Independent watches, by the numbers
Small Seconds is a magazine of independent watchmaking that lists rather than reviews: every figure from the maker's spec sheet, every price with the date it was checked, and the lug-to-lug measurement on every entry, which is the number most lists leave out.
Two kinds of page live here. The bracket lists say what a given sum buys now, every bracket from $200 to $10,000, with dive, field and GMT lists and a ranking of the high-end independents beside them. The brand guides put every current model from one maker in a single table, so the reader can see where a Lorier Neptune sits against a Falcon or a Hyperion without opening four product pages. Any brand named anywhere on the site links to its brand page, and every brand page ends with the list of pages that mention it.
By price
Best watches under $10,000
By type
Best dive watches
From a $70 Casio to a Swiss 300 m diver, each with its bezel, its rating and its lug-to-lug.
Best dive watches under $500
Seiko, Orient, Citizen, Islander, San Martin and the independents that belong beside them.
Best dive watches under $1,000
Baltic, Lorier, Halios, Christopher Ward and the Prospex line, priced on the day.
Best field watches
Hamilton, Marathon, Vaer, Nodus, Formex, and the Casio that outlasts the lot.
Best GMT watches under $1,000
True GMTs and caller GMTs, and which is which before you pay for the wrong one.
Brand guides
Atelier Wen
Hong Kong (office, Connaught Road Central); founders French, design/manufacturing coordinated from Beijing
Bertucci
Boldr
Bravur
Båstad, Sweden (workshop); founded in Stockholm by Magnus Äppelryd and Johan Sahlin
Charlie Paris
Paris, France (6th arrondissement; boutiques rue Saint-André des Arts and rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie)
Christopher Ward
Dan Henry
Ikepod
Switzerland (founded 1994 by Marc Newson and Oliver Ike; revived 2017/18 by Christian-Louis Col via Kickstarter)
Laco
Marathon
Massena LAB
New York, USA (site currency USD; founder William Massena's prior retail in Miami and New York)
Ming
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (design, engineering, final QC) and La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland (production and assembly)
Nivada Grenchen
Grenchen, Switzerland (original 1926); revived 2018 by Guillaume Laidet with Rémi Chabrat of Montrichard Group
RZE
Singapore (team in Singapore and Malaysia; founders Travis Tan, Vivian Ko, Clarence Chew per third-party coverage)
Spinnaker
Squale
Steinhart
Studio Underd0g
Maidenhead, United Kingdom (The D0ghouse workshop and showroom, opened May 2026)
Vertex
London, United Kingdom (revived 2015/16 by Don Cochrane, great-grandson of founder Claude Lyons)
Yema
From the journal
MVMT Watches: Brand Guide & Model Picks
MVMT sells almost nothing over $500. Of the watches orderable from its own site, the overwhelming majority run quartz and sit between $100 and $300, which forces a straightforward choice: buy into California minimalism on a battery movement, or pay roughly double for one of the handful of automatics the brand now carries.
MIDO Watches: Spec Guide, Model Prices and Comparisons
MIDO builds COSC-certified Swiss chronometers for under $1,500, something few other brands in Swatch Group's lineup manage at that price. The decision it forces is whether that certification is worth paying roughly double what Hamilton charges for a comparable case and movement tier, or a third less than what Longines charges for the same COSC standard.
Long Island Watch's Islander Line vs. Seiko, Invicta and Doxa: A Spec Comparison
Islander is the in-house watch brand sold by the retailer Long Island Watch. Islander is the house brand of Long Island Watch, and founded in 2019, Islander has a style of watch in nearly every genre – whether it be dive, pilot, field, dress or an everyday watch. The line runs mostly on Miyota and Seiko NH-series automatic movements, with sapphire crystals and ceramic bezel inserts fitted across most of the catalogue rather than reserved for flagship pieces. Below is a spec-and-price comparison against the mainstream watches Islander most directly undercuts, drawn entirely from each maker's own product pages.
Small Seconds does not review watches and owns none. What it keeps is the spec sheets, side by side, with the check dates. The about page says how a list is built and what a commission does and does not do.