Originally Posted by Gingerbread Man
Is there actually any need for a proper stopwatch?
Dead reckoning, but that is a dying art. The sort of thing you do when you start because you have to, then after passing your private you think it's a waste of time and fancy gizmos are the way to go, then if you stay around long enough you realise fancy gizmos are boring so go back to stopwatch again.
Once you start instrument flying in anger it's nice to have a big digital kitchen timer on your yoke. Note I said kitchen timer which you can buy at your local massive hypermarket for a fraction of the price of what you will pay at the airport for a stopwatch.