Timex stopped producing mechanical movements in 1982 and did not revive them until the hand-wound Marlin in 2017, which makes the company's recent automatic push a genuine shift rather than a marketing line. The brand now lists 66 products in its men's automatic collection, with automatic models spread across the E Line, Expedition, MK1, Deepwater and Waterbury families. The smallest of them is on sale.
The E Line 34mm is a revived 1983 dress watch built around a rounded-square TV dial case, and it relaunched last year. It shares the Miyota 8215 automatic movement with the larger 38mm version, but the 34mm is closer to the vintage proportions of the original. Two variants are discounted on Amazon right now: the black dial on a genuine leather strap at $165, down from $259, which is 36 per cent off, and the blue dial on a stainless steel bracelet at $233, down from $279, with a clickable coupon on the product page.
The reason the discount matters is scarcity in the segment. If you want a mechanical watch at 34mm, the options are close to nonexistent; the E Line and the manual-wound Marlin 1965 Reissue are essentially the only two in Timex's catalogue, and one of them is currently well below retail. Small watches have been edging back into fashion for several years, and the 34mm case genuinely reads differently on the wrist than the 38mm, particularly under a cuff.
The trade-offs are the usual ones for an entry-level automatic. The Miyota 8215 is a workhorse, not a showpiece, and it lacks hacking and hand-winding on some variants. A quartz Timex will be more accurate and cheaper to own. But the point of the E Line is mechanical character in a small vintage case, and at $165 the argument is much easier to make than at $259. If the TV dial speaks to you, this is a reasonable entry price.