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Well, fascinating if you can take more discussion on the subject... But the conclusions are interesting and unexpected. In particular that most men assume their wrists must be smaller than average when they aren’t, simply because manufacturers insist on making large watches that don’t fit them.
http://www.markcho.com/201905-the-id...-survey-report
Good read that.
My wrists are just under 7" and I regard them as small. 38mm my ideal, 42mm a stretch for me.
I seem to fit right in with the other 1000 people in the data set.
Interesting to see it all plotted out like this. Thanks for sharing. I heard him mention this on the Hodinkee podcast
I have to say as a tall guy with big wrists it does get a but tiresome hearing these small men refer to larger watches like they're talking about bell bottom flares or perms. There are bigger guys out there that require large watches!
Spot on - I’m tall thick set with big wrists and therefore the smallest watch I will consider is 44mm. Anything less and it will look like I’m wearing a Children’s watch.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bclark
Manufacturers know what sells...their business depends on it; if they offer larger watches, it’s because that’s what many consumers want.
The methodology is badly flawed. The sample is drawn only from serious hobbyists. But that’s a small subsection of Watch buyers and probably not representative.
Fascinating! I am so average... 6.75" wrist and a preference for 37mm for smart and 39mm for casual. Although I don't count lug less watches like Tunas as they wear so much smaller.
Not sure how representative the sample is though, he’s got a load of Asian accounts/mailing lists so naturally you might get slightly smaller wrists if they aren’t as tall or heavy set as the average European or American?
I personally also have small wrists (6.5”) and my largest watch is 43mm, so maybe my preferences lie outside the average?
To me, it is not the size of the watch that makes me love it but the design. I have many sizes in my collection and they are all beautiful. Some of the smaller watches are more easily read than the larger ones. What is most important is that you like it and it is comfortable.
I still think you can have huge wrists and stubby fingers which a fair amount of blokes have and a watch will look like a dinner plate . The thing is they are all told to go for big diameter watches. If you’ve got long fingers , even if you have slim wrists you can wear a bigger diameter watch without it seeming huge.
I’m happy to wear any size really though if it’s 35mm it needs to be a thin Bezel dress and if it’s 45mm the opposite applies in that it needs a chunk of case. The actual shape of the wrist really comes into play on rectangular or square shaped watches.
The oddest fit I’ve ever had was on a Speedie TV Dial (gutted) and a Tudor North Face
I find Tim Mosso seems to know his stuff about wrist sizes
Yesterday I wore my Breitling Chronospace which is 46mm, as I type I'm wearing a Tudor BB heritage chrono' @ 41mm, yes the Chronospace is a larege dial on my 7-1/4'' wrist, but the Tudor looks & feels very nice on this wrist of mine. I was very much a fan of 43mm plus watches until last year where my taste suddenly changed. I p/x'd a Zenith Montre d'Aeronef 45mm for the BB chrono' an feel much happier with the result. I have posted on TZ in the past that nothing under 43mm was my 'cup-of-tea', but now I have to be honest and say that 42mm is my sweet-spot, in spite of the BB being 41mm but wearing like a 42! It's funny, as I have a Tudor Heritage chrono' which is specd @ 42mm but looks exactly the same as the BB chrono' I also have a Fortis B42 Cosmonaute which is sold as a 42mm, but, crickey, it's all of 44mm across the bezel & looks huge!!!
Anyway, I'm really happy with all of my larger, & not so large watches at the moment, and have been for a while now.....peace at last!
Fascinating indeed!
I don’t believe they are half as omniscient as this assumes. Much of the time they are simply blindly following what they imagine is the latest trend, only several years too late as it takes a long time to develop watches, and certainly new movements. Then they often overshoot and are soon peddling back. Some watches are launched to universal derision, and it comes as a complete surprise to the brand. It’s not as if they are doing infallible market research, or even anything as thorough as this survey - for a long time they just blindly made almost everything in 42mm on the assumption that’s what the market wanted. For a great many, this wasn’t true at all and it took forever for them to figure that out.Quote:
Originally Posted by paskinner
So I am actually average, rather than smaller than average. Thank the stars. I will sleep soundly tonight :smug:
One stat that genuinely surprised me was the lower average age of respondents. I wrongly assumed all the young whipper snappers were smart watch or no watch users and that the typical respondent would be considerably older. The other was that the number of responses on lug to lug size was very low, suggesting that people take little notice of or don’t understand this measurement.
A bit O/T, but hopefully moderately interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by andyd30
The internet (Instagram, Hodinkee, etc.) has really brought the hobby to many younger people. Whilst that’s had some irritating effects (such as prices), it’s had benefits too.
I’m university age, and have two good friends who are also into watches... and know of at least two others who have a certain interest.
Sure, it’s a more niche hobby than football or cars, but I suspect that technology will have given a net increase to mechanical watches, rather than demolishing it via smartwatches.
Other than health (and even then only for those with a particular concern), I think the smartwatch is of pretty limited utility compared to the phone that ‘everyone’ already takes everywhere. Even the health stuff might be done via a small implant in the not too distant future.
The dominant features of the group surveyed were preferences for vintage Rolexes. Not exactly a representative population sample to judge physical features on.
