The Best Bulova Watches at Prices We Love

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Sure, your grandfather probably wore a Bulova, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t cool. Hype watches of today, they surely are not, but if we hop on our back-in-the-day cycle, Bulova genuinely made some of the most radical and innovative timepieces of the 20th century. It’s a legacy that lives on. The brand continues to make superb contemporary watches and vintage inspired pieces worthy of admiration for their high quality and relative affordability. We especially love our best overall pick, the Oceanographer “Devil Diver,” a fun and funky cushion-case dive watch they recently revived from their archives.

Why You Should Buy a Bulova Watch

Initially founded in 1875 in New York City by Joseph Bulova, a Bohemian immigrant to the U.S. In 1912, he returned to Europe to open a factory in Biel, Switzerland, where he pioneered standardization and mass production in watchmaking. A revolutionary concept to be sure, but perhaps more groundbreaking were the brand’s forays into advertising and marketing. Bulova was the first company to air a commercial on radio in 1926 and also the first to advertise on television in 1941. After all, what good is the capacity to make pieces en masse without demand?

Related: Complete Guide to Buying a Vintage Watch for Burgeoning Collectors

Throughout the ’60s, Bulova reigned supreme as the king of American watchmakers in terms of advertising budgets, and by the end of the decade had expanded into 20,000 retail locations. Bulova may have talked the talk with marketing firsts, but the brand also walked the walk with its watch making—launching a water-resistant piece in the 1930s, outfitting the U.S. military during WWII, the CIA during the cold war, and NASA’s lunar missions with cutting-edge timekeeping equipment. They also developed a tuning fork mechanism for a fully-electronic analog wristwatch (the Acutron) to create the most accurate piece in the world at the time.

Today the brand is owned by the Citizen Watch Company, but is still based in New York. A shadow of the juggernaut it once was, the brand still produces an incredible number of models from its Precisionist, Marine Star, and CURV collections, as well as the Archive Series of vintage inspired watches.

Once upon a time (or a few paragraphs ago), you might have thought Bulova was a watch brand for old people. Now you know they make more than a few sophisticated timepieces for everyone.

Related: The Best Watches Under $500 to Wear in 2023

Why You Should Trust Me

I’ve been collecting watches for nearly as long as I’ve been able to tell time. Around the age of 10, I started disassembling pocket watches to see what makes them tick. Today, I feel naked if I accidentally leave the house without a watch on my wrist—and, yes, I’ll go back and get one. (Horology or OCD? Only my shrink knows for sure.) Currently, my cache includes a variety of vintage and contemporary pieces from microbrands to G-Shock. Most days, I wear an Explorer II (Ref. 226570), but my grandmother’s Mickey Mouse watch will always be my favorite.

Best Overall Bulova Watch: Oceanographer “Devil Diver”

You don’t need to have lived through the ‘70s to feel nostalgia for the disco decade. That’s why Bulova went back in time and their archives to revive its Oceanographer "Devil Diver." The green dial and black and green unidirectional bezel on this cushion case dive watchare fun and funky. The stainless-steel, screw-back case combined with screw-down crown yields an out-of-sight 200 meters (or 666 feet for anyone wondering about the name) of water resistance, and protects a self-winding mechanical movement with a 42-hour power reserve. For sure, it’s a watch that would have been right at home on the dance floor at Studio 54, a beach in Puerto Vallarta, or even the first half of your neighbor's key party. But today it’s my favorite piece out of the Bulova catalog.

• CASE: Stainless steel

• MOVEMENT: Miyota 821D

• DIAL: Green

• SIZE: 44mm

• STRAP: Stainless-steel bracelet

Best Intro to Bulova Watch: Hack Watch

For anyone who digs a military style field watch, the Hack is a great affordable option. It’s a contemporary ode to a watch that served on the wrists of soldiers in WWII. The classic 38mm size case houses a time-only Japanese automatic movement with a hacking seconds function for synchronization (aka stop seconds.) The ivory dial uses Arabic numerals to tell the time in both standard and Zulu formats. All in all, it would be an easy piece to make part of your own standard issue.

• CASE: Stainless steel

• MOVEMENT: Miyota Caliber 82S0

• DIAL: Cream

• SIZE: 38mm

• STRAP: Leather

Best Bulova Watch for the Traveler: Oceanographer GMT

The vintage-inspired Oceanographer GMT takes the cushion-case shape of the brand’s classic Devil Diver design and adds a GMT function. At 41mm wide and 14.6mm thick, the watch has a domed sapphire crystal and screw-down crown. The case provides for 200 meters of water resistance. But the real hook is inside. The Miyota 9075 provides hacking, hand winding, and a date function. More importantly for a GMT, a traveler can use the crown to set the main hour hand to a new time zone when they land without affecting the other hands. If you pass midnight, the date jumps automatically with the local hour hand either way. So, whether you’re flying east to west or west to east, the Oceanographer GMT makes it easy to find the time.

• CASE: Stainless steel

• MOVEMENT: Miyota Caliber 9075

• DIAL: Blue

• SIZE: 41mm

• STRAP: Stainless-steel bracelet

Best Bulova Chronograph Watch: Lunar Pilot

Sure, the Omega Speedmaster is universally known as the “moon watch.” But astronaut David Scott wore a Bulova on the lunar surface—after his NASA-issued Omega popped its crystal in the middle of the Apollo 15 mission. This special edition Lunar Pilot Chronograph pays tribute to that prototype, but with a few upgrades. The case is constructed from solid 316L surgical-grade stainless steel case and is sandblast finished. The crystal covering the chronograph is now sapphire with an anti-reflective coating, and the movement has been updated with high performance quartz that is accurate to a few seconds a year. It only takes a few days to get to the moon, so if you’re going you can probably just set it and forget it.

• CASE: Stainless steel

• MOVEMENT: Bulova NP20 quartz

• DIAL: Black

• SIZE: 45mm

• STRAP: Leather

More Bulova Watches We Love