
Here’s the basic rundown, along with our top picks for men's automatic watches for every budget-from slick dress watches and Swiss-made chronographs to retro dive watches and stainless steel classics. We dove deep into the e-retail waters and surfaced with the 15 absolute best dive watches under 500. Their countries of origin vary from Switzerland and Japan to Singapore, Italy, France, and the U.S.

There are dress watches, dive watches, field watches, and pilot’s watches. Despite being under 500, at the 300 mark, this watch looks like it could easily compete with watches in the 2,000 range. Another is Orient Watches which until 2007 was actually a separate Japanese watch company that is now a subsidiary of the aforementioned Seiko. The dozen watches that make up our list of the best automatic men’s watches under 500 are a diverse bunch. Why We Like It There’s no denying that the design of this mechanical movement watch is the best bit about it. And while you definitely don’t need to know how your watch works to enjoy wearing it, there’s actually some pretty cool stuff going on in there. Along with these brands, if you’re looking for high-quality automatic watches for men, you need to consider brands such as Jack Mason from Texas, TW Steel, and The Netherlands. The perfect entry-level automatic watch doesn’t exioh wait, never mind, we found it. Generally you’d spend anywhere from 100 500 for a watch with an NH35 automatic movement. While the precise makeup of a watch’s tiny gears, springs, and myriad other components quickly descends into advanced levels of nerdery (we’ll save the conversation on escapement design and guilloché finishing for another day), you don’t need a degree from MIT to appreciate the basic principles behind automatic watches.

The answer, nine times out of ten (at least where luxury watches are concerned), is an automatic movement.

You may find your way into watches through history, movies or via the horological one-upmanship playing out in NBA tunnels across the country, but however you acquire your love for timepieces, at some point you’re probably going to find yourself wondering what exactly makes them tick.
