After owning the watch for almost a year, I got a review for you, this little guy, the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m T49961 wristwatch. Let’s jump into this particular wristwatch good, great, bad, and ugly.
Pros of Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m
So on the good side, this guy’s actually relatively small on the wrist. So many of your watches these days are enormous dinner plates, size watches that it’s nice to have something that’s relatively trim. This watch is 40 millimeters overall. Even a little bit big on me, I still got very small wrists. It’s a nice intermediate size that’ll look good on a lot of different people.
It’s also relatively thin. You’re looking at about 11 millimeters of overall thickness on the wrist, so it’ll get under your shirt cuff with no problem. The strap on the watch is a nylon strap, and it’s okay. It’s not a NATO strap in that there’s no connection between these two sides, but because these are just 20-millimeter lugs with spring bars, you can put a NATO strap on this watch with no problem.
The next thing is the date window on Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is well present. You can see the date even though it is pretty tiny. That’s always nice for me, at least without a date window; it’s easy to forget what day of the month it is and so on.
Another point is that if you pull the crown out to the very first position, you should be able to change the date very quickly, which is handy if you are in a month with only 30 days. This watch has no perpetual calendar, so you must adjust it on the 30-day or 28-day months.
Next, the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is light compared to many other watches that look like jewelry but should probably be stolen because they will be expensive. This is just a watch. Somebody will look at your wrist and never say anything else, just like he’s wearing a watch.
It’s suitable for any situation where you don’t want to display flashy jewelry or, frankly, you don’t care. Next thing, though, if you want to be more striking, you’ve got a lot of good color options on this watch. If you go to the Timex website or Amazon, you can see many different options. You can get leather straps, you can get different colors second-hand, and you can get all kinds of other things in this same basic style.
The next thing is that the case is made of metal, which is good. Many inexpensive watches tend to be plastic, sometimes not so fantastic. I prefer a metal case watch as it adds more weight to the wrist, which feels nice and more durable. The case Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is a variety of metals. Timex stated that the back is stainless steel. They don’t make any claims about the rest of it, but so far, it seems fine.
Let’s talk about the accuracy of the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m. To give you a sense, most Quartz watches promise something between 10 and 15 seconds a month that they will be off. If you let the watch run for a month and set it to atomic time at the start, at the end of the month, it’ll probably be about 15 seconds off.
Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is losing about eight seconds a month, so it’s in the middle of the pack. This is doing well in terms of Quartz relative to mechanical watches. Many high-end mechanical watches use the COSC spec, meaning they lose up to two seconds a day, not a month.
Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m lost eight seconds a month, which will be way more accurate than most Rolex or Patex. It’s just a fact of life with Quartz, but many people don’t know.
Finally, on the good side, the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is $40, and that’s not bad at all. In fact, for a metal case watch with a date, you can’t argue too hard with $40. At the end of the day, if something happens to it, it gets lost, stolen, injured, or destroyed. You’re out $40, and you can buy another one. So that’s what’s good about Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m.
It’s $40, which is accurate, the case is metal, and you got a bunch of different color options. It’s not so flashy, and the date window is present. Then it’s got a quick set to the strap, and the size is good.
Great Features of Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m
Firstly, what’s great about this watch is the Indiglo feature. That means it lights up if you press in on the crown from the early stage. That’s because a little bit of a glowing material lights up behind the watch. I ran the test in my special Testing Lab, or I called it on the bathroom floor.
For the test, we have the Casio Oceanus, Citizen Professional Co-drive, Perpetual, a diver, and of course, the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m. The loom on the Timex could be more impressive compared to Casio or Citizen. However, if I pinch the crown, Indiglo mode continues, and you can read it effectively. If I unpin, it goes away, and that’s how the Indiglo works.
It’s got some advantages over a conventional glow-in-the-dark loom like you see on other watches. As you see the white substance in the watch hand, it doesn’t matter whether the loom is charged or uncharged. You could be underground for three weeks as a mole person and hit the button, and it will still light up.
The Indiglo also doesn’t require adjusted eyes to read. The loom on Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is subtle, so if you’re coming in from the outside and suddenly need to read your watch, this will provide a lot more light than the loom will naturally. So you don’t need adjusted eyes, and it’s a neat little feature. I prefer a conventional passive loom, but this works nicely, and there’s no real objection.
That’s what’s excellent about Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m. It offers something slightly different than many lower-end watches, which generally don’t have a good loom, so you can’t read them at night.
Cons of Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m
First, Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is a $40 watch, so you expect some things in a $40 watch that could be better. For instance, the second hand does not necessarily line up with the markers. In my case, it’s doing that, but it will vary depending on where the second hand is. Depending on the watch’s position, it goes down further, ongoing out of sync.
The next thing is the movement. It needs some features, such as not having a quick change hour, which allows you to change the hour without moving the minutes and seconds; for instance, changing time zones would take quite some time to adjust the time.
It has no solar charging, perpetual calendar, or radio control, but it’s a $40 watch. You’re going to get those things at a different price. And then, finally, the crystal on the watch is a mineral. That means it will scratch up more readily than Sapphire or something like that. After some years, you’ll have a fair amount of scratching and wear on the crystal.
But that is something to remember; some things are slightly unpleasant, even given the price. Firstly, the date on Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m needs to be revised to read. It’s okay if you get up close to it, but from a distance, it’s tiny and challenging sometimes.
