Buying a chronograph? Get tips from Gonzo!

We men are obsessed with watches that look complex. Well, maybe not all, but most of us. We might have a couple of plain-faced types set aside for formal occasions, but our heart and soul will always reside on the complex dials denoting there’s more to observe than just time.

We are not talking about them with day, date and month marked around small, round dials within the main dial; even that’s formal! We are talking about something that measures another obsession with men – which is speed. And chronographs just fan those flames higher! This particular type of watches need no introduction; it’s a stopwatch that’s built within a regular time/date telling watch, with or without its other counterpart – a tachymeter. With that in place, a chronograph does a couple more additional things; you may even measure how many miles you can cover at your current speed with the fuel you are left with; or, how far you can travel before a refill.

Chronographs come in three different formats with three different kinds of dial layout. They can be without the tachymeter (this format is followed by many formal chronograph watches), with a tachymeter (sports watches, chiefly) or with a turning/timing bezel that’s meant for a diver. Sometimes, there remains a chapter ring present with other utilities like the minute-markers; an EB6 scale or directions and degrees inscribed or the world-time function. These can usually be turned with an additional crown provided upon the case.

These open the gate for another round of combination possibilities and stagnancy pouring into the chronograph design flow is still pretty far-off.

Often accompanied with a 24-hr marking sub-dial, it is the Citizen Eco-Drive watches who introduced this special functionality and helps to avoid jet lag big time. Or, if you don’t get to see the Sun too often; it helps to track which part of the day you are in. Choose your chronograph the way you want to use it.

Among their many practical uses apart from tracking racing times, people track cooking durations, parking meter reading; for workouts (to detect actual workout time cutting out resting periods), increase their speeds to cover a certain distance within a certain time – in fact, anything you feel that needs tracking the time. Even billable minutes! Or, the time that you spend stuck up in traffic. Could be the number of hours you wasted today.

Despite the fact even the cheapest chronograph watch shall come with some amount of water resistance (let’s take the manufacturer’s promise holds), things change once they are made to enter real test realms. These chronographs come with particular features; for example, you can operate on it while under water. These might also track more numbers of hours at a stretch to run continuously over long spans, till those big activities end.

To be continued

Some of the Watch(es) discussed in this post are listed below.  Click to see details and buy them:

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