I’ve been thinking about picking up a new watch for a while now, and I finally pulled the trigger about a month ago. Surprise, it’s not an Apple Watch.

I’ve admired the look of classic watches for a while, but I’ve had digital watches for a long time — since at least my one hour photo days, where it was essential to log the exact time a roll of film came in and what time it was due, and I’ve gone through a succession of cheap Timex and Casio digital watches.

But at the same time, I’ve started to find myself admiring the looks of analog watches, especially the ones with biggish dials and metal bracelets. At the same time, I’ve been aware of the Apple watch, but I don’t really care for the looks of it, and there’s nothing about the functionality that I find compelling.

I started looking a little more seriously at watches the beginning of the summer, and when the battery on my last watch died, decided it was time.

I wanted a chronograph style watch, preferably with Arabic numbers, with a metal bracelet. I was willing to go moderately expensive, but not too expensive. So on a Sunday afternoon, after comparing prices online, I went over to Macy’s to take a look at watches. I ended up with a Tissot Chrono XL.

It was surprisingly heavy when I tried it on – much heavier and substantial than the watches I’d been wearing. I was a little afraid I’d get tired of the weight, but I decided to go for it anyway. I’m glad I did. I love the way this thing looks. It just looks and feels classy, and I quickly got used to the weight of it.

Moving from a digital to analog watch has been interesting. First of all, when I looked in the box, there were no instructions, just a catalog of other Tissot watches. Why?? I’ve just spent a lot of money on a watch, I’m not going to get another one right away. I needed to find out how to set it and how to use the chronograph, not peruse their history.

I was worried that I’d forgotten how to quickly tell time, but that’s been a non-issue. It’s been interesting though, that I now perceive time on the left side of the face to be much more about time before the hour than time after the hour — for example, in the photo above, it more obvious that it’s 20 to 3 than 2:35, as it would be with a digital watch.

I haven’t had to really time anything yet, so I haven’t really used the chronograph functions thoroughly. It did take me a while to find the the functions to reset the hands to their starting position — and it was a bit of a surprise to find that the “seconds” hand is on the bottom-most dial, not the main sweep second hand, which is for the chronograph. And I am finding that the while the hands do glow in the dark, they don’t glow all that brightly, and at that light level, my eyes don’t see that sharply anymore.

But overall, I’m happy with having a really nice watch for a change.