Watches and Legibility

The answer to all of your questions is "yes." It depends on how the whole thing comes together. This can follow from spidery old-style dials to super busy dials, or low contrast, or or or. 

I own this one, but it's not legible in a hurry:

While I don't own anything like this, this genre is expressly and sarcastically anti-legible:

You know it when you see it. If any conscious thought or delay happens when checking time with a new watch, legibility is imperfect. 

Thesis length stuff could go into this, from length and thickness of hands to relative colros and textures and on and on. Size matters. 

As an aside, I normally don't care for the cardinal point numeral indices, as they oddly divide things into quarters and 2/3 of the info is omitted. But on that Exploder, the other indices are about the same size and all, so it matters much less. The goofy Mercedes hand removes any instantaneous ambiguity about which hand is the hour hand.

I'm after the fact adding this photo to echo @Aurelian's point about hand differentiation. The hour hand does not clear the index circle whereas the minute hand does. The second hand is much thinner and a different color. The numeral indices are, of course, large, bold, and high contrast with very minimal serif or ornamentation.

Legibility is really important to me and I think it’s a contrast between hands and dial that is top of my tick list. My most legible watch is easily my Sinn 556a

Followed by my work beater which is a Tandorio (Flieger style) bronze case

I also own a Hamilton khaki field which is particularly comfortable and I enjoy a lot 

I did recently buy a particularly nice Seiko 5 (eBay find) with a beautiful pale blue dial and silver dauphine hands. This was a little stunner that I planned to do a light retro on but alas I really couldn’t get on with it. 

In the wrong light I couldn’t see the hands properly, and was constantly doing a double take to read the time. This watch went to my son girlfriend who loves it, it just wasn’t legible enough for me 👍

A hand set can improve or detract from legibility.

I never have any trouble reading this at a glance:

However, with the same type of hands:

The problem with this is that the minute and hour hands are too close to the same size. I never trust my first glance. (Color on the second hand usually helps legibility too.)

This watch gets me confused between the second and minute hands.  Due to the dial, color would not help.  To be fair, it probably would have been more legible to me 20 years ago.

 ‘To be fair, it probably would have been more legible to me 20 years ago.’ You’re not wrong with that Greg, also a problem for me 😂

If you can read a watch well why wear it. A watch is a tool . Not just a fashion statement.

• Probly my most legible watch, but most of mine are simple bold tool watch types. Just a simple man.

This is my contender for the most legible watch. Dark dial, bright obtrusive hands and shining arabic numerals at every index. 

Elsewhere I've written about my problem with hands where my eye can't instinctively follow them out from the center.

The contrasting portion of that hour hand is basically floating out in space and you have to scan to find it.

And here is the Goofus of hand legibility

Damn, they are all so slender and hard to find, and while technically the hour hand is visibly shorter and the seconds hand is narrower still, my eye has to circle around once to figure this all out, then again to actually read the time. Having a promo image on the dial doesn't help either.

Unless the light is just right, this Serica is pretty hard to read.  The DOXA and Boldr however are really easy.  Everything else is somewhere in the middle.  Except an Apple Watch, but that's cheating.

Wow. That Seiko 5 is a stunner. Love the dial. 

To me it's a mixture of contrast and size relation between hands and dial, overall layout of the dial (including the make of the indexes), and potential points of glare (AR coating, glossy or matte finishes, glaring domed crystal etc.).

Dial size on the other hand isn't as much of a factor in my experience (but then again, my eyesight is still good).

The scale of legibility would go something like that: <1 second between looking at the watch and figuring out the time: good legibility

1-1.5 seconds: mediocre legibility

>1.5 seconds: Might as well calculate the time of day from the position of the sun.

My most legible watches would be my Oris BCPD as well as my San Martin Type-A Flieger.

My least legible watch would be that Pagani Daytona homage.

The ease at which you discern the time. Size, contrast,  & clutter.  Old eyes suffer easily. Time to bid adieu to several pieces.  Such as ......

Now this is my most 'illegible' watch the alpina seastrong heritage, it was a watch I lusted after for months and I love it. Now it looks pretty legible in the bright sunlight but in artificial light the hands seem to disappear, maybe to do with white hands on a cream face,not much contrast. But I still love it,even though it takes a second or two to read it.

I'm not convinced that any of my watches are particularly legible.

I like chronographs.  I like world timers.  I like little subdials that whirl around.  I like shiny hands paired with shiny dials. I have shockingly little regard for lume.

Photo taken with potato in low light mostly intentional to highlight.

Yeah, maybe I’m just old, but that Seiko minute hand is brutal. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder how people get paid for this stuff. 

As some have pointed out, I think a major component of “legibility” is being able to read the time quickly. Not just is the dial uncluttered and do the markings stand out, but can you put it all together visually with just a glance. 
 

