Anyone searching the web for the best cheap watches for men will quickly come to realize that the word “cheap” is extremely relative when it comes to timepieces. Given that the watch world contains everything from $16 Casios to Pateks and Richard Milles worth millions, one man’s beater watch can easily be another’s prized grail. The good news? There are excellent options at every price point, and plenty of watches in the sub-$250 realm that anyone can wear with pride, from sleek dress watches to rough-and-ready digitals.
While you’ll find a few mechanical options here (the old school variety that run on springs and gears) most entry-level watches will be battery-powered “quartz” models, and that’s not a bad thing. Not only are quartz watches more durable than their mechanical brethren, they’re also far more accurate. Ultimately, however, the most important thing that makes one watch better than another is how much you love it. And, aside from their affordability, there’s a lot to love about the 28 hand-picked tickers below.
5 Sub-$250 Watches Worthy of Your Wrist
Shop By Style: Dress Watches | Field Watches | Dive Watches | Digital Watches | Chronograph Watches | Retro Watches
The Best Cheap Dress Watches
A great dress watch is like a great pair of dress shoes: classic, versatile, and built to last. As such, the best dress watches tend to be more understated than their sportier counterparts, with monochrome dials, sober black or brown leather straps, and slim cases (all the better to slip under the cuff of your crispest white button-down.) Save the rotating bezels, chronograph dials, and bright colors for your off-duty timepieces; these stately tickers are all business.
The Best Cheap Field Watches
Like bomber jackets, cargo pants, and chukka boots, field watches made their way into the canon of modern wardrobe staples by way of the military industrial complex. Created for infantry in the Second World War, the first modern field watches were designed to be simple, reliable, and legible, with large, high-contrast white numerals, black dials, and sturdy fabric or leather straps. Fortunately, the things that made these timepieces indispensable on the battlefield makes them just as useful in peacetime, and the perfect way to add a hint of vintage military style to your off-duty wardrobe.
The Best Cheap Dive Watches
Unless you spend your vacations communing with whale sharks in Baja or spearfishing off the Florida Keys, you probably won’t do much (or any) diving in your dive watch. This is totally fine. Classic analog diver’s watches aren’t really used for diving anymore, but they have easily adapted to their landlocked second-act as business-casual accessories, a.k.a. “desk divers.” Whether or not you actually plan on taking your watch in the ocean, look for a diver’s watch with at least 100m of water resistance (200m is even better), along with other signature features like a screw-down crown and a rotating bezel.
The Best Cheap Digital Watches
When digital watches first appeared in the early 1970s, they were hailed as nothing less than the accessories of the future. Fifty-some years later people remain more enamored of old-school analog tickers than ever, but there’s still plenty of room for a digital piece in any well-rounded watch collection. While today’s top-shelf digital timepieces come in a huge range of styles and functions—including ones with Bluetooth connectivity, atomic timekeeping, and altitude sensors—the most stylish examples tend to be the ones with fewer bells and whistles and looks that recall their golden era in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
The Best Cheap Chronograph Watches
If you got into watches any time after 2017, you’re probably familiar with the story—nay, the legend—of Paul Newman’s “Paul Newman” Rolex Daytona. Fortunately for anyone who doesn’t have $18 million to spend on a timepiece, there are a ton of other great chronographs out there for less (and in the case of the selects below, a lot less). A chronograph is defined as any timepiece with a built-in stopwatch function, a distinction that makes any of these options as useful for timing a poached egg as clocking laps at Sebring.
The Best Cheap Retro Watches
Watches aren’t immune from the ever-changing whims of fashion, but they come close. That’s why a lot of the most iconic watches in the world haven’t changed a whole lot (on the outside, anyway) for the last 50 years or more. If you’re a fan of the vintage look (which includes WWII-era field watches, 1960s dress tickers, 1970s glam digital pieces, and many other classic genres) you don’t have to troll eBay to find a hidden gem. Instead, save yourself the trouble and pick up something that combines the style of yesteryear with 21st century reliability. Be sure to look for ones treated with water-resistant or water-repellent coatings to ensure the maximum value—and snag an all-around technical jacket while you’re at it.