There's no doubt that it's not a representative sample. Even his USA cohort group isn't representative of the USA since it's getting pulled from The Armoury customers - guys who dress like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by lostp
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxSS09rh...on_share_sheet
My wrist is absolutely tiny at 6.25 inches, and there were a decent number of people in that sample with a much smaller wrist.
IWC have to buy up millions of dollars of oversized watches would support your belief.Quote:
Originally Posted by Itsguy
I think it really depends on the relative size of the dial and bezel. I have a Breitling SuperOcean that is 42mm in diameter but has a very thick bezel. As a result, it wears much smaller than a number of other watches I have with the same diameter. I have a IWC Chronograph which is 43mm but seems huge by comparison.
Lug to lug matters a lot. IWC's tend to be relatively long.Quote:
Originally Posted by marcbe
Agree about lug-to-lug. That is why Tuna's wear easier than expected for their case size.Quote:
Originally Posted by JP Chestnut
Definitely. I like my standard Tuna. It's big and bold, but wearable for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by bedlam
I thought it was called a Tuna because it looked and felt like a tin of John West on the wrist. Nice innovative design from Seiko but didn't work for me.
Interesting results bearing in mind most are American and most have an average age of around 30. Combine that with A Lange being more popular than Omega and I wouldn't say the results are representative of TZ-UK members. I think we could probably put together a better survey
Quote:
Originally Posted by bedlam
So it's the survey basically made up of a group of hipsters?Quote:
Originally Posted by JP Chestnut
Interesting stuff! Lug-to-lug and depth are the key measurements for me
I think there was a TZ-UK wrist size survey a while back and as I remember it, 6.5” was firmly at the tail end, rather than being the cusp of small and average. But I’d assume that even in an accurate worldwide sample, the important Hong Kong and China markets would skew the average a little lower, and make a good case for 38-39mm options, as in the survey. Meanwhile watches made by and for tall Central Europeans might be larger than I’d like. Having just returned from the Netherlands, it felt like land of the giants to this average-ish sized Londoner.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxy100
It's not how large your wrist is that's important, it's what you do with it.
And a survey of TZ-UK members would produce results as irrelevant to 30-year-old Americans!Quote:
Originally Posted by Itsguy
It would still make a good survey, and we could find out a lot of information on everything from how long you wear your watches, how many you have, number of divers/chronos/dress etc watches and so on. I find 40mm-42mm is my ideal watch size, and I have a 7 1/2" wrist. I look at 40mm Subs and think they look much better on a 6.5-7" wrist, but it would be interesting to see what size Rolex (as a very good indicator of size, as I suspect most people here - as in the survey I the US - would list it as their favourite brand) people think fits them best. We could start a thread to discuss what we'd need to know and then see what we get out of it.
+1. I'm also in possession of an underfed wrist and that survey was much more skewed to our sizes.Quote:
Originally Posted by JP Chestnut
I have a theory about why it is so and I don't mean any disrespect to anyone but wrist size and watch size discussions tend to be more popular amongst people with smaller wrist sizes since they often ( and probably rightly so) often feel they are being underrepresented and watch companies tend to cater to people with bigger wrist sizes or those favoring larger watches. Of several hundred thousand potential responders only a little over nine hundred respondedand it is quite likely those with smaller wrist sizes or those favoring smaller or more reasonable case sizes are over represented. Thankfully most brands seem to be waking up to the fact that there is a size able demand for smaller watches and seem to be responding by rolling out smaller versions of many models. I am slowly beginning to appreciate more reasonable sizes and I think this is a welcome development.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wibbs
You may well be right there. I was interested in this survey mainly because of a long history of being unable to wear 90% of the exciting new releases, which gets to you after a while! If it weren’t for this, I probably would never have posted this thread. It also seems quite skewed in favour of vintage lovers and people who have even heard of ALS, surely a tiny minority of the watch buying public.Quote:
Originally Posted by RAJEN
Here is a different survey, which is skewed towards Americans: https://theslenderwrist.com/average-...ize-for-a-man/
This fits expectations better, though interestingly most people also assumed their wrist to be smaller than they were, as compared to actual averages.
Here’s our own TZ-UK, UK skewed poll: https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...age-wrist-size
I haven’t found a decent global study.
G Shock is the most popular brand of watch in the world, excluding Apple smart watches. They sold 50 million in less than seven years to 2017 and their sales are continuing to increase as they sold 9 million just last year.
Their size usually start beyond the max of the scale he used and they have been increasing the size of their watches for over a decade now, kind of indicates that there is still a huge market out there for large watches.
Mitch
I must be in a minority. I have no idea. Not a clue. As to how big my wrist is 🤔
I'm sure I must have measured it for a bracelet order or some such at some point but wasn't interested enough to remember the detail - what am I missing?
These results can't be representative surely?! 6.75" average with a penchant for 36-38mm?! Must be influenced by the eastern contingent.
I have a 38mm wrist and prefer 6.25” watches
I don't think you do..... Unless you're in Lilliput. ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by ped
Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk
Enjoyed it anyway though the results are as people expected. So the survey confirmed that most like average size watches with some wrist presence. 36 and under is a bit small and 43 slightly big..
I'm totally average at 6.75". Stop tittering at the back.
I've always thought I had girly wrists and have 36-40mm watches with two outliers - a 42mm Seiko with very short lugs, and a 34mm Tissot. I think 37/38mm is probably the perfect size for me.