BARGAIN Alternatives to EXPENSIVE Luxury Watches | Watchfinder & Co.

well hello everyone and you join us here today to have a look back at some of our favorites from watches and wonders and to do something a little different we're going to find a bunch of cheaper versions of those watches so you don't have to spend all your money tom i know you're a big fan of not spending all your money so how did you find it looking for some cheaper versions to these watches yeah okay um there are some easier than others um obviously you know yeah you know sometimes you just have to cut your losses don't you and just say that is never gonna be mine yeah i mean ultimately these watches cost more for a reason uh hopefully we've found some good alternatives that people will actually enjoy um so tom and i are going to go head to head with this we're going to pose different watches and what we'd like you to do dear viewer and listener is to tell us who you think got the best choices whose roundup was better let us know in the comments below um alternatively tom and i can fight it to the death in the work car park let's jump straight into it because we've got a few we've got five different watches that we have picked out the first one of course is the green rolex gmt master ii uh what was your pick for that so i um completely ignored the left-handed nature of that because who cares you know and i'm allowed to say that because i'm left-handed as well so uh i won't be offending any southpaws um so i just went for a green gmt yeah yeah i went for the um the uh the baltic aqua scaff gmt in green um the minty fresh edition yeah yeah the two-tone you've got uh the minty green for fresh breath and then you've got the cool blue which fights plaque i believe and yeah but i really love these baltics i think they've got a really nice subtle vintage styling i really love the dome crystal it looks really nice and tactile and smooth and it's got a green gmt hand and that's what that's what everyone was so excited about so um we've got you covered there and it's only about 800 900 as well so um yeah massive savings uh and if you really do want it to be a left-handed watch you can quite simply flip the bezel around and set the hands at what would now be your new ten to two and just pretend like the word baltic isn't upside down it will still technically work yeah you'll get used to it it's like when uh when you when you ride a bicycle with the controls that go the other way you get used to it when you go back again it will be tricky but yeah so that's some sort of hazing ritual you're subjected to i don't know i think i think i saw it in a youtube video but i'm not sure if i dreamt it at this point right so a similar sort of vibe to you really i threw the left-handed bit out to the window pretty soon after i couldn't find any left-handed gmt watches and went went solidly for the green i think green is the big feature of watches and wonders this year as opposed to the left-handed so i think it's fine to go that route sure i've spent a little bit more than you have which is seven eight thousand pounds somewhere around there i went for the strangely named seiko pressarge sharp edged spb219j1 this is very very clearly seiko but it's got that new uh sharp edged vibe which we we spoke about before didn't we i think yeah they're cool i really like them they are sharp they are you get that very very grand esque textured special dial a really nice sunburst green going on that has a huge amount of depth and color variation no green gmt hand i'm afraid it is yellow here but i think a green gmt hand would pretty would pretty much disappear against the dial but uh yeah the infamous power reserve on the dial some lovely white grand seiko s cans it may be a thousand pounds but i think actually you get a lot more grand seiko-ishness than psycho-ishness for your money yeah definitely definitely creeping into grand seiko territory there so yeah cool yeah i'd pitch it as a value proposition to be closer in terms of quality to the gmt master from rolex but for money that's a lot further down towards the affordable end yeah yeah great so next watch tom the venerable vacheron 222 the talk of the town the little gold watch that could what are you spending your money on that saves from the 50 000 pound retail price off the 222 right well why have silk when you can have cotton and why have 24 garrett gold when you can have stainless steel gold's pvd why indeed more importantly why pay 50 000 pounds when you can pay 400 yeah yeah i'm going for the uh the tiso prx uh in gold and specifically the 35 millimeter version which um is the the new addition to the prx lineup um now you may say it was because of public outcry people were saying these watches are a little bit too long um they're a bit too big for the smaller wrist and tiso overdressed that and said oh okay here's some 35 millimeter but they're actually saying that wasn't the case and they're saying this is closer to the original this is actually one to one um replica of the the original t so uh uh i think it was a c star um back from 79. um yeah but you know it's got it it tells a lot of the same story that the vacheron 222 is saying you know you've got that that gold integrated 70'sness and i think it looks really cool uh i i think the chasm in in prices is massive but actually from a distance you probably get away with it it's less than a percent of the price [Laughter] i i don't know i feel like i've done that wrong that doesn't seem right uh 400 pounds goes to 4 000 pounds goes to 40 000 pounds yeah that's less than a percent of the price of the 2 2 2 which is wishes bananas but you're right this really captures a lot of what the 222 is about keeping those old sizes all in gold very very traditional they've not over furnished it with finishing and fanciness it's very very simple and that's that's what really appealed to me about the 222 was actually kind of how bare bones it was um you've done