Watches are a fetish of mine…)
Don’t forget an analog watch will also serve as a crude compass. In the northern hemisphere, point the hour hand at the sun, and the 12 o’clock marker will point pretty much due south. A watch could also be handy when hiding (in your spider hole..?), so you can “know” it’s been 30 minutes since the last patrol went by, and not just guess at it.
Luminox’s are great watches; waterproof from anywhere from 100-200 meters, depending on model, and probably as tough as a G-shock. Don’t know if Luminox makes any ‘gadget’ watches with alarms, etc. Mine’s just an analog 200 meter with the date window. One thing that Luminox does absolutely better than any other brand is the night illumination. They use tritium inserts, rather than luminescent paint, so they’re as bright and consistent as a night-sight on a gun. Any other ‘glowing’ analog watch gradually dims thru the night; a Luminox doesn’t. I was told by a jewelry store manager that tritium watches aren’t allowed into the states due to some govt regulation, but Luminox has some kind of special dispensation due to being a government supplier. Don’t know if it’s true or not; just what I’ve been told.
I have an old G-shock, but I just don’t like digital watches, and I just about hate black plastic or rubber watches. It’s tough as a tank, but it’s a vanity thing with me, I guess. If I were living in the woods, it would definitely be a very good choice. I’ve seen the new solar/atomic G-shocks in the stores, but haven’t looked at them close. They seem like a heck of a good idea. Toughness, accuracy, and low (zero?) maintenance all in one.
Those last two (higher accuracy and lower maintenance) are hard to combine in a watch; one usually comes at the expense of the other. Reduced “maintenance” (battery dependency, etc) can be had with a wind-up or self-winding watch, but those are the least accurate kind. Even an “officially-certified” stamp on a Rolex, Omega, higher-end TAG, etc, is just a certification by the Swiss govt that the mechanism’s accurate to within 2 ½ minutes a month. “OK” accuracy, but that slippage compounds over time. I have a relatively expensive TAG that’s automatic, but I rarely wear it anymore except for dress occasions. It gains right at 2 minutes a month, and I just don’t like being “off” by that much; I want my watch to tell me what time it is, not “about” what time it is.
A quartz analog watch is much more accurate than a wind-up or automatic, and a quartz digital watch is even more accurate still, but you’re faced with the battery (maintenance) issue.
The Seiko “Kinetic” was the first I found that that solved the problem in an analog watch, and now with the solar analog watches being more common (and solar digital being even more common) there are a lot more options. FWIW, the Kinetic doesn’t have a battery per se, the movement actually charges a capacitor rather than a battery. For a long-term shtf thing, this could be even better, as batteries eventually wear out and won’t charge. A capacitor will last decades.
Citizen also makes solar watches, but I don’t know if they have any digital or not. The “ECO” series, iirc.
My usual watch is an Omega Seamaster Professional. Waterproof to 1,000 feet, better illumination (larger dots) than any watch I have except for the Luminox, and (weird to say), but “comfortable”. My only concession to function rather than “niceness” on it was that I bought the quartz one, rather than the self-winding one, as it’s substantially more accurate; but that does raise the maintenance level, needing a new battery every few years. So I don’t get the nifty “sweep” look with the second hand that my TAG (or a Rolex) has, but it’s accurate to within 4 seconds a month, rather than 150 seconds a month. Two & a half minutes “wrong” may not sound like much, but when comparing that 150 seconds to the 4 or 5 seconds of a quartz analog watch or the 1-2 seconds of a quartz digital, the difference it substantial to say the least. And the 2 ½ minutes a month is for very high-end mechanical watches, most mechanical watches are substantially more sloppy than that; more like 4-5 minutes (300 seconds) a month.
To recommend based on objectivity rather than preference, the “best” choices would probably be the G-shock digital or a Luminox analog. Still have the battery limitations to consider with the Luminox; so the solar version of the G-shock may be just about “perfect” from a purely functional point of view, but I still hate digital watches.
For choosing a watch for just objective functionality, ask yourself what you’d want on your wrist if you were shipping out to Iraq or Afghanistan tomorrow. The answer to that should lend some insight to what’s important in a watch to you. I’d be wearing the Luminox, and have the G-shock packed away as a spare. (If you wear a Luminox into a combat zone, I’d consider a watchband that covers the face for night-time use. They really are that bright at night.)
