I am a firm believer that any watch can be great no matter the price tag. This week, we are taking a look at a time teller that is firmly in the realm of “frugal fun” – the Timex Waterbury x Hodinkee Limited Edition. With an MSRP of only $275, does this budget friendly collaboration do the job or is it a case of the bends? Get my personal take on this sharp looking multi-category watch below.
About
Trendy or not, watch enthusiasts tend to lump watches into neat categories or phenotypes. Dive watches, pilot watches, tool watches, you get the point – we have our complete, albeit wildly imprecise, Dewey Decimal System for cataloging time keepers. I love me some watches from every known corner of the horological universe, but sometimes you get an oddball here or there that doesn’t quite fit into any single niche. It resents and rejects attempts to file in nicely, straddling multiple watch genres while laughing at the purists and the pedants.
Last year in November, Hodinkee released what I think is one such watch via their then-latest collaboration with everyone’s other favorite brand ending in “ex,” Timex. The result was a handsome looking mechanical limited edition launched as part of Timex’s Waterbury collection, whose naming convention hearkens back to a time when Timex was known as the Connecticut-based Waterbury Clock Company. The latter went belly up in 1944, but was eventually revived into the budget-friendly behemoth you know and love today.
This limited edition is… well, wait a second. What exactly are we looking at? For starters, it has an elapsed timing bezel and 100 meters of water resistance. Sound like a dive watch? Not quite – an ISO rating requires 200 meters of water resistance and a screwdown crown. You could call it a skin diver, but its thickness at 13mm is greater than vintage styling would deign to inspire. To me, this is primarily a field watch, the official catch all for officially ambiguous tool watches. It has a few dive-worthy characteristics, but these have been fondued in alongside characteristics from other watch types. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. Most watches nowadays borrow at least a little from one adjacent medium or another.
Kudos to Hodinkee – inconclusive classification aside, this is a very handsome watch. The biggest draw for a lot of buyers is going to be the highly legible Explorer-style 3-6-9 dial. The dial surface’s texture reminds me of the stippling on a pistol grip, albeit on a much smaller scale. The cream-colored Timex logo and hour marker indices, as well as the stealth Hodinkee logo right above “Waterbury,” are all printed which befits this watch’s budget friendliness. However, the height of the printing combined with the dial’s stippled texture gives this watch face a ton of visual depth. That bright red seconds hand is no optical slouch, either.
The eyeball for the Timex x Hodinkee limited edition is made of mineral glass. On a scale of underwhelmed to overwhelmed with this material choice, consider me thoroughly whelmed. Mineral is the middle ground crystal choice between acrylic (Hesalite, Plexiglass, etc.) and sapphire, sharing none of the advantages from either alternative. Acrylic scratches and buffs out easily, while sapphire may not buff out but provides maximum scratch resistance. Mineral is somewhat resistant, but if you do scratch it, you are probably SOL. I would have liked to have seen this watch with an acrylic crystal, all things considered.
I will state plainly that I dig the 40mm case, which straddles the line well between approachable sizing and modern marketability. While not drilled, the lugs are nice and stubby so there isn’t much metal to cause overhanging. Case finishing is rugged and fitting – horizontal brushed finishing on the slab sides, beveled edges that are polished, and a signed crown with the Waterbury logo. While the beveled edges are not exactly art, I appreciate Hodinkee and Timex electing to pay attention to the case instead of treating it as an afterthought.
One thing I am not digging is the bezel. $275 will unsurprisingly net you $275 worth of quality control, and when I cracked open the box, the first thing I noticed was that my aluminum bezel insert is misaligned and sits ever so slightly to the right of 12 o’clock. Cheaper watches tend to have these inserts glued in; while you can attempt to loosen them temporarily with a heat gun or rubbing alcohol / acetone, my experience is these tactics can be hit or miss. Misalignment aside, the bezel is okay to grip. Chalk it up as functional and move on, I suppose.
Movement-wise, the Timex x Hodinkee limited edition is powered by a Miyota 8215 Automatic. These economical 8-series movements are the equivalent of a tractor or a Yamaha TW200 – agricultural and noisy while at work. While decently reliable, the 8215 lacks the hacking and bidirectional winding capabilities that might appear on similarly priced Seiko movements such as the NH35A (which would have been my pick for the engine). The crown has a ghost position for the date function in the movement, and the -20 / +40 accuracy range may be a bit antiquated, but the 8215 ticks and tocks just fine. When you aren’t dropping premium dollars, movement tightness should be gently forgiven.
All in all, we have a mixed bag of both good and undesirable elements. Normally, such a Jekyll and Hyde-style mixture would be unpalatable. Don’t forget the context here, though: the MSRP is $275, not $2,750. For that price, this watch doesn’t get strapped on as part of the power suit ensemble. It does, however, get signed up for laundry and dish duty. You will probably have it on your wrist when you are trying to untangle the jigsaw puzzle of parts that will eventually form an Ikea couch. It might even grace you with its presence on a bicycle ride. And when today is finally done and you casually drop it back onto the desk it started the day on (albeit with more scratches), it will still be the most handsome sub-$300 beater anyone could buy.
The Specs:
- Case Material: Stainless Steel
- Crystal: Mineral
- Features: 120-Click Elapsed Timing Bezel (Aluminum)
- Movement: Miyota 8215 (Automatic)
- Power Reserve: 42 Hours
- Screwdown Crown: No
- Bezel Movement: Unidirectional
- Caseback: Sealed Caseback
- Water Resistance: 100 Meters
- Case Diameter: 40mm
- Lug-to-Lug: 47.5mm
- Lug Width: 20mm
- Thickness: 13mm
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