The Best Affordable Dress Watch Under $400 Just Got Better

The smaller Orient Bambino got slimmer and gained a feature.

Published June 11, 2024

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Ask just about any watch enthusiast for an entry-level, affordable dress watch recommendation, and nine out of ten times their answer will be the same: Get an Orient Bambino.

The Bambino line from the Japanese brand has long been adored for its affordability, classic styling and robust automatic movement. The chief complaint about the Bambino in years past was that it was too large for a dress watch, with its case diameter clocking in above 40mm.

Orient fixed this in 2022 when it released a smaller 38mm version of its flagship dress watch with a lug-to-lug of just 44mm, and now the brand has made yet another improvement by releasing a stellar new version of the smaller Bambino.

Orient Bambino 38 Small Seconds

$340 at First Class Watches

Small Meets Small Seconds

The new Bambino has the same 38.4mm case size as the 2022 release, but it houses a different movement. Rather than the Orient Caliber F6724 movement, the new version receives the Caliber F6222.

Like the F6724, the F6222 is an in-house automatic caliber that features both hacking and hand winding and boasts a power reserve of 40 hours. So what’s the difference?

The F6222 displays its seconds via a small seconds display at 6 o’clock in place of a central seconds hand. This gives the new watches a more traditional look to better match their elegant dials with their applied Roman numeral indices.

orient watch on a mans wrist — The smaller case size combined with the small seconds complication makes for one wearable and elegant dress watch.

What’s more, the use of the small seconds counter allows the watch to be a half-millimeter slimmer, as it measures just 12mm thick as opposed to the 12.5-mm thickness of the older central-seconds version.

We’ve seen Bambinos with the small seconds display before, but only in the larger 40.5mm version. This marks the first time the small Bambino case has been combined with the small seconds complication. And to my eye, it’s a match made in heaven.

Pricing and Availability

There are four versions of the new Orient Bambino 38 Small Seconds, all of which feature stainless steel cases with mineral crystals on front and back and come on crocodile-imprinted calf leather straps.

There’s a black-dial version with a contrasting silver small seconds display, a white dial with blue hands and a cream dial with blue hands — my pick of the bunch as I think it looks the most elegant. There’s also a version with a gold-tone case, gold-tone hands and indices and a silver dial.

The watches haven’t hit U.S. retailers yet, but when they do, it appears they’ll be priced at $340, with the gold-tone version costing slightly more at $365. Those prices are a steal for an attractive and wearable automatic dress watch from known brand, but given this is Orient we’re talking about, the odds are high that you’ll be able to find the new Bambino on sale for significantly less — making it even harder to pass up..