A surprisingly much-better-than-ordinary watch

My prior taste in watches was quite expensive, but I wanted my next and subsequent watches to be much cheaper. This was just a reflection of a desire to simplify things in my life overall. In fact, I was looking for the cheapest watch I could find that still had decent features and quality. I wanted a digital watch with just the basics -- a chronograph, a countdown timer, and an alarm -- but not one with that junky or cheap look and feel. Having two time zones would be a bonus. My first choice was a Timex Ironman, but I thought I'd see what other brands had to offer as well.

As I looked at practically every brand name of digital watch available in the large city where I live, and after visiting around a dozen retailers, my heart zeroed-in on the Ironman 30-Lap full-size 53131 (ladies can also get a small-sized one). The other watch brands looked their price: cheap and often junky. I was also surprised at how few of the cheaper brands lacked a countdown timer.

This watch has the basics PLUS the extra time zone. It even comes with 100-metre water resistance. I also like how for the $50 CDN ($30-35 US) I paid, the watch looks really sporty and stylish for the price! What really impresses me, however, are the extra features that I discovered only after buying the watch and reading the instructions. It has several customizable settings lacking in most of the other brands! Let's look at them mode by mode:

1. Normal mode (shows time, day, and date): 12 or 24 hour mode, hourly chime on/off, beep sound on/off, date shown as mm-dd or dd-mm, two time zones.

2. Chronograph mode: choice of having lap time displayed at top and split lap time on the bottom OR vice-versa; 30 laps can be recorded (Phys Ed instructors and coaches, this means you can press "split" as each student crosses a finish line and record the times of up to 30 students; just an example of how you could use this feature).

3. Countdown timer mode: you can set hours, minutes, AND seconds (most watches don't allow this!) up to 23:59:59; at the end of whatever time you set, you have the option of setting the timer to stop altogether OR have the countdown repeat, beeping a few times every time it reaches zero and starts again.

4. Alarm mode: once you set a time, you can choose whether it goes off daily, just on weekdays, or just on weekends.

In all modes, you have the AWESOME Indiglo feature. Pressing it gives you amazing clarity even in total darkness for about 3 seconds. Holding this button for a few seconds switches it into a night mode whereby pressing any of the five watch buttons activates the Indiglo. This means that you don't have to fumble around in total darkness to find just the Indiglo button -- any button will do! The only thing I don't like about this watch is how you can't manually turn this feature off. It does so automatically after 8 hours, but this is of minor concern.

In dim (but not dark) lighting conditions, just tilt the watch face toward the light source and the face glows as if it were in Indiglo mode but without the wasting of battery power.

I also like the large display and numbers. This makes it much easier to quickly read information at a glance. When I look at other digital watches now that I'm used to this one, their numbers look almost comically small and even junky!

What also impresses me is, of all things, the strap! It's stylish and sturdy and even has a little bump that prevents the thing that holds the loose end of the strap down from sliding around. A VERY cool feature that I had never seen before!

So I've just used a whole bunch of words (and time) to describe something as simple as this cheap Timex Ironman watch. You'd think I'd have better things to write about! But I've been so impressed with this little watch in the year I've owned it that writing this much about it has been worth it. For what you pay, you definitely get a surprisingly much-better-than-ordinary watch!