The domed-crystal dress watch, before you spend four figures.

The Bambino’s signature is its crystal. It is a strongly domed mineral crystal that rises well above the bezel and bends the dial edge as you tilt your wrist, in the manner of the acrylic-crystal dress watches of the 1950s and 60s. It is the reason the watch looks vintage in photographs and older than its price in person.

Mineral rather than sapphire is the trade for that shape at this cost. It scratches more easily than sapphire and it is cheaper to replace.

Orient builds its own automatic calibers rather than buying them from ETA or Miyota, which is unusual at this price. The Bambino’s movement winds from the wrist, winds by hand from the crown, and hacks, so the seconds stop while you set the time. Orient and our catalogue both quote a 40-hour reserve.

It runs at 21,600 vibrations per hour on 22 jewels per our catalogue entry. The line has run since 2011 as Orient’s accessible way into a mechanical dress watch, and that is still the pitch.

Orient has issued the Bambino in many numbered versions with different dials. Our catalogue lists this entry under a reference that Orient’s own site shows as the Version 9 Sun & Moon, a dial with a day display, a 24-hour register and a sun-and-moon indicator. The watch pictured on this page is a different Bambino dial, and we have not been able to match it to a confirmed reference.

So this page does not tell you which complications the pictured watch carries, what colour the case is, or which caliber number is inside. Confirm the reference on any listing before you buy. Every figure we do state is one that holds across the Bambino line as Orient publishes it.