I have had one of these watches for many years. In fact counting it up, it must be close to 20 years - eek! I should qualify that by saying it's not the same watch, I've replaced it with an identical one several times. So I guess I am very qualified to renew it - or perhaps not as I'm not going to compare it to many others!

This is a basic digital watch. Digital display, black casing with 3 buttons, black plastic strap.

____FUNCTION____
The display gives you
- the time (duh!) (in 12-hour or 24-hour clock) including seconds
- the day of the week and the day of the month (eg. today it says TH 17 - Thursday 17th).
- an indicator of whether the alarm or the hourly beep is set.

It has a basic alarm which, once set, will go off at the same time every day until you remember to turn it off. This can be confusing if you use it to remind yourself to take dinner out of the oven but it only takes a few button presses to turn it off so I've nobody to blame for that but myself!

You can choose it to beep at the top of every hour. I have no idea why you would want to do this.

It has a basic timer - you can time things (in 1/100ths of a second, not that you hitting the start / stop button is that accurate!). Press to start, press to stop. Or press another button to pause the display while the counter keeps counting - "lap timer"

There is a backlight - push the top left button & the display lights up. If using this in the full dark you need to be able to identify the correct button by touch. This is the advantage of a 3-button watch: 2 buttons on one side, one on the other, so you know which is which.

That's it for functions. It's a watch, not a gizmo.

It is advertised as "water resistant". I have never had one die due to getting wet - I don't wear it to shower or go swimming, but I spend a lot of time outdoors or camping so it's been pretty drenched.

____LOOK____
The look is basic and probably a bit clunky. It's really a man's watch. It doesn't contribute much to fashion, unless possibly you're into 80s retro :-) The watch part itself is about 3.5cm square with the display window being about 2cm long by 1cm tall. 2 silver-coloured metal buttons on the left, one on the right provide access to all the functions.

____FEEL____
The watch face has a metal back, as with most watches except the very cheapest.

The strap is plastic with a black plastic buckle and feels rather cheap. This is ALWAYS the first part to go - usually the little sleeve that holds the end of the strap in place but occasionally the strap itself will crack across. I suppose this is a consequence of it being curved the same way round the same wrist day after day - it builds up a weakness at certain points which then split. You could theoretically replace the strap, but as you can replace the entire watch for under £10 it hardly seems worth the effort.

The main disadvantage of the plastic strap is that your wrist can get a bit sweaty under it. But it does clean easily!

The plastic buckle looks and feels cheap - but is surprisingly robust.

____LONGEVITY____
As mentioned above, the straps break before the watch itself. I would say the straps last 3 years, sometimes up to 5. The battery lasts longer (at least 5 years) and I've never had anything else break, even when I dropped one in the car & then put the seat down on it (oops).

____PRICE____
You can buy this design at High Street jewellers for around £15. Alternatively if you shop around online you can get it for around half that, including delivery.