a good job there tom and now i'm kind of embarrassed to say my one but i will anyway for the for the for the sake of this video i went with the far more expensive i think this is going to be a theme tudor royal in steel and gold right so we don't quite get the full gold look but we do have that gold dial gold bezel gold um center links if you like yeah i feel like i've let you down on this one the prx is is much better than this the tube is good but the prx definitely is closer to the ethos of the 222. well i don't know better brand recognition and it's still got that sporty elegance thing going on hasn't it um i think you would still look good um you know in this the the the tiso and and the vacheron 222 in a white suit on the beach um panama hat yeah with a big bright blue cocktail um you know it's going to tick those boxes as well isn't it the one thing for me is i'm not sure about the bezel that kind of it does look like it wants to be turned but i presume you just unscrew it oh yeah i would definitely try to turn that every time did you ever do that um at school you just sort of take your pen apart and put it back together yeah of course yeah um but tudor you know you have great quality uh brand recognition that's real gold you're seeing here that's not gold colored steel points for that points for that definitely if you do want to oh no i said the wrong price it is 2 630 pounds if you want to save a little bit of money you can get it all in grey and just pretend it's white gold i guess for 1780 yeah or when the when the vacheron 222 in steel comes out you'll be closer to that yeah exactly there you go so i'm one step ahead of the game also another one sorry i'm just saying awesome another watch that really caught our eye at watches and wonders was the grand seiko koda very inspiring for its ingenuity for its finishing for its just general japanese goodness so tom i think this is going to be a hard one to really do any service to for cheap yeah what have you got well i sort of pitched the idea of finding a bargain version of this as a joke but you went with it anyway um so i've not i don't do jokes i've not in any way tried to um match spec or any kind of complication or anything like that or even skeletonization i've just gone i've gone down more the um the traditional japanese route which was abundant in that watch you know you had that samurai styles strap and and and that colder heartbeat you know the japanese drum sort of vibe so i've just tried to kind of go with that and actually what i've just sort of taken this as an opportunity to remind people about the citizen which is citizens um high-end lineup and they've got a couple of new releases um coming out in the autumn of this year the capturally named eco drive with annual accuracy of plus minus one second and the eco drive with annual accuracy of plus minus five second per year i'd like to add yeah i mean great accuracy but um not not a catchy title for a lineup of watches but they um are exquisite and they feature a hand-dyed izumi washi paper dial um which is a traditional japanese paper used in their paper lanterns and screen doors and things like that and izumi means japan blue and um they're just amazing watches i'm assuming with the that beautiful paper texture dial that there will be some ignorant westerner come bursting through at any moment where do i get my noodles at um cut that but yeah i i love i love that's why i love the title the citizen um viewers may remember ferrari's ultimate ferrari which they called la ferrari this is very much in the same vein but with a more japanese twist this is the citizen with a kind of a faux englishman's bowler hat on sipping a glass of whiskey sure but it's great to see grand seiko getting some getting some whoop ass getting some competition going on yeah yeah they're scared um they are getting chased around the ring with a steel chair uh at this point um so it's got uh so one of these versions is limited and that has the um the caliber zero 100 s which is this eco drive and you can actually see it through the sapphire caseback and it looks amazing for a solar-powered quartz movement it looks great um yeah but yeah as i say these won't be available to the autumn and they are yet to be marked with a price so i don't know if these would be a bargain or not i think the current existing watches are available about four thousand five thousand pounds and they're not available in the uk or the us and most of europe um currently the this citizen boutiques are in hong kong taiwan and japan and there are some in france as well so maybe you could nip over to france and have a look but um i just wanted to uh to draw them to people's attention and maybe get a bit of buzz going maybe get them over here i'd love to see one yeah get that buzz going for all those people who can't actually buy one because they're not available in their country uh yeah but if we if we kick up enough of a fuss then maybe they'll be like oh people are interested in our product let's make it available to them i see what you're saying in the same way that when you complained about tiso they miraculously reproduced a smaller version of the prx not but a week later yeah i mean it doesn't always work um because some some watch companies don't understand like people want wanting their watches and making them available uh it's tricky i don't it's a tricky thing to overcome but yeah let's try yeah patek phillips mr stern still hasn't returned my phone call with all my good ideas what can you do while we're calling out citizen actually i'd also like to point out the caliber zero two zero zero which i really really like the look of uh great looking movement inside i wanna see more of that stuff yeah yeah yeah it looks awesome okay well for my for my alternative to the koda i've gone down a different route i've strayed away from the japanese and gone to swiss but i've taken the the approach of doing watchmaking in a very special