Choosing a watch for yourself is tough enough, but the difficulty factor expands exponentially when you are trying to choose a watch for someone else.

Whether you like it or not, their taste in watches may be different from yours.

Notice we said ‘clever watch gifting’ in the title, not smart watch gifting, because while smart watches are one of the strongest watch trends in years, many people are still smart watch resistant and want a good old fashioned analog, preferably with a good old fashioned automatic movement.

The other major hurdle for the uninitiated is the problem of the watch genre.

There are many types, including dress watches, divers, pilot’s watches, sports watches, simple three handers or complex chronographs.

Use our guide to whittle down the vast and perplexing choices that are out there and hone in on the personality of the person for whom you are buying the watch.


Smart Watch

The smart watch is the mother of all smartphone accessories.

Once the choice of tech nerds, the smart watch has become a must have accessory for those who love to keep track of their lives and their fitness levels.

The smart watch can beam important notifications straight to your wrist, and run native apps as well as perform something as perfunctory as tell the time.

Today's best models can also perform any number of neat and useful tricks, some of which include enabling you to search the internet with your voice, keeping track of your exercise regimen over GPS, purchasing your goods at the grocery store without reaching for your wallet, and keeping track of every step you take.

Like many electronic devices, the smart watch is currently locked in a battle for operating system supremacy, and the key players include all the usual suspects: Samsung with the GS2 system, Android Wear, Google and who else, Apple.

So, your guiding rule of thumb for buying a smart watch is to match it to the recipient’s phone.


Diver Watch

Diver’s watches are never in fashion because they never go out of fashion.

The Diver has remained a firm favorite among sporty types since their introduction in the 1950s, and are the ideal watch for those who love to combine on land precision and practicality with some wet and wild adventures in and on the water.

If you’re going to buy a dive watch don’t settle for anything less than 150 meters water resistance, preferably 200 plus.

Most good quality divers will come with a unidirectional bezel to assist the user if using an oxygen tank underwater.

The bezel can be set to the time the user entered the water, and cannot wind back on itself so there is no danger of miscalculating how much oxygen is left.

If the recipient is going to be using the watch frequently in water, pick a rubber strap or stainless steel band.

Clean the watch after use in the sea, because the salt can attack the stainless steel if left unwashed.


Skeleton Watch

If you’re buying a watch for someone who loves to know how things work, you could consider a skeleton watch.

This is a mechanical watch designed in such a way that all of the moving parts are visible through either the dial of the watch or through the back of the watch.

Sometimes the dial is completely skeletonized, other times the inner workings of the movement are viewable through just a small cutaway.

Many people love to marvel at the many moving parts as the movement goes about its business of keeping accurate time.

While traditionally, the movement structure was fancifully embellished with frilly, engraved flourishes, today’s skeletons are modern and edgy, taking a less-is-more approach.

You’ll find a good choice in skeleton watches at all price ranges.


Dress Watch

If in doubt, this is the go to style of watch you can happily buy for just about anyone who works for a living.

The choice is vast, but what exactly is a dress watch? Ideally it’s a sensibly sized timepiece, preferably no bigger than 42mm in diameter. The key to a dress watch is simplicity.

Usually it will have hour, minute and seconds hands, and often a date, or day and date window but nothing more.

The idea behind a dress watch is that it can be worn with a suit, tucked unobtrusively under a shirt cuff.

This means a thickness of max 10 mm or just over (under 7 mm brings you into the realm of ultra-thin), and a diameter of around 39 mm to 40mm.

The watch should look sufficiently smart and sober in a business or evening setting, with an uncluttered dial and an overall sense of harmony and balance.


Digital Watch

If the person you’re buying for prefers the up to the minute precision of digital to analog, there’s a world of affordable choices out there.

With far greater battery life than smart watches, robust build, and some smart features, a digital watch can include everything and more you ever wanted from a watch including world time, alarms, day, date, even temperature and tide times.

In addition to being useful, affordable and versatile, they are also highly collectible.

The Casio G-Shock, for example, continues to create hundreds of new models throughout the year, many with a choice of analog and digital time-telling on the dial.