Ten Dollar Tuesday: Civo Military Watch

If you have legions and legions of troops, you don't want to spend too much on their watches, that's where this CIVO Military Watch would come in handy. It seems to be continually marked at 50% off for a price under $10. It delivers on the typical military field watch style.

CIVO Military Watch

The CIVO Military watch is a quartz watch with a 39mm diameter case that is 11mm thick.  It sports a 20mm wide strap that is 240mm long. The manufacturer claims 30-meter water resistance. It's a nice looking field watch for about $10. If you'd like to check it out, use my Amazon affiliate link to see the Civo Military watch here.

Ten Dollar Tuesday: Casotime Tactical Military Watch for Men

If you've got $10 and an appetite for a military-style watch, your money can go far! The Casotime Tactical Military Watch is currently discounted by 60% on Amazon to come in at an amazingly low price that's well below $10. The watch offers 30-meter water resistance, a 40mm diameter dial, and a battery good for 1+ years.

Casotime Tactical Military Watch for Men (Amazon Photo)

The strap is of a generous size and the watch looks like a competitor to entry-level Timex Expedition watches. But, there may be drawbacks with a watch this cheap. For example, the 1-year battery life and "fire-and-forget" operation makes me wonder if it is hard to change a battery. You can check this low-priced Casotime watch out here via my affiliate link.

Wristwatch Review: SKMEI Military-style Watch

I recently ordered a new Ola Oficina  SKMEI Men's Analog Luminous Hands Day and Date Black Watch With Black Leather Strap (SK9113A) from Amazon.  Just two days after I placed my order, this box arrived on my doorstep.  If you are accustomed to a 3 week wait for an inexpensive watch to arrive from China, the quick turnaround time was a pleasant surprise.

Unboxing the Ola Oficina SKMEI Men's Military-style Watch

Unboxing the SKMEI Military-Style Watch

I had a small unboxing ceremony.  To find a smaller cardboard watch box and a bit of plastic bubble cushioning material inside.  There was plenty of room in the Amazon box for the watch to slide around.  But, there really wasn't anything to damage the watch which was snug in a cute little cardboard box.  For less than $10, I didn't expect to find a fancy watch tin.  But, I thought Ola Oficina did a good job in creating very polished and presentable cardboard packing.

SKMEI Watch Design

While this watch has a very utilitarian name, I prefer to think of it as a SKMEI Military-style watch.  The timepiece is basically inspired by a classic military camp-watch inspired design.  It has a compass-like dial with minutes marked in 5-minute intervals and inner rings with 12 and 24-hour time markings.  The watch has a fairly readable panoramic date window at the 3-o'clock position.

SKMEI Watch Dimensions

This SKMEI watch has a 43 mm diameter case, a 13 mm thick case, and a 22 mm wide genuine leather strap.  While the watch seems perfectly dimensions, the watch strap is just a little short for my approximately 8-inch circumference wrist.  It barely fit with the buckle grabbing the very last hole on the strap.

Surprisingly, the SKMEI watch strap and watch seem close to the size of one of my favorite Nautica  watch and strap combinations.  However, the leather strap of the SKEI just doesn't stretch as much as the slightly longer plastic or resin strap of the Nautica.

SKMEI Watch Construction

To reach a less than $10, Ola Oficina had to make some hard decisions about materials and construction.  However, this watch offers an alloy case, a plastic bezel, and an acrylic crystal. The manufacturer even claims that the watch is water resistant to 50 meters.  Like many low cost watches, there is minimal lume on the watch hands, but none on other markings.  The SR626SW battery is a commonly available watch battery that should pose no challenge to change.  The leather strap is genuine and thick.  Some Amazon reviewers thought it was stiff, but I found it short, but easy enough to work with and soft.  I found that the acrylic crystal had a slight tendency to pick up fingerprint smudges that were easily wiped off with a shirt tail.

Overall, I'm pleased by my purchase.  For $10 or less, I had very low expectations.  However, I found this watch to be similar to the commodity quartz watches that you'll find in many department stores.  In my opinion, it is a little bit nicer than the no-name watches that you'll see at Walmart or Target.  If you are looking for cheap bang around watch, you might give SKMEI a try, they have a ton of different models available from a variety of Amazon sellers.

Watch SIghting: Bass Pro Shops Quartz Watches

This weekend my travels brought me to the Bass Pro Shops store located in Duluth, Georgia.  While I was shopping for other things, my journey through the store did take me past a display of inexpensive Bass Pro Shop-branded watches.

Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World Store - photo by Michael Barera [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

I had to stop and take a few spy photos so that you can see some of the inexpensive watch options available there.  The display square in the store shows five watches that can be found for $19.99 each at Bass Pro Shops.  Unfortunately, only a couple of these watch styles were available when I visited the Duluth, Georgia location.

The first style that caught my eye was the this militaristic camouflage dial watch with tachymeter.

The next watch to catch my eye was this silver-dial quart watch.  It gets middle of the road reviews on the Bass Pro Shop website.  The negative reviews point to the quartz watch simply running out of the juice.

The third watch is a simple watch with a diver-style bezel.  It's a basic watch with a nice solid look and a metal band.  Again a fairly good value for $20.

If you are shopping for someone who is into BassPro shops and the outdoors, a watch like this is not a bad deal.

Great Watch Deals: ZuluTimeZone Insignum

My friends over at ZuluTimeZone are still blowing out there remaining inventory of Insignum watches at bargain clearance prices!  You can get a $250 Insignum watch for less than $75 + shipping.  All of the watches feature contemporary German design and quality control. 

Insignum is a fledgling brand from Germany.  They combine German engineering and Asian manufacturing to bring an affordable high quality watch to your wrist.  However, as I understand it, the brand seems to have withdrawn from the American market to focus on Europe.  That means you get a European designed watch that NO ONE in your office will be wearing.

The Insignum Forum Black 3 Eye Sports Chronograph shown below looks great.  But, the ZTZ clearance sale is a no returns, all sales final, while supplies last kind of deal.  If you want a great deal, you need to jump on it.

Insignum Forum Sports Chronograph

If you peruse the rest of the ZTZ website, you'll notice a couple of great buys.

First they have a pre-sale going for Android Parma 200 Automatic Dive watches.  These are limited edition watches that can be ordered with a free kit.  The Android Parma 200 offers 200-meter water resistance and a traditional dive watch look with a bit of Android flare that looks really good.

Second, you might notice another interesting brand at affordable prices: Techne. They've got some really sharp looking aviation inspired watches like the Techne Merlin at prices that compete with the department store watches that everyone wears.

[Update 2025: ZuluTimeZone.com was a cool watch retailer. However, they are no longer in business.]