Submitted by Eric Daniel
The purpose of a watch is to tell time. After that, it's all just bells and whistles. Throughout my career, I've had more than a few; some were big and gaudy (G-shock) some were big and spendy (Citizen Aqualand Promaster, which I still use for diving by the way) and some were cheap and unreliable (the army issue tritium faced watches.)
This is the watch I'm currently using, and really have no intention of deviating from. Technically, it's referred to as the Timex Men's Easy Set Alarm Watch #T50832. The watch will run you about $45 and it does everything I ask it to with out a lot of fuss or manipulation.
First off, the face is analog (i.e. it has hands) and there are luminescent strips on the hands so that you can read the watch at night without having to use the back-light. If you want to back-light the watch, however, it uses Timex's "indiglo" feature, which provides enough blue-green light for you to read the watch without lighting up your position.
The alarm is easy to set; you simply rotate the bezel till the alarm needle is set to the correct time and then pull out the alarm pin. Pull the alarm pin out to the first stop (one beep) and you've set the alarm for 1-hour mode (the alarm will go off when the minute hand hits the alarm needle.) Pull the pin to the second stop (two beeps) and the alarm is set for 12-hour mode (the alarm will go off when the hour hand hits the alarm needle. So that you can't screw up the needle setting, once you pull the alarm pin out, it disengages the alarm setting gear on the bezel.
Setting the time and date on the watch is simply a matter of pulling out the time/date set screw and rotating the bezel. There is no twisting of tiny knobs or mashing of buttons, which makes it easy to change the time on the fly.
Finally, not that I've tested it, or ever anticipate validating it, the watch is water resistant to 50m, which is good enough for everything I'll ever do with it.
P.S. Astute readers will notice that I've got the watch wrapped around one of the Silverfoot watchbands Buzzard commented on a while back. I have to agree with him, these watchbands are easy to use, reliable, and pretty much indestructible.
