I got a little into watches last year and learned a bit. At the sub-$1000 price range you'll be looking at the Japanese brands of Citizen, Seiko, Casio, and Orient. Citizen tends to be flashy, Seiko goes for boring, Casio just flat ugly, and Orient has a couple of tolerable looking models but their thing is mechanical movements if that's a problem for you. Citizen and Seiko both have well-respected solar powered movements that should last at least a decade without needing batteries as long as they have exposure to room level ambient light. They will run 3-6 months in a drawer though. If they run down just expose them to strong light for 24 hours or so and they'll recharge.
If looking at Swiss, then Swatch Group=Satan. They've seemingly got a thousand brands due to the collapse of the Swiss industry from the Quartz Crisis around 1980 but none have any real connection to the historic companies themselves. They have each brand slotted for a specific price point and gimp models that threaten their plan. Case in point is the Hamilton Intramatic. Nice looking watch with a good grade movement but because Swatch has determined that movement can only be used in models above the Intramatic's price they required that it not have a second hand. Crap like that instead of building the best you can is what's wrong with the Swiss industry. Oh and the Powermatic 80 movement is a real piece of work. Took a decent movement, slowed it down for the 80 hour reserve but took a hit on accuracy doing so, added plastic parts in important locations, and outsourced most of it to China while using legalese to call it Swiss. In fact, with anything less expensive than Tudor/Rolex you better know what you're looking at or you''ll get stuck with what amounts to a cheap Chinese watch with a storied name on it.
Oh yes, something else I learned by experience. Keep it simple. Complicated dials like Breitling's Navitimer or Citizen's Navihawk may look cool but are hell for reading comprehension because they're too busy. If low-light use is important you want a large indicator for 12 o'clock and the hands should be bold and easily told apart (see Rolex "Mercedes" hands or Tudor "diamond" hour hands on their Black Bay. And Day/Date complication is virtually useless unless you're saturation diving but does uglify a dial all the time.
