The Best Watch Brands in the World, from Heritage Brands to Innovators
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What makes a watch brand great?
It’s more than just a name.
It’s a combination of craftsmanship, innovation, heritage, and design.
At its core, a watch brand should be defined by the quality of its movements, whether mechanical, automatic or quartz. Precision and reliability separate a true watchmaker from a fashion accessory brand – after all, if you can’t rely on your watch to tell you the time, it’s kind-of fallen at the first hurdle.
Heritage also plays a crucial role. Many of the most respected brands have histories spanning decades, or even centuries, showcasing a legacy of horological innovation.
But history can be a trap.
A great brand also embraces modern advancements, blending tradition with cutting-edge, forward-thinking technology.
Another key element is design. A good watch brand has a distinct aesthetic, something more enduring than IYKYK.
Finally, there’s prestige and perception.
Some brands command respect due to exclusivity, craftsmanship, and innovation.
However they do it, these are the brands that stand out from the herd.
Best first watch brand: Swatch
Clearly Gent
A plethora of entry points makes the Swiss powerhouse an ideal gateway to the addictive and wallet-destroying wonderful world of watches. From high-profile collabs to minimalist beaters, the brand that saved the Swiss watch industry in the Eighties has since been the first watch on the wrist of untold collectors. Its recent blockbuster hook-up with subsidiary Omega put it back on the radar, but there's an option in its stable for everyone, wherever you are on your horological journey.
Best investment brand: Rolex
Pre-owned Rolex Submariner 16610
£9250.00 at chisholmhunter.co.uk
Like anything that can cost as much as a house, watches are often touted as investments, with the claimants pointing out a handful of eye-popping auction prices. The truth is that only two brands are almost guaranteed to go up in price: Patek Philippe, and Rolex. The Crown is the banker here, and as one of the most valuable brands in the world, even its (comparatively) entry-level models tend to go for more used than they do new.
Yes, that's partly to do with marketing – as well as a genius production model that somehow makes the million units they produce each year feel scarce – but mostly it's because Rolex has always made phenomenal watches. You should buy a Rolex because you love it, not because it will make you money. That it probably will is a bonus. Speaking of which…
Best spend-the-bonus brand: Cartier
Cartier Tank Must
£3300.00 at watches-of-switzerland.co.uk
Granted, it depends on whether your bonus cheque contains commas, but if you're looking to flash the cash without looking like you're flashing the cash, few brands combine swagger and watchmaking bona fides as delightfully as Cartier.
Unlike most haute horlogerie brands, Cartier has that all-important name-recognition beyond watch world, as well as the guts to impress those who are fully immersed in watch world. As well as its superb in-house movements, Cartier's catalogue contains some genuine icons, including the Santos and Ballon Bleu. But if you're celebrating a particularly good annual review, it has to be the Tank, whose beautifully boxy silhouette was inspired by the Renault-made ones France sent across no man's land in 1917. Easily the world's most elegant celebration of mechanised death.
Best first automatic watch brand: Seiko/Tissot
Tissot PRX Powermatic 80
For most of the last half-century, Seiko had this sewn up. Its Seiko 5 is an astonishingly democratic piece of watchmaking. For the price of a pair of trainers, you get an in-house automatic movement, decent water resistance, bombproof build quality, and neat details, like its 4 o'clock crown.
Then Tissot – a brand better known for never saying no to an unexpected collab, as well as a more-is-more design ethos – dropped the PRX, and basically broke the internet. Or, at least, that little bit of that really cares about sweeping seconds hands. A reissue of a forgotten Seventies model, it's basically a Royal Oak-a-like, but with an authenticity that stops it feeling like just another modern steel sports watch. Granted, the automatic variants come in at double the price of the entry-level Seiko 5s, but that extra investment gets you an 80-hour power reserve, courtesy of Tissot's tweaks to the workhorse ETA 2824 movement. Get the 35mm in gold. And, actually, another with the Tiffany dial. Oh, and there's the all-black one too…
Best first proper watch brand: Tudor
Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight
£3550.00 at watches-of-switzerland.co.uk
Rolex's little brother hates being thought of that way. And, thanks to a decade of restless innovation above and below the surface, we don't really think of Tudor that way anymore. It's got in-house movements, some instantly recognisable silhouettes, and most importantly, brilliant watches at prices that, at other brands, require compromises. Really, the only reason you wouldn't get a Tudor as your first big boy watch is because, well, everyone gets a Tudor as their first big boy watch.
Best watch for thinness: Piaget. No, Bulgari. Or, Richard Mille? Wait, Bulgari again?
Bulgari Octo Finissimo
£26200.00 at watches-of-switzerland.co.uk
For some brands, slimness is an obsession. For the rest of us, the urge to make gossamer-thin watches can come across a bit like George Mallory's take on climbing Everest – because it's there. But really, it's a bit like Nasa putting men on the moon. Impractical? Sure. Costly? And then some. But the innovations that make possible a functional, wearable watch that's no thicker than a book cover (and costs more than a house and which you'd be forever petrified of snapping in half) eventually trickle down into the kinds that normal people wear. Like how Neil Armstrong gave us memory foam mattresses.
This stuff is hard, so not that many brands compete. The crown tended to swap between Piaget and Bulgari, with the former running essentially unopposed from the Fifties until the 2010s, when Bulgari began dropping world-beatingly slim timepieces, each shaving fractions of a millimetre off their predecessor. In 2022, Richard Mille surprised everyone with the 1.75mm, Ferrari-badged RM UP-01, and held the title until last year, when Bulgari counterpunched with the 1.70mm Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC, which is even chronometer-certified. That remains the record-holder, while Piaget has the belts for thinnest tourbillons (flying and standard). But it's a barely-perceptible-on-the-arms race that's getting very exciting, for those of us who get very excited by watches best enjoyed with a magnifying glass.
Best for-the-heads brand: Ressence
Ressence Type 3 Blue
Ressence makes weird watches. No hands-circumnavigating-a-circle here. There isn't a crown. Some don't even have bezels. Instead, you get multiple faces, displaying multiple things, some floating on oil, and all rotating around the face, loops within loops, like a mad haute horlogerie Spirograph. Like we said; weird. But good weird. Completely unique weird. And weird with an uncompromising focus on taking away everything unnecessary, on reimagining how one might track and display time, rather than weird in a "what if you could check your crypto wallet on your watch" kind of way. Which makes them weirdly cool.
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