Bracelet

A bracelet is a segmented metal construct to hold a watch on your wrist. Bracelets are often overlooked when evaluating a watch, but as you can see there's significant options and things to look for. As they often determine the (dis)comfort of wearing a watch, a bit more time is a good investment.

Pros:

• Waterproof
• Durable
• Versatile, style-wise.

Cons:

• Fixed length can be uncomfortable, as your wrist enlarges in warm weather
• Often a pain to get sized just right, requires special tools to resize.
• Expensive, usually adding $100 or more to the price of a watch. What's more, matching the end links is often an epic quest if you get a third-party bracelet.
• Often flashier and more attention-getting. I consider this a negative, but if you want an attention-getting watch, feel free to disagree.

There are many, many styles of bracelet:

• Oyster
• [President]
• Milanese
• [Beads of rice]

For example, here's an Oyster-style bracelet on a Seiko:

and many, many variations and options:

• Solid or hollow end links
• Solid or hollow links
• [Half link]s or not
• Micro adjustments or not
• Diver extensions for wetsuits
• Micro adjustments such as Glidelock (the Rolex system) or Seiko's unnamed system on [the Marinemaster].
• Push button(s), flip locks, stamped or machined clasps
• [Integrated bracelet] or [standard lugs].
• [Pin and collar] or screws to hold the links together

For example, here's a [Citizen] dive watch, titanium, with SEL, [solid links], [pin and collar] attachment, no Micro adjustments, Diver extension, Push button release with flip lock, no [half links], and [standard lugs]:

See also Strap.

Places to buy

• The Strap Shop has some really nice looking bracelets with good pictures.
• Watchadoo has 5-link bracelets that are wonderful - I got one and it's tank-like.
• Strapped for Time was recommended here
• You can Milanese-style bracelets from WatchStyle

Related pages