and unique and technologically interesting way so the koda had the constant forced torbjorn that had the cage within a cage within a cage rumble in the jungle ticking jeweled uh constant force torbjorn right this is and i haven't really heard anyone talking about it maybe we'll go on to explore it in a little bit more detail in the future this is the frederick constant slimline monolithic um it is 4 000 pounds sure which is still magnitudes cheaper than the coda and you might be thinking why are you showing me a frederique constant don't they just make nice looking watches that are fairly straightforward yes they do but this one is anything but because what they've got and done here is they've taken 26 components of the escapement thrown them all in the bin and replaced them with just one so i don't know if you've heard of compliant mechanisms wait didn't you ask me this before when we were talking about patek yes yes so patek philippe has their advanced research department where they play with the material silicon to create compliant mechanisms to create very very interesting escapements you remember patek philippe's obsession with silicon right sure yeah the bendy movements that bend in and out of different shapes exactly yeah compliant in the sense that they can elastically move from one position to another not enough to break but enough to to move between different positions and um frederic constant has managed to create an escapement of one piece that is made entirely out of silicon fascinating wow club so very clever yeah those patek philippes cost i don't know hundreds of thousands half a million this is four thousand pounds for a similar thing and that's not all because this particular escapement doesn't just beat eight times per second like an ordinary one does it beats 80 times per second 10 times as much that's just a blur it will it literally is people will see the video it vibrates backwards and forwards like a crazy thing uh but it still manages to have an 80 hour power reserve nice 40 millimeter diameter usual sort of thickness it's really quite incredible and no one's really mentioned it and it's a fascinating watch yeah it's great it looks amazing and again it's that beautiful melding of very traditional looking watch and very complicated technology yeah it really is i i would very much like to see one in the flesh it's still up for a pre-order i believe there are only going to be 800 800 or so 810 pieces um and there is a big note on the product page that says this product is not available in germany [Laughter] sorry germany but well i have a theory if anyone is familiar with uh mercedes project one car with a very very bold project to put a formula one engine in a road car that has been in production hell for years in trying to make it work i would imagine that there are still some teething issues with this particular watch and that the rules in germany mean that those teething issues so far mean it can't be sold there that's my guess be very interested to know if anyone has any other understanding as to why interesting but this is so cutting edge yeah brilliant well then from an absolute masterpiece to a bargain in itself we saw and heard a lot of buzz around tudor's black bay pro which is a reimagining of rolex's own explorer 2 from the 70s really really nice looking watch the tudor great quality great innovation with those ceramic markers and stuff like that it's gonna be tricky to find a watch that serves a similar purpose for even cheaper what you got yeah this was the uh a hard one because it's it's already a barking um relatively speaking so yeah i struggled with this one uh my initial thought was so i i so i've gone to oris and that's what i've settled with and my initial thought was oh what about the pro pilot x which they also announced uh watches and wonders but that's around the same price but i'm still a cool watch yep um so i actually just landed on the um oris times servo valente oh the big the big crown pointer collection yeah yeah yeah that's right yeah um so it's a really cool looking watch and it's got some nice vintage vibes about it it's got a similar simple case 38 millimeters so quite small it's got a gmt hand but it's not really but it looks like one so that sort of ticks that box and um three nice style colors there's a nice sort of c blue there which is probably my preference or a nice sunbursty smoky grey or a green um and i think i think we um i think we should come back to oris um on a sort of broader topic because i think they're worth talking about um their watches are nicely positioned and priced and i like their message um so yeah i thought i'd just get one of those in there bring bring bring bring hello who who's that oh hi it's tom phoning it in that's a terrible choice it's a lovely watch that's a terrible choice i thought it was horus with my check [Laughter] um i'm not going to give you that one at all we'll see what our dear viewers and listeners think it's it's not a gmt it's not really an explorer's watch it's certainly nice it's certainly a vintage appeal lovely cathedral hands there and the um point to date which you're hoping you'll be able to fool people into thinking it's a gmt hand but you're right something that really impressed me with oris when we spoke to them at watches and wonders was their commitment to sustainability and i know some people would probably go oh that's just some sort of corporate tick box they have to do but whether or not it is if they're doing it that's all right by me sure so a half points uh i think i'm gonna blow your socks off with my choice uh however this is the smith's everest the prs25 this is a watch from a revived brand but this actually has a pedigree in being a watch one on everest looks like the explorer so that ticks the explorer box doesn't have the gmt hand because it's more like the explorer one than the explorer ii 36 millimeters so very lovely vintage vibes guilt dial nice explorer