Styles
The families that group watches by design and purpose: dive, dress, field, pilot and more.
A watch style describes what a watch was designed around: a dive watch is built for toughness and water resistance, while a dress watch is built for elegance and a slim profile.
This section helps you match the right style to your use and your wardrobe.
- Digital Watch
- A digital watch shows the time as numerals on an LCD screen rather than with hands. It is quartz powered and usually adds a stopwatch, alarm, backlight and sometimes world time. Digitals are extremely accurate, inexpensive and tough, and the Casio F-91W and G-Shock are icons of the type.
- Dress Watch
- A dress watch is a thin, minimalist watch made for formal or business wear. It has a small to moderate case, a slim profile that slips under a shirt cuff, a clean dial and usually a leather strap with modest water resistance. It is the opposite of a chunky diver.
- Field Watch
- A field watch is a rugged, highly legible watch derived from military issue. It has a clean, high-contrast dial, often an inner 24-hour track, a modest case usually around 38 to 40mm and a tough build. It typically comes on a NATO or leather strap and is made for everyday utility.
- GADA Watch
- A GADA watch, short for Go Anywhere Do Anything, is a versatile one-watch piece that copes with work, sport and smart-casual wear reasonably well. It is usually a sturdy sports watch or diver around 38 to 40mm, built to cover most of what one watch realistically needs to do.
- Pilot Watch
- A pilot watch is an aviation-derived style built for cockpit readability. It has a large, clear dial, high-contrast numerals, an oversized crown that can be operated even whilst wearing gloves, and sometimes a GMT hand for a second time zone. The whole point is fast, error-free reading at a glance.
- Sports Watch
- A sports watch is a durable everyday watch built for activity: higher water resistance, a legible dial, a robust case and bracelet, often rated to 100 metres or more. It is broader than a dedicated diver and sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from a dress watch.
- Tool Watch
- A tool watch is a watch built to do a job, such as diving, flying or fieldwork. It puts legibility and durability first and pushes decoration into the background. In that sense it is the opposite of a dress watch, designed for hard, practical use rather than for show.