Illuminating Watch Brands for After Hours

While we could build a compilation that covers watches and watch brands for business people or even celebrities alike, let’s do something different. In this list, we cover watches that are fit for one of the night missions that go down in any of the Mission Impossible films.

Who is the watch for? Well, that depends on where your interests lie. If you’re someone who:

• Works late into the night
• Has a love of hiking/traveling or diving?
• Or even prefer taking walks in the evening

Citizen’s Entire Military Collection

The choice of Citizen in illuminating paint is called the Natulite. Now, while it’s used in most of their high-quality watches, the collection we recommend is the one with military-style offerings. The Lume in these collection lasts for a minimum of about 7 hours, which is one of the best records in the industry. This is despite the fact that Lume and even the movements use Citizen’s Eco-drive technology to charge up.

LumiBrite Makes Seiko Watches Perfect Night Companions

Seiko’s apparent answer to other brands with luminous watches comes in the form of the LumiBrite technology. The tech charges in just around 10 minutes when exposed to sunlight or artificial light and lasts for around 5 hours in the dark.

Now, the best thing about this tech (other than it’s safe, of course) is that it’s used in most Seiko watches nowadays. From their dive watches to their military-grade ones, Seiko gives a bit of variety.

Timex Indigo Watches Make Up the Cream

Unlike other watches, Timex doesn’t concern itself much with mechanical movements. Instead, they stick strictly to the use of quartz watches. This way, they can cram in as many features as their followers can want into a watch. One of their best is the Indiglo Back-lit technology 

Literally, you can go for a vintage-looking (though slightly chunky) timepiece like the Timex Weekender or you can go for something modern and a bit militaristic like a field watch, in particular, the Timex Expedition Rugged Core Analog Field watch. It all depends on your taste when it comes to Timex. The only issue you have to worry about with Timex watches though, is that somewhat disappointing resale value of theirs. But at the same time, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that their watches are budget-friendly.

Casio’s Neo-Brite Tech is Your Best Bang for Buck

Most, if not all of Casio watches, have the Neo-brite technology included. Better yet, you can either go with Casio’s analog watches in the form of their Sports line-up if you want something budget-friendly. Otherwise, go for their Casio G-shock collection. You’ll find anything from bulky, but performance-type timepieces to Illuminators with square, bold faces. Nevertheless, the one thing that remains the norm with this collection is that most high-quality models are rugged.

Expect watches here to last a comfortable 5-8 hours, for eyes well-adjusted to the dark. It’s not the best on the list, but for the price, we doubt anyone will complain much.

The Luminox Brand

With Luminox, they clearly draw their inspirations from their name.

The watchmaker creates watches made for the military, or to be more specific, their field operations. As a result of that, their collections; Sea, Air, and Land (following the different environments that field missions are staged) are filled with watches that glow brightly at night. All due to the company’s Luminox illumination glass tubes called LLT (LLT = Luminox Light Technology). The tubes are made up of borosilicate glass capsules, which are known for lighting up at night, with no impact on the power reserve. This all equals 25 years of use. We recommend the collection that best fits your travel choice. It’s in the best position to meet your preferences after all.

Other features to expect from the five above:

1: Except the luminous watches from Seiko, other watchmakers use a quartz movement. So, expect: 2: Efficient timekeeping (even the Seiko models due to their powerful movements) 3: Long power reserves (more than 10 years for quartz watches and 55+ hours for Seiko watches) 4: No manual winding 5: “Beater Watch” sizes

Our Final Thoughts

There are other mentions like the PRC 200 models from Tissot and even timepieces from lesser-known companies like Mondaine (the watches that use Tritium). Nonetheless, the difference between these ones and the ones on our list is that they offer much more than just illumination at night. The watches’ lume is just another part of the package that the manufacturers behind the watches above got right.