Hamilton Khaki Aviation Automatic Men's Watch, 45mm Stainless Steel Case, Swiss Made, Blue Dial Analog Wrist Watch for Men, 100m Waterproof, Sapphire Crystal, Textile Strap

I have the beige version of the same watch, and I can say it's an amazing watch, and well worth the price. You won't get to experience what a really high quality swiss watch is like for any less. And believe me, before I got it I was right there with you: nobody could possibly need or want a $2000 watch; it's just luxury insanity pricing. It's not. After you have this and compare it to your $200 watches you realize it was the $200 watch that was the rip-off. Everything about the watch is solid. You wind it (if you want) and you can feel the tight but smooth movement isn't the usual cheap "gritty" gear train. You put your ear to this and you can barely hear the movement; it's not wasting energy making noise. You click the chronograph buttons and everything feels solid and tight. The crowns are substantial and satisfying to work. The watch weighs enough to let you know it's there. The band is perfect, and has nice touches like a suede back to make it comfortable. The crystal has anti-reflective coating that actually works, and doesn't just turn the reflections blue; it makes them disappear entirely. Oh, and it keeps time. Mine gets better than 2 seconds a day. For a mechanical watch, that's really good, about as good as any Swiss watch you'll find, even a Rolex. Hamilton doesn't screw around, despite not being one of the high-end collector boutique brands. It's just a solid brand that delivers, and puts in the work to do things right without being flashy; they use non-magnetic silicon for the balance spring, they completely upgrade the regulation to their own specs, and modify the rate to achieve extra power reserve. If you don't want to spring for this much but still want a true quality watch at a decent price, then consider the non-chronograph version of this watch, or even one of their field watches. (The chronograph feature is very complicated to make and is a much more expensive movement.) Lastly, a quick word on the X-wind function: it works, is very clever, but is just an ornamental feature that, if anything, takes away from the watch. Nobody would EVER use this in real life. The text is too small to be readable while flying, and furthermore the two crowns which control it are completely useless and not needed for true use. You only need to use the outer crown to actually use the function in real life, if you were so inclined. It's just a nice historical homage to the old E6-B flight computers people used to use. (As proof of Hamilton's agreement with me on this, the instructions that come with the watch are actually incorrect, despite the watch actually being a correct version of a cross-wind computer! At least the watch designers knew what they were doing even if the manual writer didn't.) As such, my only complaint about the watch is that they should've just made the bezel either a unit conversion computer like their other pilot's watches (and actual useful thing for pilots in real life) and/or included a tachymeter scale (also occasionally useful) instead of a purely ornamental nod to an aviation tool nobody will ever use.

Nice watch, i can see this lasting 100 years if you take care of it. Some things i thought browsers might wish they knew before they purchased... Surprisingly heavy, weights just 20 grams or so less than an iPhone 16, so essentially the weight of a phone on your wrist. If you don't have the band very snug, it will inevitably try to slide away from the top of your wrist because of the weight (some may find this uncomfortable). The band is very sturdy, like it has a shank in the portion with the rivets, not pure flimsy nylon as one might imagine. Watch is has lots of dials (for serious enthusiasts), and the numbers are very small. The image is quite zoomed in on the shop so you might not grasp how small the numbers will be. For example the outer bezel numbers might be 1-1.5mm tall, and the inner bezel numbers might be less than 1mm tall. So if you plan to be able to read them make sure you have good glasses :D The chronograph (the stopwatch) is very cool, hard to believe its all packed in there and is all mechanical. The stopwatch portion uses the main dial's second hand for seconds + the bottom smaller dial for minutes + the top smaller dial for hours. This might not be obvious at first blush, but the watch's main second hand dial is the small one to the right, not the large second hand you might be used to seeing.