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Sports Watches – A Guide to Choosing a Sports Watch
Sports watches come in all shapes and sizes. Watches have loads of different functions all designed to enhance sporting excellence and to facilitate greater enjoyment of sport. Watches have the ability to record lap times and split times, they come with countdown timers and stopwatches, there are also high-tech watches that include barometers, altimeters and pedometers. Sports watches can be both analogue, digital or a combination of the two. The ones with digital displays will often have memory so they can record your progress over a number of weeks.There are a number of things to consider before you buy a sports watch, firstly you need to consider your sport and the things that you need your watch to do. Take into account the weight of the watch, its water resistance rating, its functions and its style (a big watch would not be appropriate for cycling for example.)
A chronograph watch is a watch with a number, normally two or three, of sub dials. The functions of the sub dials vary, but commonly include a stopwatch and a breakdown of the second, minute and hour functions into their own dials. These watches are designed predominately for use in sports, although there are many models that use the chronograph function as a stylistic feature. Chronograph watches come in a wide range of styles and have different levels of practical use. The most advanced come with the ability to record multiple split and lap times, with stop watches that are accurate to 1/100th of a second.
Having a watch that has a suitable water resistance rating for the activity you are undertaking is essential. A watch with a 3 or 5 atm rating is not suitable for jumping into water. Although it can be worn whilst swimming. 100m watches are the ideal standard for most water sports. The rating determines how much pressure can be placed upon the watch rather than the depth to which it can go down. Specialised divers watches are essential kit for divers and there are a number of watches that are specifically designed to be able to resist the pressure of great depths. Other sports may not appear to need such high levels of water resistance, but if a watch is being used as a tool for sports it is probably worth having one that has at least 3 or 5m water resistance.
Materials
Functions are not the only attributes that you should think about if you are buying a sports watch. The material that the watch is made from will determine how practical it is. Titanium watches are always light weight so they are often a favourite for sports enthusiasts. Rubber straps are also popular as they are easy to clean and are likely to last a long time even if they are used in the water. For much the same reason stainless steel bracelets are also popular. It is worth remembering that they are heavier than rubber straps but that they are also more durable.
Best Selling Sports Watches
Casio have a lot of watches that are designed for sports. Most of the Casio watches are digital so they can have memory in which data can be stored, the digital set up also allows for switching between different functions with ease. The Casio G-Shock range is designed for adrenalin fueled sports. This global best selling range is designed to be shock proof so they are perfect for extreme sports.
Citizen and Seiko both make high end sports watches, designed with the sporting professional in mind. They look great and are packed full of functions to enable maximum benefit from sports. Citizen’s Promaster and Skyhawk rangesand Seiko’s Sportura Collection demonstrate the immense capabilities of sports watches.
16. October 2009 at 5:22 pm :
I love sports watches they are very fashionable with alot of extra features your normal standard watch wouldnt have.