Luminox watches

[BOSS1]

^^ I wore a Casio WS210-1AV for my work 'beater' for a quite a while (years)...barely a mark on it. Tough, solar, everything you need...easy to read times, easy to use, alarms, etc., and nothing you don't. As I live near the ocean, the tide/lunar functions were a nice touch. If I weren't a 'watch enthusiast' and 'graduated' to a smart(er) watch, the Casio could probably serve me well for many more years. I still throw it on from time-to-time when doing chores and whatnot.

WS210H-1AV | Tough Solar Men's Sporty Watch | CASIO

• Tough Solar with sporty design • 1/100-second stopwatch • Tide graph • Moon phase • World time • 5 alarms • LED backlight • 100-meter water resistance

www.casio.com

But as we still don't have an actual 'budget' number. 'Not to expensive' is a bit ambiguous. If the budget is $500ish and you're willing to shop, IMHO the all-time value leaders are Marathon and Helm. The Marathon SAR line are great 'grab & go,' legit, tough watches. They also sport my preferred Arabic numerals watch faces...probably the ultimate 'tool watch'. You probably won't find a watch that delivers more 'bang for the buck' in the auto range than Helm, particularly the Vanuatu. German Precision Watches (GPW) are also worth a look. Christopher Ward, Zelos, and Helson a few others can be found in that range...but are a little too nice of watches to thrash.

YMMV, $02. worth,
Boss

 

[Murphy Slaw]

^^ Bertucci is solid.

Yep.

Solid lugs...

 

[tirod3]

Agreed, Casios have those odd lugs and proprietary straps. Protreks can be had in more standard lugs these days, the last one I gifted to my son I wore on a 22mm NATO, which worked for me.

Tritium is much like meth, tho, initially it's bright and attractive, after time goes by it's dark and useless. I'd heard this for some time and found it to be true - a S&W 4566 TSW with trit sights came to me and they were black. It's common on the S&W forum to just white them out with model car paint and move on - the costs to replace them are as much as brand new sights, along with gunsmith fees.

Now consider a tritium watch, with 12 vials for the time markers, and half a dozen more for the hands, bezel, etc. This is why we see so many Luminoxes on ebay - that are 8 years old or more. The display is dying. Tritium has a half life of about ten years and they will go dark, it's not permanent.

I have a Citizen with lume on it nearly as old as that Smith Auto - late 90s - and those markings still work - they just need some daylight and they will run all night. As said, eyesight has to be adjusted from bright interior lighting to none when transitioning - what too many demand is overkill when all their eyes need is a half hour to acclimate to lower light conditions. Our retinas are much slower to adjust - goes to old stories of soldiers keeping out of daylight when running a constant string of night ops, to preserve their vision.

I would suggest in the long run - a watch you will keep as your main EDC for the next 25 years - that Japanese lume is far superior, and a good Dive will have it. There is a question, tho - with all the LED flashlights, phones, etc on the market, do we really need to read the dial thru the sheets to know what time it is? I jest, but that is literally what some ask for - intense brilliant lume comes at a cost, when given an hour or so, it's overkill as our eyes adjust. Not to mention it's a bit of a giveaway if you need to be blacked out from observation for some reason. Very few wear the old flap straps that cover the dial now.

Adding some more specs to the criteria will likely narrow the focus of this search, and keeping Brand out of it will actually help. If you want 25 year plus lume, then Japanese is a spec, not tritium. If you need accuracy, then quartz - my Citizens keep to a minute a year, not a week. If a bezel is desired, then Dive rated - not WR, actual ISO DIVE - which also gets shock resistance and the ability to wear it 24/7 for months if needed. Nothing like leaving a watch in a Grand Canyon showerhouse after a hard days hiking. I went back 20 years later and no, it still hadn't been turned in to lost and found . . .

And another option, look to used - prices for a clean, relatively well kept watch are half of new, a significant savings. If I was a flipper I could sell the Citizen Im wearing now, it's gone up double over the last two years as inflation and the economy make the dollar worthless. Since it will outlive me, I'll keep it.

 

[jbmonkey]

^^ I wore a Casio WS210-1AV for my work 'beater' for a quite a while (years)...barely a mark on it. Tough, solar, everything you need...easy to read times, easy to use, alarms, etc., and nothing you don't. As I live near the ocean, the tide/lunar functions were a nice touch. If I weren't a 'watch enthusiast' and 'graduated' to a smart(er) watch, the Casio could probably serve me well for many more years. I still throw it on from time-to-time when doing chores and whatnot.

WS210H-1AV | Tough Solar Men's Sporty Watch | CASIO

• Tough Solar with sporty design • 1/100-second stopwatch • Tide graph • Moon phase • World time • 5 alarms • LED backlight • 100-meter water resistance

www.casio.com

But as we still don't have an actual 'budget' number. 'Not to expensive' is a bit ambiguous. If the budget is $500ish and you're willing to shop, IMHO the all-time value leaders are Marathon and Helm. The Marathon SAR line are great 'grab & go,' legit, tough watches. They also sport my preferred Arabic numerals watch faces...probably the ultimate 'tool watch'. You probably won't find a watch that delivers more 'bang for the buck' in the auto range than Helm, particularly the Vanuatu. German Precision Watches (GPW) are also worth a look. Christopher Ward, Zelos, and Helson a few others can be found in that range...but are a little too nice of watches to thrash.

YMMV, $02. worth,
Boss

that is a great casio.

 

[bdmicarta]

Now consider a tritium watch, with 12 vials for the time markers, and half a dozen more for the hands, bezel, etc. This is why we see so many Luminoxes on ebay - that are 8 years old or more. The display is dying. Tritium has a half life of about ten years and they will go dark, it's not permanent.

I have 2 Luminox, both bought used, that I've owned for around 20 years, and a third one I bought used in the past few years but it is as old as the other 2. All 3 of them still work and I wear one of them every night. They are not real bright but if I wake up at 5 in the morning I can still read them. They will probably stay like this for awhile. I have 2 relatively new Deep Blue watches with tritium, much brighter than the small Luminox tubes. If the Luminox watches really die I will switch to wearing the Deep Blue.
The way radioactive half life works- in ten years half of it is gone. In the next 10 years half of that is gone so 1/4 of the total is still remaining. In the third 10 years half of that is gone so 1/8 of the original is left. Your eyes don't read brightness linearly, comparing a brand new watch with 20years old, maybe older, you would think the old one was half as bright. If I was guessing just based on how radioactive decay works I would think the useful life of Luminox tubes would be about 25 years, and my history with the 2 that I've owned for around 20 years supports that.

 

[bdmicarta]

I did an informal and unscientific test last night. I have been wearing my Orient Kano during the day mostly inside my house, a watch with fairly good lume. About 12:30 I go to bed and switch to my very old and beat up Luminox Navy Seals watch. About 4:30 or 5:00 I wake up so I'm thinking I can grab the Orient and look to see if I can read it in the dark. I can see the hands but I can't see the hour markers. Then I look at the Luminox and even though it has dimmed, it is old enough to probably be past its half life, the hands of the Luminox are brighter and of course I can see the hour markers too. I can understand this, a true dive watch doesn't to maintain its lume for a long time because you can't stay underwater for a long time. For my purposes it doesn't have to be bright but it has to be there all night.