markers all of that loveliness and 325 pounds bargain um i will have to take some negative points because it is sold out but there will be more available soon oh cool also you have to take negative points because smith's i mean who i i was smith's is they make crisps and they're a toy shop and there's nothing about smith's that's luxury so how about that well well um i'll give you some stats then and i'll write them down on pieces of paper so you can eat them um the smith watch company was founded in 1851. oh heritage smith's also sponsored that expedition up of everest you know the one that rolex always bangs on about being worn by uh tenzing norgay the actual expedition was sponsored by smith so they kind of lost out there and the watch wasn't worn by sir edmund hillary but it was carried by him as part of a contractual obligation so so like i mean if you're talking for 300 quid that's quite a lot of heritage that they've they've earned that you're not spending very much money for and and do you like really the real cherry on the cake for smiths they also had a long established contract with british rail oh notorious for not being on time [Laughter] oh well we won't hold that against them um yeah it's a lovely watch and that's a great price um yeah i'm very interested in that good one that sounds oh it's 300 pounds is your limit isn't it that's all right i can stretch it starts with a three that's close enough 325 pounds yeah so i think i i don't think we need to ask people about that particular round i think i very much smashed you into oblivion with that one so let's see if you can reign it back in again for the last round which is patek philippe's unexpected calatrava 5226g which i'm not sure about but a lot of people have reacted to very fondly um very sporty got that textured dial got a bit of smokiness going on got some 1930s vibes gonna be a hard one to match yeah i mean i'm not i'm not bothered with any kind of world time of functionality i think that's gonna bump the price up and no one really needs that anyway it's rubbish keep it simple switzerland exactly yeah so i've just gone for a nice kind of warmth and travelly vibes and a nice textured dial and i've gone with a hamilton khaki aviation pilot pioneer and we've we've talked about the pilot pioneer series before um but i think it's worth bringing up again because they're just great watches a great price point um and i think i think what was really nice about that patek was that that crunchy dial texture and and this has got that and it's got that nice kind of warmth in the uh the new rules and markings as well and nice cathedral hands as well so um yeah really cool nice clean watch um yeah i like it twelve hundred pounds twelve hundred dollars there's certainly some nice there's certainly some nice pilots watch vibes going on there as well that real 1930s uh inspired warmth is definitely the right term for that yeah it has it that calatrava just has that something that something warm about it that feels nice and fuzzy and cozy and this this very much carries that too i'm disappointed to see that you found one with that texture because right the one i found doesn't have that texture at all what you got similar sort of place uh longines heritage classic tuxedo uh 1 680 pounds has that creaminess has that contrast has those sort of pointy hands and big numbers and stuff like that but instead of a smoky dial that fades from black to creamy in the middle mine just has a hard line no feathering and it doesn't have any no no no feathering feathering turned to zero and it doesn't have the texture either i was quite pleased with that but now i'm not so pleased uh still a nice watch though yeah it was i i thought the calatrava was evocative it felt a bit sort of english patient and kind of warm climates and travelly and um yeah and this is a bit more elegant than that but it's still i think it still ticks that box i will say that yours is 43 millimeters which is the size of a side serving plate mine mine is 38 which is more in keeping with the patek philippe's elegance and simplicity and uh understatedness so i think i gained some points back for that yeah that's more my style 43 is probably that's probably have to say i'd probably have to pass on that actually it'd be wearing you rather than you wearing it wouldn't it yeah exactly so there you have it five very very popular watches from watches and wonders and ten budget alternatives who do you think dear viewer and listener did these watches the best service with their cheap alternatives um i think tom you definitely got some and i and i definitely got others i think it's a close fight for sure closer than i expected i did think that my superior knowledge would wipe the floor with yours but you did a good job you should be you should be pleased with yourself thanks i tried you did um andy if you're a listener if you have any alternatives really obvious ones that we no doubtedly missed post those in the comments below as well if you'd like to see us go head to head again on some bargain alternatives let us know tell us what category we should think of next and until then we're going to go and look at some more cheap watches and perhaps add some to basket what do you think tom yeah it's so it's always an edge see you next time bye bye [Music] you

Channel: Watchfinder & Co.

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Keywords: watchfinder, law owe pin, watch, watches, rolex, expensive, bargain, alternatives, watch review, bargain alternative, expensive watch, expensive watches, omega, rolex submariner, tudor, patek philippe, audemars piguet, cheap watches, entrepreneurship, watch collection, affordable watches, teddy baldassarre, kevin o'leary, roman sharf, nico leonard, luxury watches, tier list, apple watch, gq, producer michael, cartier, seiko, grand seiko, richard mille, jacob and co, hodinkee, datejust

Id: QJePRyFDdQw

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022