Casio CMK-100 Titanium Field Automatic

Casio's CMK-100 collection runs from $335 on a strap to $445 on a titanium bracelet. This is the company's third mechanical collection in two years, after decades of making only quartz and digital watches, and it is a field watch in the Tudor Ranger mould.

The case is titanium, 38mm across, 11.4mm thick, 44.7mm lug to lug. Three versions keep natural titanium; two get ion-plated in dark grey or rose gold. Every case, plated or not, gets a titanium carbide coating for abrasion resistance, which is the kind of detail that usually disappears at this price. The crown screws down, the caseback screws on, and the crystal is sapphire, not mineral glass. Water resistance is 100m.

The dial comes in black, grey or brown depending on version, with a grained texture, baton markers and Arabic numerals in luminous material, and a date window at 3 o'clock. None of it is original. All of it is correctly proportioned, which is the harder thing to get right at this money.

Inside is an undisclosed Japanese automatic movement that behaves exactly like a Miyota 8215: 21 jewels, 3Hz, 42 hours of power reserve. It is a known, serviceable movement with no pretensions, and it is the same calibre reason the watch can sell for 299 euros at all. The full titanium bracelet version weighs 98 grams; the strap versions weigh 55 grams.

What Casio is selling here is a spec sheet that usually belongs to watches costing three or four times as much, attached to a brand with no inherited mechanical reputation to charge for. That absence of reputation is exactly why the price works.