It’s also not lit up by the Indiglo feature, as shown in the picture below. So you won’t be able to read the date at night, but that’s also the case on most watches that use a date window and conventional loop. The dial on this watch is also crowded for my taste. I prefer a minimalist watch, like the Casio Oceanus, with only markers and hands. It’s straightforward to read at a glance.
For Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m, it’s still okay, but I wish they’d put less crap on the dial, but that’s, that’s just me. The second hand has a shake through it. It’s okay, but it seems weird and cheap, mainly if you are used to higher-end movements where the second hand is exact. It hits the marker precisely and doesn’t shake around much once it arrives.
That’s weird, even compared to other, more inexpensive Quartz like the Casio, and you don’t see that kind of shake. The next thing that is becoming a much bigger problem is that there needs to be a crown guard on this watch. On other watches, a metal structure prevents something from just whacking into the side of the crown. It provides a ramp; if something hits the watch, it will bounce away from the crown.
If something comes in from the side, it will apply a lot of force to the side of the crown. Some people on the Amazon review forums have been reporting that the crown is easy to break off entirely, and that’s no good. Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m’s crown is not a screw-down crown, so it doesn’t have that sort of robustness, and the lack of a crown guard makes it a little bit lacking.
Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is water resistant but only 50 meters water resistant. That’s the level where you’re probably okay swimming, or if it’s raining, doing dishes, or getting tossed into the pool, you’ll be okay. Still, vigorous swimming, showering, and high-pressure water could cause problems. So for a watch meant to be the Expedition, that seems slightly off. I’d like to see a hundred meters of water resistance, so you don’t have to think twice about it. A hundred meters is good to go for anything but scuba diving.
Then finally, on the bad side, which is borderline ugly, this watch has no low battery indicator. Most higher-end quartz watches have some way of showing that the battery is low in the last day or week or whatever of battery life; usually, it’s a week.
It’ll start jumping two seconds every time the hand moves rather than just one, and that indicates to you that the battery’s getting low, so you need to change the battery. If it’s a solar watch just by putting it in the sun, or you need to get the battery swapped out, and Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m has no such indicator.
The watch could die in 10 minutes, and I am none the wiser. I have no way of knowing how good this battery is, except no one when I bought the watch or when the last time I had the battery changed was. This is ugly if you need to depend on your watch. Mainly because, unlike a quartz watch with a solar panel built into it, you need to buy a battery and swap it in there or take it through a jeweler rather than just setting it in the window for a couple of minutes to get better.
I’m not too fond of the lack of a low battery indicator, and I’d like to see that in the future because it’s never good to have your watch stopped utterly unexpectedly. It’s one advantage that mechanicals have, so you always know that they’re going to be running because if they’re going to die, they’ll do so slowly.
That’s what’s terrible about the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m. There’s no low battery indicator, and the water resistance is okay but different from what I’d like to see on something called Expedition. The loom on it could be better; Indiglo makes it up, and for the crown, the guard is missing entirely, and that’s a little dangerous.
The second hand is pretty shaky, the dial face is crowded, the date’s a little out of the read, and some other stuff that could be much better, but it is acceptable for $40.
Ugly Sides of Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m
First, I’ve owned two of the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m. The first one I bought was a lemon. The date didn’t change whatsoever, and the second hand was rattley. The second one still has some shake through it, but the other one was incredibly rattley, which makes me think it was damaged during the shipping, or it was just a defective watch.
Either way, I sent it back and got a new one. But that’s still indicative of some quality control issues. The second issue is that the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is quite popular as a loud watch, especially when you put this watch down on a desk or something like that; it is very loud.
It’s much more audible than any other Quartz watch I own, to the extent that people comment a lot about it on Amazon reviews. You hear that “tik, tik, tik” sound very clearly. It’s not a big problem, but if you hold it up the ear or even close to your face, you can hear it. So that is something you must keep in mind if you like a silent watch for whatever reason.
My Verdict on Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m
I’m a bit of a watch snob. I like watches, especially higher-end watches. I’m not a fan of Rolex, Patek Philippe, and that old affair, but just lovely, high-quality, and great watches. And Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is not a great watch. It’s missing many features that can make a Quartz movement exciting and compelling.
It’s missing things like the radio sync, solar charging, and perpetual calendar, those sorts of things are great, but this doesn’t have them. It’s also not well enough made that it lacks craftsmanship and is relatively cheaply made.
It could be more robust, and I am not confident in it as a tool as it has no end-life indicators. You don’t know when it’s going to stop. It’s got borderline water resistance, it’s probably fine, and I’m being just dramatic.
But still, there were questions about the long-term durability, particularly the crown and then the crystal, because it’s mineral. And so, if you are a watch snob and you’re looking for something great that you can be proud of and trust, the Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is not one of them.
Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m is a fine watch for the price tag. It’s cheap and has good basic features such as the Indiglo and the construction’s fine. It’s readable, and it’s accurate. If you want something pretty inexpensive or you need something for travel, then this is something you should consider because you’re going to buy it, you’re going to wear it, it’ll serve you well for a while, it’ll die, and then you’ll buy another one for $40.
Then that’ll be just fine, but the thing is, even if it’s never going to be great, it will be good enough. And if that’s what you’re looking for, a watch that’s good enough, Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m, is an excellent choice.
I hope this review for Timex Expedition Indiglo WR50m was interesting and that you enjoyed reading it and had a good time.