A collection lets every watch have a job. One watch has to live through work, weekends, travel and the mornings when you are already late. That changes the buying question. The most dramatic dial or longest specification list may lose to the watch that fits, sets easily and feels right on an ordinary Tuesday. The linked enthusiast conversation asks what people would keep if they could keep only one; their varied answers are a reminder that daily life is the real brief.
Two catalogue examples show the choice. The San Martin SN0113W V2 is a compact three-hand automatic on its supplied bracelet. The Baltany S6083 GMT Date Sports Watch is a larger sports watch with an NH34 GMT movement. The GMT hand may be useful if you regularly track another time zone. If you rarely do, it is an extra function and another thing to set. Neither reference is a universal one-watch answer; they emphasize different forms of convenience.
Choose the inconvenience you can accept
Start with fit. If the watch is too tall under your sleeve or the bracelet needs constant repositioning, you will feel that every day. Compare diameter, lug-to-lug and thickness, then seek real wrist photographs. The San Martin and Baltany differ on those measures, but a number cannot tell you where a caseback sits or how the first bracelet link behaves. A return route is part of the decision when you cannot try them on.
Then consider setting. Both examples are automatic, so a person who wears the watch daily may find either simple enough. A person who leaves it in a drawer for days should think about the time it takes to reset the display. A GMT is only a benefit when it solves a real problem for you. If grab-and-go convenience outranks mechanical appeal, a quartz watch may fit the one-watch brief better than either example.
Think also about the tasks you will ask of it. A watch for travel, swimming and formal dinners is a demanding brief, and any answer will compromise somewhere. Check the seller’s specific water-use guidance rather than treating a rating as permission for every activity. Make sure you can live with the dial in poor light, the strap in heat and the case under the clothes you actually wear. Keep the decision close to your habits, not an imagined ideal lifestyle.
Finally, consider the path after purchase. Can you return it if the fit is wrong? Is there a local repairer willing to work on the movement? Will you be content putting a new strap on it if the supplied one disappoints? These questions are unromantic, but a single-watch owner has fewer ways to work around a problem. The practical support around a watch is part of its daily usefulness.
San Martin
SN0113W V2
Compact, restrained and suited to mixed daily use.
Baltany
S6083 GMT Date Sports Watch
Useful if travel functionality outweighs dress versatility.
A useful final test is to imagine owning no backup. What would irritate you on the third week: resetting it, the clasp, legibility, bulk or the lack of a travel function? Choose the watch whose limitations you already understand and willingly accept. One-and-done is less a trophy than a repeatable choice.