The 15 Best Men’s Dress Watches for Every Budget

When it comes to men’s watches, sports watches are king. Whether we’re talking dive watches, GMTs, chronographs, field watches, or everyday GADA watches, enthusiasts and casual watch fans alike flip for anything sporty. Larger, casual watches like the Rolex Submariner and Omega Speedmaster are always a hit, as they’re tough, versatile, purpose-built, and look great with everything. Well, almost everything. While we love sports watches just as much as the next guy, they’re not the best choice for a formal event, which is why every guy should have one great dress watch.

The best men’s dress watches are lowkey, subtle timepieces that exude class and sophistication. They are as essential an accessory to getting dressed up as a silk tie or pair of leather oxfords, and your watch box isn’t complete until it has at least one great dress watch in it. Lucky for you, we’ve rounded up 15 of them from across a wide range of price points, so you’ve got no excuse to not have a great dress watch strapped to your wrist during your next fancy night out.

What Is A Dress Watch?

There are a handful of general rules that dictate what counts as a dress watch. Like other rules concerning formal attire, these guidelines have relaxed a lot over the decades, and even back in the 1960s, you had James Bond wearing a Rolex Submariner on a NATO strap with a tuxedo. In other words, don’t feel like your dress watch has to adhere to the following criteria 100 percent.

Complications (Or Lack Thereof): Generally speaking, dress watches are meant to fly under the radar. They’re there to show you the time at a quick glance and nothing else, as it’s typically considered rude to be fiddling with a chronograph or GMT bezel during a posh event. But while time-only models are certainly the most classic style of dress watch (some purists even think a seconds hand is too showboaty), there are plenty of complications that have made their way into dress watches. The most elegant is certainly the moonphase, as it’s tough to beat the romance and poetry of tracking Earth’s natural satellite on your wrist.

Size: Dress watches traditionally are smaller than sports watches, and historically, they were downright tiny. Up until around the 1990s, men’s dress watches were commonly 34mm or smaller, but as watch sizes have crept up in recent years with the “big watch” trend, these classic sizes are getting harder and harder to find. 38mm is more of a common size these days, but really anything under 40mm should work fine for most wrists. Just keep in mind that most dress watches have large dials proportional to their cases, so they’ll wear larger than a diver or chronograph of the same dimensions. Dress watches should also be relatively thin, with the most common test of practicality being whether or not they will easily slide under the cuff of a dress shirt.

Straps: A dress watch is typically worn on a leather strap. A high-quality black calf leather strap pretty much always works with a dress watch, but other colors of leather also work, as do fancier hides like alligator leather. Just steer clear of anything too flashy or garish, as you don’t want to draw extra attention to your wrist while dressed up. Steel bracelets can also be worn with dress watches, but they will typically have smaller links than the bracelets you’ll find on sports watches. Think beads of rice, Milanese mesh, and Jubilee bracelets.

What To Look For

Aesthetic: With dress watches, the name of the game is “understated.” Fewer numbers will appear on these dials, as will complications like chronograph registers and moon phases, with few exceptions. Again, you know your usage and wardrobe better than anyone else, so you have to be the judge of how flashy you want to be on your wrist.

Size: As stated above, dress watches tend to be on the smaller side compared to sports or everyday watches. However, those numbers have been increasing as of late. Since most have very diminutive bezels, dress watches will have larger dials relative to their overall diameter. Aim for around 38mm, but feel free to go bigger or smaller depending on your wrist size and personal preference.

Material: While case material won’t matter much in terms of dressiness, the material of the band or bracelet will. Look for either steel or leather bands to make your dress watch fit your ensemble.

Orient Bambino

Best Budget Dress Watch: Orient’s watches are almost a rite of passage for any budding mechanical watch enthusiast, as the Japanese brand makes some of the best bang-per-buck affordable automatic watches out there. One of its most popular offerings is the Bambino, and while it comes in a number of different variants, we’re partial to this cream-dialed version with its applied Roman numerals and blue handset.

