A watch for every budget

Choose the best possible watch for your budget with our handy guide.

£100 Swatch Sistem51 Navy

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, they say, except that, with Swatch’s inventive automatic, you don’t. Made entirely by robots, it has a 90-hour power reserve and will never need maintaining.

£108 (020–7499 8211; www.swatch.com)

 

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£500 Autodromo Prototipo

Designed by a young New York product designer besotted with the golden era of motorsport, the Prototipo has a meca-quartz movement. That means it’s battery powered, but has a sweeping chronograph second hand like a mechanical.

£505, Autodromo at Page & Cooper (020–8387 4060; www.pageandcooper.com)

£1,000 Oris Divers Sixty-Five

A retro diver’s watch remade for a contemporary market still lusting after vintage styles and, as always with Oris, great value for a Swiss-made mechanical.

£1,150 (01784 730865; www.oris.ch)

                                          

                                           £5,000 Zenith Elite 6150

The Elite automatic is one of the great mechanical movements of the past 20 years. Zenith’s version has a 100-hour power reserve and sits in an ageless round steel case.

£5,600 (01204 424051; www.zenith-watches.com)

 

 

£7,500 IWC Portugieser Yacht Club Worldtimer

IWC’s signature family has a sportier sub-line called Yacht Club that includes this steel worldtimer, complete with 13 time zones and an hour hand that can be adjusted forwards or backwards in one-hour
jumps.

£7,500 (0845 337 1868; www.iwc.com)

                                          

                                           £15,000 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Extra-Thin

Argued by some to be the most iconic design of the 1970s, if not the past 40 years, the self-winding Royal Oak should be in any self-respecting watch aficionado’s collection.

From £16,600 (020–7659 7300; www.audemarspiguet.com)

£30,000 Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre Chronographe

Elegant and ingenious, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Duomètre Chronographe has two barrels or power sources—one to run timekeeping and the other the chronograph function.

£33,400 (020–3107 1833; www.jaeger-lecoultre.com)

Patek Philippe 5170G

Easily the most cultured chronograph in all Christendom is this whitegold-
cased beauty made by the world’s most collectable watch brand—
a calling card nonpareil. £53,320 (020–7493 8866; www.patek.com)

** Read more on Luxury Watches on our dedicated page