How To Choose Your Watch – The Alternative Way

How To Chose Your Watch – The Alternative Way

When buying a watch, people usually make their choice based on the looks or the brand. But there is also another way – why not go for the one that matches your lifestyle the best.

Each watch company represents individual sets of values and ideals through their investment in innovation, features to help you do what you do, their history and even a location. So, can you match it to your life, values, admiration to its engineering or a place that potentially means a lot to you?

So here are some different watch ideas.

If you had to think for a moment, what are the most important things to you in your life, at the moment? What group of people do you want to ‘hang out’ with, in your ideal life? What does your personality say about you? Here are some examples to get you going:

Watch Ideas For The Outdoor Adventurers

For such person Suunto would be the obvious choice. It is one of the few companies founded by an engineer. Tuomas Vohlonen was an adventurer who enjoyed orienteering in his spare time. To help him with the navigation through the forests, he invented the first liquid-filled compass.

Since then (1936), the company has innovated all sorts of useful ‘outdoorsy’ technologies for wristwatches. And it paid off big – many explorers and adventurers use it all around the world.

I have one of these watches, and I am blown away by the number of features it has. It is not the place to list all of them, but the most jaw-dropping abilities of Suunto Ambit 3 watch include the storm warning (can be life-saving when climbing mountains), ability to track all types of sports and a GPS tracker which shows your way back to the pre-set point.

It seems that the location of the company also matters. Scandinavians love outdoors, so you can be sure that those Finland-based engineers are personally testing their innovations on those frequent trekking and sports trips across the wild mountains and forests.

Another plus is that this part of the world is a leader in nature preservation and recycling. In turn, this is reflecting their manufacturing processes, material selection and ease of access to the repair service, instead of just throwing away and replacing.

See our Suunto Ambit 3 review for the full list of features and capabilities.

For A Technology Geek

There is no other company in the world with a more compelling story as Apple. Steve Jobs’s embedded innovation and passion in the company’s culture.

Most high-tech lovers do and will love Apple Watch for years to come. Get one, and you are part of the latest trend, part of the massive movement that gets lots of new features to test and (let’s be honest) brag about, with every new release.

Mind you, there are also other technological discoveries made by other watch companies. You can see more and more smartwatches coming to the market, including those issued by the traditional watchmaking companies.

So don’t stop discovering, there will be (or potentially is?) a time when the Apple Watch is still the most popular, but not “the latest” any longer.

For The Funky People Who Like Sports

I always felt that smart watch designers have neglected funky people to like to add colour to their style. And no, I don’t think that changing a wallpaper on your Apple Watch is not it.

In addition to kinda boring looking Apple Watch, you can go with the Fitbit which has some colour but not much of a style. You can go with a dedicated, usually chunky and masculine looking sports watch. Some of them are quite nice, but you would rarely use them on a social night out. For most of us, it does not work as a main daily-wear watch either.

Creative Withings team from Paris has finally come up with an interesting idea on how to design a hybrid watch that is smart but does not look anything like sports watches.

Withings Move is a second generation or hybrid watches that does the job of a smart watch while looking like the ordinary analogue watch. The display of information to you happens through activity tracking bar 0-100% that you can see on the face and through their dedicated app.

This watch has all the functionalities you would expert from a sports watch:

  • tracks your run, swim and many other sports seamlessly. No button pressing and menu browsing required – all is done automatically
  • sleep tracker tells you about your sleep patterns and quality
  • GPS tracking to tell the distance and elevation that you covered during your sport
  • allows swimming and snorkelling with water resistance of up to 50m

These are all amazing features that are done by many others, what truly sets it apart from other tracker watches that it does not need to be charged for up to a year and a half.

But the main think is the style. A style that can be personalised to you. Their online design tool allows to choose the colours of the strap, activity dial and the case. The watch face has quite a few different designs and colour patterns too. The above, for example, are the ones I designed. One is more gentle and formal, while the other one is flashy and summery. What would be your style?

See Withings Move Watch Builder to design your own. Then watchmakers from France will assemble it and send it to you. All that that amazing price of under $100? Surely it is fun to have few watches in different styles, if you know what I mean.