The other thing I’m thinking is that not every watch needs to be easy to read quickly. Think of all the beautiful dials you see around here. It’s unlikely any of them help legibility. Sometimes it’s enough for a watch to be pretty.  I guess my point is that tool watches should probably be easy to read (Breitling, I’m looking at you), but looking good can be the priority for dress watches. 

I’d say it’s pretty much everything you mentioned and I feel the Sinn is about a legible as it gets! 😊👍

For me, the most important aspects to legibility are the contrast between the dial and the hands, as well as the size of the hands. The hour hand should be noticeably shorter than the minutes hand, so that there is no confusion. I tend to like chronographs, and although sub dials that contrast with the rest of the dial may be visually appealing, they serve to severely hamper visibility.

One of my most legible watches is my Omega Speedmaster 57. This is a chronograph, but the sub dials are similar in color to the rest of the dial, so they don't interfere with legibility. Even though the SS hands don't contrast as well with the black dial as white hands might, they are faceted in such a way that they always seem to catch the light in such a way that both hands stand out from the dial. The date window at 6 o'clock is large enough that even with my aging old man eyes, it's still easy to read.

I find that Sinn makes some of the most legible dials. I have 3 Sinn watches, two of them chronographs, and all 3 are easy to read at a glance due to the stark contrast between hands and dial.

I also find that black dials tend to provide the best contrast. White dials can work great for legibility as well, but they don't seem to have the same level of contrast that black dials offer.

If there is very little contrast between the dial and hands, I find that I often have to play with the positioning of a watch to get the proper lighting to read the time. I still feel that my silver dial OP36 is a beautiful watch, but it's a helluva tough watch to read the time with a quick glance.

The glare from the crystal can also hamper visibility. My Santos has great contrast between the dial and hands, but the curved crystal can sometimes end up causing reflections depending on the lighting and the angle of the watch.

For me, I like a lot of lume. Had a dress watch that had dark hands on a dark dial and it completely drove me nuts. Thus I ended up with a lot of divers. 

Maybe it was @benswatchclub who first indicated to me how helpful a minute hand that reaches to the inside edge of the minute track and an hour hand that reaches only as far as the inside edge of the indices. That has actually been something I look for now, but will not entirely count out if a watch does not quite meet. 

No need to apologize for an Explorer I pic. The piece is a timeless classic and very legible. Everything described in this post nailed it @OscarKlosoff  "You'll know it when you see it." BTW please keep posting Explorer. The lume makes it very legible at night 

I have the Explorer (124270) and the Pepsi (126710BLRO), the latter being my first watch with the cyclops.  Anything around 3 gets imprecise.  The Explorer is much more legible, and much easier to set.    

Thanks for all the comments! This is probably my least legible watch… ☀️

Legibility is important to me, so most of my watches are diver and field watches that inherently have good legibility (i.e., high contrast, easily-read hands, easily-determined indices and orientation). One watch of mine had poor legibility due to the reflective dauphine hands disappearing into the busy chrono dial in most lighting conditions ( 5:37 below) ... so I fixed it with some lumed pencil hands (3:55 further below):

I think sinn 556 is the most legible ever maybe. I like the Tudor FXD too. Something like this is very legible too. Just minutes and hours. No fuss. 

My most legible:

My least legible:

It's the totality of the design.  How the individual parts, from color, to shape, to layout, to contrast; the sum of the parts make the whole called legibility.

My two least legible watches are below.

First is hard to read as it is small and has poor contrast.

Second requires glasses for the digital display and the single 24 hour hand is taking some getting used to.

I find size, simplicity and contrast the main factors for legibility

I'm late to the party, but always like to play!  Love those Sinn s, will have to add one to my quiver one day.

Most legible - my pretend GS Prospex Lx diver!  Ka-pow - can't not see the time instantly.  Also punch in the face lume that blazes like another sun all night.  And most of my other divers are pretty close behind: 

Least readable - my 'I bought it for the handmade dial and damn the legibility ' Kurono Grand Mori.  The hands are both fully polished and look very similar at a glance.  

Other watches I've tried on have had obscene legibility, but I think if the design appeals to you then sometimes it's worthwhile to sacrifice legibility in the name of art if you really enjoy.

I’m curious if any SBGA413 owners have had issues with legibility … I’ve heard it mentioned as an issue (I still am in love with the design despite this potential drawback)

I'm in my 50's, my close-up vision has gotten worse in recent years and I work in a job where I'm always checking the time. Thus, legibility is a big issue for me. Most of my watches are tool watches and are very easy to read at a glance. The two best ones are probably my Speedmaster and Black Bay Steel (41mm.) Large black dials, white hands, easy to see minute markers. 

The two WORST ones, at least in terms of contrast and reflection are a Hamilton Khaki Chrono and a G-Shock. They look pretty good in the photos, but in bad light, they are virtually (for me) unreadable.