Considering you can get their socks and some other things at Walmart now, I would say their quality is probably slipping a bit. That being said, directly from them the quality may be better.

That's awesome. My Seiko Alpinist is my favourite but my Orient mako 2 is my second.

Hoenstly, despite what other say, hexclad isn't bad. It seems to be a little more robust than normal non stick but at the same time it's still non-stick so I can't comment it's lifespan. The thing with hexclad is the texture also limits your contact with the entire surface to help make it last longer/work better. It's not anything special, it's like the bead blasted rock coating.

Like everyone says, cast iron, enameled cast iron or stainless works. If I were you would just do enameled cast since it doesn't need any special work. You could get stainless and burn/season it too.

If you don't care about the looks as much, my hiking/renovating/portaging watches are the casio A158W-1 and the Casio f91W-1. Theyre both basically the same, but the A158W-1 is in stainless steel. Looks nicer and is more durable. I've had to replace the strap on my F91W-1 before and it's about as much as the watch. Both are retro looking but super accurate. I hadn't adjusted the F91W-1 in 3 years and it was only a few seconds off. The A158W-1 was about a minute off after like 2-3 years. Either way, great for the price.

Do you want an automatic or a quartz? Seiko makes great automatics in the 250-500 dollar range. Same with Orient. My cheap Seiko only loses 2-3 seconds a month where as my expensive Seiko gains like 30 seconds a month.

If you're going quartz, Timex is good, Seiko is good too.