About Watch Almanac
Watch Almanac is a reference for watches, built by a collector who got tired of buying watches that looked great in photos and wore too big. Case diameter is the number brands lead with, but it says little about how a watch sits on a wrist. Lug-to-lug, thickness and lug width do.
So every watch here starts with those numbers, each one labeled with where it came from.
Where the numbers come from
Diameter, thickness, water resistance, movement and price come from the brand whenever the brand publishes them. Lug-to-lug usually isn’t published, so we take it from hands-on reviews that measured it with calipers, and say so on the page. If sources disagree we use the most-cited figure. If we can’t source a number, we leave it blank.
Prices are US retail at the date shown and change often, especially for Rolex and Patek Philippe.
How we estimate fit
A watch looks right when its lugs end inside the flat top of your wrist. We estimate that flat width as 31% of your wrist’s circumference (a 7" wrist is about 55 mm across), then grade each watch: an ideal fit leaves at least 4 mm of wrist spare, a snug fit 1–4 mm, and anything wider than the flat overhangs. A watch whose lug-to-lug covers less than three quarters of the flat wears small.
Wrists vary in shape, so the estimate is a starting point. For a closer answer, measure across the top of your wrist with a ruler and enter it in the fit finder.
Corrections
Measured a watch and got a different number? We want to hear about it, with a photo of the calipers if you have one.