance rating, a selection of higher-quality quick-release bands or bracelets, and a double-domed sapphire crystal that’s got a pretty good anti-reflective coating. It comes in two sizes, making it more versatile than the Coach, too.
For a similar gold look, the Nixon Time Teller offers a comparable vibe for often around half the price or less. It also has 100m of water resistance, so you can actually dunk it.
If slimness is your main priority, Casio also has you covered for around £100 with their Casio Edifice EFR-S108D, which is wafer-thin and much better built with a sapphire crystal. Some new versions even come with elaborate textured dials that up the ante. Casio’s MTP-B145D is also a good budget substitute with similar looks to the Coach for a fraction of the price, albeit it’s designed specifically for smaller arms, at 35mm.
In my eyes, if you’re already spending two hundred quid, you may as well stretch for the likes of the Tissot Everytime, which is a Swiss-made watch from a famous brand, or even go for my favorite, the absurdly good Citizen Stiletto, also known as the Suratto in some regions.
Unlike the overpriced Coach, this Citizen is an engineering marvel, squeezing an Eco-Drive solar movement and a three-dimensional, ridged dial into a remarkable sub-5mm package. Indeed, this watch is so sleek, it’s actually thinner than the strap attached to it. And it can be yours for roughly the same price. Madness, isn’t it?