Archer Watch Straps - Classic Nylon NATO Watch Bands

This strap helped bring an old tired watch back to life. Very happy with the results. Nice colour and shine. Very comfortable.

Decent quality watch strap for a good price. Available in so many colours and combinations the only real difficulty is choosing the one you want. This was the first Nato strap I'd bought. I followed a YouTube video and found three different ways to fit it. I tried each until I found the one I preferred. Fitting the strap was child's play

Casio W-86 is a great watch with a rubbish strap. The 18mm strap will fit (Casio state it's a 19mm strap) but you have to remove the pins, there's not enough room to feed the strap under the pins if they're left in. Note that the pins are tapered, not sprung loaded! It's a fiddle due to the lack of room and the strap thickness but it will fit and can be adjusted. As for the strap itself, it seems good quality but a bit bulkier than I thought and it's tricky to get the buckle where I want it, but overall it's good and I'm keeping it.

I am a big fan of the archer straps. They are a good nato because there are no pins holding it together so there is no way it will fall off. (Some nato straps have spring bars and these are weak points). I have loads of them, all different colours and sizes. Comfortable too.

Brought as work nato strap for my watch, has kept its colour good still white and bright, its moisture wicking so wrists don’t feel irritated or sweaty, good quality buckles and strap

Got the grey and black NATO for my vintage Cardinal Submarine and it looks amazing. Very happy. Fit is good.

Fantastic strap, this is amazing quality for the price, would 10/10 recommend.

Traditionally, NATO straps are quite long and will fit almost any size of wrist (the one that I have is at least an inch longer than this). They were designed this way so that they could be worn over, or under most form of battle dress without requiring adjustment. The conventional way of wearing a NATO strap would be to fold any excess material back through the 2nd keeper, which would generally be positioned up near the lugs of the watch in the 12 o'clock postion. Although the NATO "bump" can look odd, and creates an asymmetrical appearance, this tends to make for the most comfortable and versatile fit. However, many wearers of this style of strap are either unaware of, or do not wish to wear it in this way and the traditional strap is generally much too long to be worn in any other way: look on YouTube is likely to reveal far more videos demonstrating how to cut, or otherwise resize a NATO strap than videos demonstrating how the strap would conventionally be worn. A frequent complaint from those who do not wear the strap with the 12 o'clock bump is that the strap seems much too long. In their strap design, Archer seem to have attempted by accommodate all comers by making the strap much shorter than a typical strap of this sort might be (it seems to be at least an inch shorter than a traditional strap of this sort). However, this creates more problems that it solves as it doesn't satisfy fully the requirements either of those who want to wear the strap more like a standard strap or those who would expect to wear the strap as it would conventionally be worn (particularly if the latter group has larger wrists). My wrist is slightly slimmer than average, and I find that with, the 2nd keeper in the 12 o'clock position, the buckle on the watch is positioned almost at the side of my wrist. Although this is probably the most comfortable position, it is unusual for the buckle to be this far around towards the side of the wrist. If I wanted to wear the watch with the buckle near the centre of my wrist, then the fold back through the 2nd keeper would also be under my wrist, rather than up near the 12 o'clock position. Whilst many people might prefer that, I think that having the fold back in the 12 o'clock position means that it won't catch on anything, whereas moving it to the underside, or further around to the side of the wrist not only makes for a less comfortable fit and, whilst it may be more aesthetically pleasing to some to have the fold back out of sight, it might also be more prone to catching. Also, as the strap is much shorter than a typical NATO strap, whilst it will fit most wrists, those with larger wrists are likely to find that there may not be enough extra length on the strap to fold it back through the 2nd keeper at all, effectively making the 2nd keeper redundant. If the manufacturer deliberately made the strap shorter to please those who expect to wear it as a normal strap with the tongue of the strap running straight through the keepers, then those users will also be disappointed as they will also find that there is likely to be either too much, or not enough, length at the end of the strap to be able to use it in this way (the keepers are fixed in place so they can't be moved around to accommodate the end of the strap). Also, as the lugs on the keeper are quite large (which is not unusual for this style of strap), if the end of the strap was fed directly through the keeper, it would not be held in a way that felt secure. Having said that, in my case, the strap is long enough for me to use the 2nd keeper in the conventional way and, even though having the "bump" in the 12 o'clock position, means that the buckle is not positioned centrally under my wrist, it does feel as comfortable as other NATO straps and it has all the usual qualities of being easy to clean and care for and of drying almost instantly if it is exposed to water. However, considering I could have bought a more authentic version of the original "NATO" strap design for about the same amount of money (or slightly less), from a heritage brand that has loose connections to the company that actually supplied these straps to the UK military, I'm unlikely to be purchasing further straps of this sort from Archer.