Hamilton Intra-Matic Auto

Best Sub-$1,000 Dress Watch: A mid-twentieth-century reissue from within this century, Hamilton’s OG Intra-Matic has gone on to anchor a line that now also includes sports watches and chronographs. But we’re still fans of this classy original, with its entirely polished case, its beautiful domed sapphire crystal, and its attention to detail — like the way the stick minute hand slightly bends down at the tip to meet the edge of the curved sunburst dial. Hamilton didn’t need to put this much effort into a sub-$1,000 dress watch, but we’re certainly glad they did.

Longines Flagship Heritage

Best Overall Dress Watch: This guide is full of mid-century-inspired dress watches, but none are as exquisite as this one. Unsurprisingly, it comes from Longines, a brand that does heritage reissues better than anyone in the business. The aptly-named Flagship Heritage is based on the Longines Flagship of the 1950s, and it’s a thing of beauty. Dauphine hands, applied indices, and an applied winged hourglass logo are all in gold tone, contrasting wonderfully with the inky black dial. We’re also big fans of the 6 o’clock date window and minimalist small seconds display.

NOMOS Orion

Best Minimalist Dress Watch: Proving that modern styles can still be timeless, we present NOMOS’ popular Orion in the reference 301. Committed as ever to Germany’s Bauhaus school of design, this watch is an exercise in modern minimalist aesthetics, with stick hour markers and stick hands on a white dial. But don’t mistake its simplicity for cheapness. That dial is galvanized silver-plated, the indices are diamond-polished, and the hands achieve their cornflower blue coloring from expert heat-tempering. Then there’s the movement: NOMOS’ esteemed in-house manual-winding Alpha caliber.

Cartier Tank Must

Best Quartz Dress Watch: The Cartier Tank is one of the most classic and enduring watch styles in the history of the world. It’s been around since WWI (the watch’s look was modeled after the view of a tank from above) and it looks just as good as ever. With Cartier being a luxury brand, however, Tanks can get pricey, and that’s where the Tank Must comes in. Powered by a quartz movement, the Tank Must offers all of the classic Cartier style while leaving your wallet much lighter than a mechanical version would, and it’s one of the most affordable ways to get a truly iconic dress watch on your wrist.

Grand Seiko SBGM221

Best GMT Dress Watch: A GMT is not a complication you would expect to find on a dress watch, but Grand Seiko executes it so elegantly here that it makes us wonder why more brands don’t do it. Arguably the luxury brand’s most recognizable model after the Snowflake, the gorgeous SBGM221 boasts a round case entirely covered in Grand Seiko’s renowned Zaratsu polishing, a stubby heat-blued GMT hand, typical GS-style diamond-polished multi-faceted indices and sword-sharp hands, an ivory-colored dial, and a brown crocodile leather strap. Oh, and it’s a “true” GMT, too.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Classic Monoface Small Seconds

Best Manually-Wound Dress Watch: After the Cartier Tank, JLC’s Reverso is undoubtedly the world’s most famous rectangular dress watch. Ironically enough, it actually got its start as a sports watch in the 1930s, as its innovative rotating case was created for polo players to protect their watch faces while playing. But tastes evolved, and the once-sporty Reverso now sits firmly in dress watch territory. And what a dress watch. This reference has a single dial (Monoface) with a beautiful silver guilloche finish that’s accented perfectly by a trio of heat-tempered blued hands.

Glashütte Original PanoMaticLunar

Best Complicated Dress Watch: GO may share a home with fellow German watchmaker NOMOS, but it has a totally different style. One of the luxury brand’s flagship models, the PanoMaticLunar’s asymmetrical dial provides a ton of visual interest while remaining subdued and clutter-free. It boasts a big date complication, a moonphase aperture, and overlapping dials for the hours/minutes and seconds. The unique design makes excellent use of white space, and everything is powered by one of the brand’s in-house engines with its trademark hand-engraved balance bridge and duplex-swan-neck fine adjustment.

