Collection: Men's Leather Strap Watches

Men’s watches on a leather strap

Leather makes a watch warmer and a little dressier than steel, and it suits a sports watch as well as a dress watch. Here you’ll find the men’s Citizen and Bulova models that come on leather, from dress watches under 8 mm thick to 46 mm chronographs, most of them powered by Citizen’s light-charged Eco-Drive.

Citizen Eco-Drive on leather

A Citizen men’s Eco-Drive leather watch is one of the easiest watches to own: any light charges it, so it keeps running between wears and never needs a battery. Our guide to how Eco-Drive works explains how long a charge lasts. On this page they fall into three groups:

• Dress: the Axiom AU1062-05E is 40 mm and 7.8 mm thick, with two hands and a date. The Citizen Classic models are between 8.3 and 8.7 mm, and the Rolan BU2110 and BU2112 add an analog day and date with 12/24-hour time.
• Chronographs: the Avion Chrono at 41 mm, the Brycen at 44 mm with a tachymeter, and the Avion at 45 mm, all timing to a fifth of a second for up to 60 minutes.
• Pilot’s and racing watches: the Promaster Skyhawk A-T JY8149-05E and the Perpetual Chrono A-T CB5919-00X set themselves from atomic time signals, and the Promaster Tsuno Chrono Racer has a hand-assembled movement with a flyback chronograph.

The full range is on our men’s Citizen Eco-Drive page.

Bulova on leather

Bulova’s men’s watches on leather lean toward automatics. The Hudson and the Surveyor 96B427 are 39 mm automatics with a date. The Sutton 96A330 and the Prestige 97A206 have skeleton dials that show the movement at work, and the Series X2 brings the same idea to a 41 mm square case. On the quartz side, the rectangular Bulova Classic 96B443 is 29 mm wide and 6.9 mm thick, the Wilton is a 46.5 mm chronograph with a small seconds dial, and the Lunar Pilot brings back the design of the Bulova chronograph worn on the moon in 1971.

Choosing one

Start with where you’ll wear it most. For the office, a thin three-hand watch slips under a shirt cuff: the Axiom, a Citizen Classic or the rectangular Bulova. For weekends, a chronograph like the Brycen or Avion has more going on. Leather also makes a case look a little more compact than a steel bracelet does, so a 44 mm chronograph on leather wears more quietly than the same size on steel. For more slim options on leather and steel, see our men’s dress watches.

Looking after the strap

Leather and water don’t mix, even when the case is rated for swimming. The Tsuno Chrono Racer AV0088-01L is water resistant to 200 m, but its strap will last far longer if you take the watch off to swim. Keep perfume off the leather, let it air out after a warm day, and expect it to soften and shape itself to your wrist over the first few weeks. When a strap wears out, it’s simply replaced: the lug width, in millimetres, tells you which straps fit. Our guide to choosing a bracelet or a strap compares leather with steel, rubber and fabric.

Questions

Which is the thinnest? The rectangular Bulova Classic 96B443 at 6.9 mm, then the Citizen Axiom at 7.8 mm.

Can I swim with a leather-strap watch? Check the case first: at 30 m it’s for splashes and rain only. From 50 m up the case can go swimming, but keep the leather out of the pool and wipe it dry if it gets wet.