For The Mindful

I have to admit; this one is my personal favourite. If you live slow, you rarely need to know the exact time. But, unless you live in a forest, you probably still need to use a watch here then. So that’s where single-hand watches come in handy. It just screams “I don’t have to be anywhere I don’t want to right now”.

There are quite a few companies that make them these. But you can make it even more special by getting one from the guy who actually invented the concept. Klaus Botta, a German industrial design student, came up with this new way of checking the time in 1986. This idea is becoming more and more popular today.

I found that it fits well with my New Year resolution of being more mindful and appreciating the moment. This watch teaches you to look at the time in a completely different way. It is not about ‘where you need to be at the certain time’ but more about ‘where you are in the day right now’.

For example the grey time is my resting time and I want to make sure that there I do things that I truly enjoy and that are good for me. But also appreciate the fact that when the arrow shows 2pm that means that I still have four productive hours to go.

All that without caring too much about how many minutes is there past certain hour or seeing seconds hand running non-stop.

For many people this also could be the watch for the times when they do want to be more relax or mindful. There are a lot of people to like to really relax on the weekends. I think that this watch would be just perfect for them.

To learn more about the watch and how I use it, read my Botta Uno 24 Watch Review.

For Someone Proud Of Their Heritage

Why not get yourself a watch made in the country where your parents or grandparents come from. There are many great watches made in the UK, France, Italy, Spain and even Finland, to name a few. Many of them will proudly mention their country on its face – a lovely reminder every time you check for the time.

It is also a matter of pride. For example, an Englishman who lives abroad would love to wear one of these every day. Harold Pinchbeck is an upcoming watch brand with a lot of pride heritage to talk about. And it looks great – and fitting so well with its ‘gentlemanly’ roots.

It also a great conversation starter, such story tells itself when someone sees your watch. You will not only get questions about it, but you will potentially find something in common with people you would have not even talked to before.

For A Sybarite (Person Who Likes Luxury)

In that case, you are spoiled for choice, probably more than anyone else. There are many luxury watch companies with fantastic watches to offer.

Mind you, the people in such environments do have an eye for detail. They will probably know how the brand and much your watch costs in a glance. If you are part of that crowd, it shouldn’t be a problem.

But, if you are trying to bluff your way in, they will figure you out in no time. So you might want to skip on that temptation of getting an expensive-looking fake watch or go for a cheaper range from a luxury watch company instead.In this world, knowing about your brand is good. Looking stylish is even better. But it would help if you also went the extra mile and potentially learn an interesting fact or two about the piece you like to wear.

Such a story could be an interesting topic to start when you run out of things to say during a boring networking event, for example. Here is one of my favourite stories. It is about Hublot, an official F1 watch company. Of course, a well known Bernie Eccleston, the CEO of Formula 1, wears one too.

So it happened, that Bernie was actually mugged and had his watch taken away once. Not to let the situation turn negative, Hublot put out adverts with pictures of beaten up Barnie Eccleston with a tagline: “See what people will do for a Hublot”.

As we know, there are more than a hundred Swiss watchmakers out there. So I created The Best Swiss Watches For Under $500 post to help you out if you are on the budget.

For A Rebel Against The Usual Norms

Who said that the watch has to be a circle? Why does it have to display numbers around the face? Surely you would not want any liquid inside it? It is so wrong and amazingly challenging on so many different levels.

There are quite a few strange watches out there, but name one, for me, the ultimate rebels in the watch world would be Urkwerk – mind-blowing display and engineering and HYT – watches that are actually powered by liquid.

Usually watches try to impressive and stand out. This HYT h10 does not need to try very hard. Blue liquid shows the hours and the arrow in the middle states the minutes. But, let’s be honest – most people will forget about the time when checking every engineering detail on this futuristic alien watch.

The watch buffs will also appreciate the technological genius behind it all. It is actually a mechanically winded watch, that pushes liquid around!? But despite all that it is very functional to use every day and you can even go diving for up to 50 meters with it.

Have another type of people in mind? Share your thoughts bellow.

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