Best Watches Under $50

A full-size analog dive-style watch with 200 meters of water resistance, a rotating bezel and a screw-down crown.

This is the pick if you only read one. The MDV-106 Duro is a 200 meter dive watch with a screw-down crown and a unidirectional bezel — the same functional recipe as watches costing twenty times more — at a price where nobody would mind if it got scratched. The practical consequence of 200 meters is that water stops being a thought: showers, dishes, pools, the sea. The reason it keeps getting recommended, though, is social rather than technical. It reads as a proper watch on the wrist, and the single most common thing owners report is somebody assuming it cost far more. Two honest caveats: the stock rubber strap is the weakest part of the watch and many owners swap it within a year, and at 42mm the case is simply too large for a genuinely small wrist.

A simple field-style watch on a slip-through fabric strap, with Timex's Indiglo backlight that lights the whole dial.

The safest guess on this page, and the one to buy when you have never measured the recipient's wrist and cannot ask. A 38mm case is the size that offends nobody — small enough that it does not look borrowed on a narrow wrist, large enough that it does not look like a dress watch on a big one. The slip-through fabric strap is the second reason it is safe: it comes off in seconds with no tools, so one watch becomes several looks for the price of a coffee, and if the strap color is wrong it is a two-dollar problem rather than a returned gift. Indiglo lights the entire dial rather than glowing weakly from the side, which sounds like a footnote until somebody uses it in a cinema. It ticks audibly in a quiet room, and a fabric strap will never be formal.

The full-metal version of Casio's classic rectangular digital watch, with an illuminated display and a folding steel bracelet.

The full-metal version of Casio's rectangular digital, and the one to buy for somebody whose taste runs to design rather than sport. The steel case and folding bracelet are what change the character: the same silhouette in resin reads as a gadget, and in steel it reads as jewelry, which is why this is the Casio that turns up on people who do not otherwise wear watches. It also fits a wide range of wrists, because a bracelet sizes by removing links rather than by punching a strap. Two things to know before you wrap it: the bracelet almost always needs links taken out to fit, which is a five-minute job at any jeweler and should be done before gifting, and the display is small if the wearer needs to read the time without glasses.

The thin resin digital watch Casio has sold, essentially unchanged, since 1989. Time, date, alarm, stopwatch, backlight.

The pick for the person who has told you they do not wear watches, because the usual reason for that is weight and this one weighs essentially nothing. Unchanged since 1989: time, date, alarm, stopwatch, backlight, and a battery life measured in years rather than months, so there is no maintenance conversation attached to the gift. It is also genuinely hard to damage, which makes it the right answer for anyone rough on their things — tradespeople, teenagers, cyclists, anyone who would otherwise take a watch off before doing anything. The resin strap looks exactly as cheap as it is, and it is splash-resistant rather than swim-rated, so treat it as a tool rather than a present with ceremony attached.

A deliberately plain watch with oversized numbers on a white dial and a leather strap, with Indiglo backlight.

Buy this when legibility is the actual requirement and everything else is decoration. Oversized black numbers on a white dial, nothing else on it, and Indiglo for the dark. It is the obvious answer for a grandparent, for anyone recovering from eye surgery, and for the much larger group of people who have quietly stopped being able to read a cluttered dial and have not mentioned it. The honest trade is that a dial designed purely to be read is not a dial designed to be admired: this is a practical watch, not a stylish one. The leather strap will need replacing in a few years, which is a cheap fix and not a reason to skip it.

Casio's combination watch: analog hands over a small digital window, in a compact steel case on a folding bracelet.

The pick for a slim wrist, which is where most watches under $50 fall apart — the budget end of the market is dominated by large sports cases, and a 42mm watch on a six-inch wrist looks like it belongs to somebody else. The AQ-230 is small, steel, and carries analog hands over a little digital window, which is a distinctive enough combination that it reads as a chosen object rather than a default. It suits men and women equally, which is rare and useful when you are buying for somebody whose taste you know better than their measurements. The digital window is small, and it is splash-resistant only, so it is not the watch for a swimmer.

A digital Casio with a world-time display, multiple alarms and a ten-year battery, in a chunky resin case.

The pick when the recipient has people in other time zones. World time on a watch sounds like a gimmick until you give one to somebody whose parents are eight hours away and who currently does the arithmetic in their head every evening. The ten-year battery is the quieter feature and arguably the better one: it means you are not giving somebody a future errand. The busy dial has a genuine following of its own, so it does not read as generic, but it is larger and more obviously plastic than the metal Casios above, and the button layout takes a few minutes to learn — worth setting the time yourself before you hand it over.

The long-running Ironman sports watch: 30-lap memory, stopwatch, alarms and 100 meters of water resistance.

The pick for a runner, swimmer or anyone doing intervals, and the only pick on this page bought for what it records rather than what it looks like. Thirty laps of memory, a stopwatch, alarms and 100 meters of water resistance, in a case light enough to forget mid-exercise. For a gift it has one specific advantage over a GPS watch: there is nothing to charge, nothing to pair and no app to set up, so it works the moment it comes out of the box. The styling is pure sports and will never go with a jacket, and the resin strap stiffens over several years of sweat — both fair, neither a reason to look elsewhere at this budget.