Blancpain Villeret Quantieme Complet

Best Calendar Dress Watch: In addition to inventing the dive watch with the Fifty Fathoms, Blancpain makes a wide assortment of highly complex dress watches in its Villeret line. One of the more affordable offerings from the line is this complete calendar. Executed in a solid red gold case with a deep blue sunburst dial, the watch clearly displays the day, date, month, and phases of the moon — the latter by way of Blancpain’s charming grinning lunar display. The brand also offers annual and perpetual calendars (for a good deal more money), but for something you’re only wearing once in a blue moon (no pun intended), we find the complete calendar plenty sufficient.

Rolex Day-Date 36

Best High-End Dress Watch: Up until this point, we’ve extolled the virtues of keeping your dress watch low-key and subdued. But if you do feel like the occasion calls for a bit of flash, there’s no beating the Rolex “President.” The watch earned its nickname from its decades-long association with the USA’s highest political office, so its formal-wear bona fides are set in stone. Only ever offered in full precious metal, the most classic reference is the one you see here, with a case, fluted bezel, and three-link President bracelet all in solid 18 ct yellow gold.

F.P. Journe Chronomètre Bleu

Best Grail Dress Watch: If even Rolex and Blancpain feel too pedestrian for whatever once-in-a-lifetime high-end event you have in mind, then allow us to introduce you to F.P. Journe. Arguably the most lauded independent watchmaker in the world, Journe has redefined what discerning enthusiasts expect from luxury watches with his intricate movements and unique yet classic creations. One of his best-known models is the Chronomètre Bleu. Nearly impossible to get anywhere near its already lofty retail price, the watch is one of the hottest in the industry, and it’s no wonder why. With a case crafted from solid tantalum, a mesmerizing blue dial with cream-colored hands and indices, and an 18 ct rose gold manually-wound movement, this masterpiece is a thoroughly modern and borderline sporty take on what a contemporary dress watch can be.

Timex Marlin Hand-Wound

Timex has been on a tear over the last handful of years, and the brand has this watch to thank for it. Prior to the release of the blockbuster Q Timex Reissue, Timex dropped this extremely faithful 1960s dress watch reissue. At the time, the brand was churning out nothing but modern quartz watches, so a mid-century-styled 34mm hand-cranker that looked like it fell off of Don Draper’s wrist landed like a bomb in the enthusiast community. A few years later and the Marlin reissue remains one of our favorite affordable dress pieces.

Baltic MR01

While not as groundbreaking as Timex’s release, French microbrand Baltic still managed to shock quite a few people when it launched the MR01 in 2021. Known largely for its retro dive watches, Baltic went against the grain by releasing a stone-cold stunner dress watch in 36mm with applied mirror-polished Brequet numerals, a grainy asymmetrical dial, and — most interestingly of all — a micro-rotor movement out of China that’s all tarted up and visible through a sapphire caseback.

Tissot Heritage Visodate Powermatic 80

In case it wasn’t apparent by now, mid-century styles are very “in” in the dress watch world, especially when it comes to the affordable segment, and Tissot is no exception. The brand originally brought back its old-school Visodate several years ago in 40mm, and it’s been a massive hit for the Le Locle watchmaker ever since. More recently, Tissot has upped the ante even more with this version that brings in the brand’s fantastic Powermatic 80 movement with its 80-hour power reserve and patented Nivachron balance spring.

Mido Baroncelli Heritage Gent

There are a lot of impressive things to note about Mido’s best dress watch. There are the faceted dauphine hands that boast contrasting finishes to add depth. The exhibition caseback showing the movement’s Geneva striping, perlage, and blued screws. The honest-to-goodness heat-treated blued seconds hand. But the watch’s most impressive attribute is its remarkable thinness. At just 7.3mm thin, it’s the thinnest non-quartz watch on our list, which is all the more impressive considering that it’s an automatic and not hand-wound.

The Best Minimalist Watches

If you’re into more understated options, check out our guide to the best minimalist watches to wear.