Tissot PRX · Buyer’s guide · September 2026
Which Tissot PRX should you buy?
Three decisions, in this order: quartz or automatic, 35mm or 40mm, steel or gold. Get the first one right and the rest follow.
Decision one: quartz or Powermatic 80
This is the only choice that really changes the watch. Everything else is taste.
The quartz PRX is thinner, lighter, cheaper, and keeps better time. It has a solid caseback and a battery you replace every few years.
The Powermatic 80 is the automatic. It is noticeably thicker on the wrist, costs meaningfully more, and keeps worse time than a R300 quartz, and it is the one almost everyone actually wants, because of the 80-hour power reserve and the exhibition caseback. Put it down on a Friday, pick it up on Monday, still running.
- Power reserve
- 80 hrs
- Case
- 35mm
- Movement
- Auto
- Caseback
- Glass
If the point of buying a mechanical watch is that it is mechanical, pay for the Powermatic. If you want a PRX because you like how it looks and you would rather not think about it, the quartz is genuinely the smarter buy and nobody will know from across a table.
Decision two: 35mm or 40mm
The PRX is a 1970s integrated-bracelet design, so it wears wider than the case measurement suggests. The 40mm is the original proportion and reads as a men’s watch. The 35mm is not a compromise version. It is the same watch, the same movement, better suited to smaller wrists and increasingly bought by everyone.
If your wrist is under about 17cm, try the 35mm first.
Decision three: steel or gold
Steel is the default and it is the one that disappears under a cuff. The gold-tone PVD version is the one people notice, and on the champagne dial it is the closest thing under a thousand dollars to the 1970s luxury-sports look the PRX is quoting.
What it costs, landed
List is $812.85. The reader code below brings it to $731.57. Here is what that becomes by the time it is on your wrist in South Africa, because the sticker is never the number that matters.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| List price | $812.85 |
| With code LUNGELONCANANA | $731.57 |
| Shipping, VAT, clearing, bank fee | +R3,380 |
| Landed, South Africa | R15,136 |
| Warranty | 1 year, dealer |
That assumes roughly $40 shipping, 15% VAT on the customs value plus a 10% uplift, about R350 clearing, and a 2.75% bank foreign-transaction fee. Watches are duty-free into South Africa under Chapter 91. Buying in the US, ignore everything below the code.
This is a grey-market retailer, not the keenest price on the internet. What the code buys you is a fair number on a broad catalogue, payment terms including Afterpay, Klarna and Zip, and one basket instead of four. What it does not buy you is a Tissot warranty; cover is the dealer’s, for a year.
Search the reference number before you order. If someone beats this landed, buy there. We would rather you did that than felt caught out later.
10% off at Watches of America
Our reader code. It applies to the gold Powermatic above and across the catalogue.
Affiliate link, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you
This page contains affiliate links and a discount code we earn from. It has not changed what we published: the page says plainly that this is not the keenest price available and tells you to check the reference number elsewhere first, which costs us the commission on anyone who does. We would rather be the site you check than the site you buy from once.
GrayWatches · Independent grey-market watch research · Some links are affiliate links, always disclosed on the page.