Watches

Watches

Watches for Tactical use - Some advice from This Tribe

When selecting a watch for military or security use, at This Tribe we would recommend considering some obvious factors; how robust and waterproof the watch is and what features you need, but also some less obvious ones: the watch glass, the strap pins and to a lesser extent the strap itself, the illumination and for digital watches such as the Suunto Core, the ability to use the watch with gloves on.

Watch Glasses

The description of the watch glass, eg. "Mineral glass" doesn't mean much to most people. It's actually quite straight forward. Watch glass come in 3 main types - mineral crystal, sapphire crystal and plastic. We're concerned with the first two. Sapphire Crystal is usually regarded as the better as it is extremely hard and therefore scratch resistant, however there is an important disadvantage when compared with the cheaper mineral crystal - it shatters more easily. Therefore a military spec watch mineral crystal is the normal choice and all of our watches at This Tribe use this except the more lifestyle oriented Traser Classic Chrono BD Pro.

The story doesn't quite end there as glass shape also affects strength and for this reason the top-end Suunto X10 uses a domed mineral crystal glass.

Watch Straps

Like most military users we at This Tribe are fans of the NATO or "Animal strap". These have the clear advantage of allowing a watch pin to break or fall out, while still retaining the watch on the second pin. The NATO strap width is 18mm so a Traser P5900 (which has a two part strap) will take one. The other Trasers we stock (except the Traser Classic Chrono BD Pro) take 22mm straps and come in various strap versions. At This Tribe we decided to stock the NATO / Animal strap versions as the most practical and suited to military use.

Illumination

Most people know how easy Trasers are to read at night. (the company that owns Traser, Mb-Microtec, deals entirely with lighting technology and the Trasers use Ronda movements), although there is a slight disadvantage over a digital backlit watch - you can't read the second hand without a torch. 99% of the time that's not a problem of course, but it is one to be aware of. You won't get H Hr to the second without a torch with a Traser.

Gloves

Gloves of course complicate any work than demands manual dexterity and accuracy, and pushing tiny watch buttons is no exception. Many "black plastic Casio" cheap military watch owners have managed to switch to a useless watch mode while trying to turn the light on. The Suunto Core gets around this by being large and having suitably large and textured buttons (light is the bottom right one) and the Suunto X10 allows the light to be turned on when any button is pressed (the behaviour is configurable to keep gadget freaks happy). Also both of these watches have multi-function displays so the time remains visible.

We hope that's of some help. The This Tribe team