The best watches under £100 (UK, 2026)
Five watches under £100 I would genuinely buy, each right for a different person. Take the one-minute quiz to find yours.
Casio F-91W: the £15 digital icon
Unchanged since 1989: time, date, alarm and stopwatch, and collectors with watches worth thousands still own one.
Timex Expedition Scout: the classic field watch
A clean dial, simple indices and a fabric strap, with roots in the watches soldiers wore in the field.
Casio Duro MDV-106: the £55 dive-style watch
A rotating bezel with real resistance, 200m water resistance and a screw-down crown, for less than a nice dinner.
Vostok Komandirskie: the Russian hand-wound mechanical
Made by a factory that supplied the Soviet Ministry of Defence. You wind it every morning and hear it tick.
Sea-Gull 819.12.6075: an automatic under £100
From the company that made China’s first wristwatch: a self-winding movement you can watch through the caseback.
What is the best watch under £100?
It depends on the job you need it to do. Each of these five wins for a different kind of person, and the cheapest one isn’t the worst. The quiz above matches you to yours in about a minute.
Quartz or mechanical: which is better under £100?
Neither is better, they’re just different. Quartz runs on a battery: accurate, always ready, nothing to wind. Mechanical runs on a spring: hand-wound means you wind it each day, automatic winds itself as you wear it. Both drift a few seconds a day, but you get a movement you can feel and hear.
Can you get an automatic watch for under £100?
Yes. The Sea-Gull 819.12.6075 has an automatic movement made by Sea-Gull itself, and it’s usually around £80 to £90 from specialist sellers.
What size watch suits my wrist?
Lug-to-lug length matters more than the diameter: if the lugs overhang the edges of your wrist, it’s too big. These five range from compact to 44mm, and the quiz takes your wrist size into account.