News · Timex
Timex gives the Waterbury a meca-quartz chronograph and a red pusher
Timex has dropped a mechanical chronograph module into a 39mm Waterbury, added a tachymeter bezel and a rally strap, and priced it at US$319.
Hen & Mills Editorial · 2 min read · 15 August 2026
The Waterbury is where Timex keeps its history. The line is named for the Connecticut town the company has been building watches in since 1854, and it usually plays things straight. This one has been sent to the track.
The chronograph is the news, but the module behind it is the reason to care. Timex has gone meca-quartz, which is the difference between a US$319 watch an enthusiast will actually enjoy using and one that just sits there telling the time.
The click you are paying for
A standard quartz chronograph runs the stopwatch off the same circuit as the timekeeping. The seconds hand ticks along in soft one-second steps and the reset drifts back to zero. Meca-quartz puts a mechanical chronograph module on top of a quartz base, and everything your thumb does changes. The pusher has a crisp mechanical click. The chronograph seconds hand sweeps in fine little jumps. Reset flies it back to twelve with a snap.
It is the feel of a proper mechanical chrono for a fraction of the money, and it ruins you slightly. Go back to a cheap all-quartz chronograph afterwards and the pushers feel limp.
Two registers and one red pusher
The styling goes hard at motorsport and mostly earns it. Brushed steel case at 39mm, black dial, two contrasting sub-dials, a fixed black tachymeter bezel for working out average speed over a measured mile, and a single red anodised pusher doing all the colour work on an otherwise sober watch.
Two registers keep the dial clean where a third would start crowding it, and 39mm is a sensible number in a category where everyone else is still building 42mm and up. The strap is perforated black leather, rally style, with the holes that started life as a way of keeping a driver's wrist cool. The crystal is double-domed K1 with an anti-reflective treatment, so you get the soft vintage curve without paying sapphire money. Applied indices, lumed hands, all of it easy to read.
The red pusher is a little try-hard. Easy enough to live with.
Fifty metres, and no local price
Water resistance is 50 metres. Rain and a splash are fine, swimming is pushing it.
What US$319 buys is that pusher feel and a genuinely handsome racing chronograph, and on both counts it gives you more than the number suggests. Timex hasn't put a price on it here, so getting your thumb on that pusher means importing one.
