Wristwatch Review: GameTime Agent Series College Team Watch

If you are looking for an officially licensed team wristwatch, you might try the GameTime Agent series team watch. These watches retail for about $25 on the Gametimeshop.com website, but my wife happened across a Florida Gator watch for me from GameTime at Walmart for $20. The Gametime Agent series watch is a traditional analog watch featuring a stainless steel case back, a silver plastic case, a rotating black bezel, and a black nylon and Velcro strap. The face of the watch features a team logo on a background of team colors.

Agent series watches are available for most major college teams, most pro football teams, many pro basketball teams, several pro hockey teams, several NASCAR drivers, and even the fictional favorite driver Ricky Bobby. My Florida Gator watch has the familiar toothy Gator logo in an orange oval set against a beautiful blue background. It looks great.

According to literature supplied with the Florida Gator watch, the Gametime Agent Series has a quartz movement and is shock resistant and water resistant down to 3 Atmospheres. The Gametime Agent series is covered by a limited lifetime warranty that mandates an $8.50 handling fee to service the watch. When my wife initially bought me the Gator Watch, I was re-assured to see that a tiny plastic spacer was preserving watch battery life by keeping the watch stem from being pressed in. Nothing is more annoying to watch buyers than seeing a battery-powered wristwatch ticking away valuable battery life in a store case.

As a Gator fan, the team logo immediately biases me in favor of this wristwatch. Beyond the officially licensed Gator logo, the Gametime Agent Series watch has sharp styling. The black bezel rotates easily and can be used to measure elapsed time with the first twenty minutes marked with white 1-minute hash marks and additional hash marks every five minutes around the bezel. Legible white numbers are placed on the bezel at 10 minute increments. From a distance or on casual examination, the GameTime Agent series watch does not look cheap and would not be embarrassing in any social situation. Fit and finish are good and meet typical expectations for Chinese-made consumer products.

The watch is light weight and easy to wear all day. This NCAA-licensed watch is sized for men without being a clunker. The Gametime Agent series watch has a 1 and 5/8-inch diameter face and 3/8-inch thick body. My Gator watch does not have the weight, heft, or polish of my Relic analog wrist watches and it doesn't have the high tech look of my Relic LCD analog watch. However, the Gametime Agent Series team watch functions well and the Japanese movement kept accurate time over two days of observation against an accurate clock. Since I have rather large wrists and have trouble finding watches that fit, I was most impressed by the generous 10-inch band length provided.

Of course, no $25 wristwatch is perfect. Even a Gator wristwatch has a few flaws, for example the Velcro wrist strap looks like it would be difficult to remove from the watch. Since the wrist strap covers the stainless case back, it is difficult to read the etching on the back and it would be difficult to change the battery. The Velcro band is backed by typical black nylon webbing and tends to trap heat and perspiration. This NCAA licensed watch also lacks "glow in the dark" or back light features. You also won't find any calendar features on this inexpensive Gator watch. This watch just doesn't provide the date or day. Finally, at $8.50, the warranty handling fee hardly seems worth the trouble if the watch breaks.

Overall, I'm pleased with my GameTime Agent Series wristwatch. It simply looks nice and allows me to show support for the Florida Gators every day.