Let it be clear that not all of us are lucky enough to spend a
fortune on watches which are essentially seen as a time keeping machine in India. Two-Three
decades before even having a watch was a big deal. There was a monopoly of HMT
in the Indian Market. If one has to buy a watch at a reasonable price it has to
be a HMT.If you were HMT averse you have to go for imported items. I remember
my father having Enicar(Swiss watch).Ricoh was there but not sure of its
roots.Situation started changing with the entry of Titan in the Indian Watch Industry.
Soon it was all Titan, Sonata, etc with no trace of HMT except in rural India.
Watches or Timepieces as I like to call them are broadly
divided into three categories:-
1) Hand winding Mechanical Watches: - They
are the oldest watches made by mankind with little changes over centuries. The
movements of hands are powered by the Mechanical energy poured in by winding
the key of the watch. They are loved by watch purists and ecologists because of
the human craft ship and non polluting batteries respectively. Their accuracy
is nothing to gaga about because they are fairly inaccurate. But still they are
live examples of evolution of human skills. They requires maintenance and
servicing as mechanical movements are involved resulting in wear and tear over
a period of time
2) Automatic Mechanical Watches: - They
are a close cousin to hand winding mechanical watches. The difference lies in
the fact that they get the mechanical energy from the wrist movements while the
watch is worn. So little need to manually wind them if one uses the watch
regularly. In case of irregular usage pattern one can always resort to manual
winding.
3) Quartz Watches: - They are the most
common watches used today. Based on a quartz crystal which oscillates 32000
times to calculate 1second; these watches are fairly accurate. But needs
battery.
Another categorization can be in terms of analog and digital
which again can be of three broad categories i.e.
1) Analog Watches: - They are the general
type of watches with traditional hour, minute and second hands. More hands can
be there as of in chronographs.
2) Digital Watches: - They are the watches
having electronic display of time on the LCD.
3) Analog-Digital Watches: - They are the
mix of analog and digital watches. They have the traditional hands as well as
the electronic display of time.
There are still sub categorizations like chronographs,
retrogrades, alarm chronographs, perpetual calendars etc which are more or less
the variants.
That said as a prologue to the actual review that is of
buying a mid range watch in India
as now.What is Mid-Range? That is purely a subjective question as it differs
from person to person depending on his pocket size. But say for most people
this mid range is anything up to Rs 5000.Mind you this is purely my
approximation which may or may not be true. But I go further keeping this in
mind.
Firstly you have to decide which category you want to buy.
For most of us it is fairly simple i.e. quartz watches. No maintenance, low
cost and trendy designs available. Almost all of the companies have a
considerable range and designs for quartz watches. Companies that have a good
range in quartz watches in the mid price ranges in India are:-** 1) Titan (Trendy designs) 2) Citizen (Classy formal watches) 3) Casio (Cool Analog-digital mix watches) 4) Maxima (Maximum at cheap price) 5)Timex(Timepieces with Considerable range) 6) Swatch(Sumptuous Chronographs)
7) Esprit & Nautica **are also there but they hardly comes in sub 5000 range. And there are many other options too that I can’t remind as
of now.
If you are an eccentric and want to go for something
different mechanical watches are for you. Unfortunately Mid range has only one
option for you in Indian scenario i.e. HMT. HMT has quite a range of mechanical
and mechanical automatic watches.
So make your decision and happy buying to you.