I'm guessing that the stuff you buy breaks easy, like headphones or something.
It doesn't, my brother bought a pair of noise-cancellation headphones (not earbuds) from some crappy chinese website. He got them for $30 and they worked incredibly well.
how do you use it to tell the time though?
There are numbers on the left and right side of the watch. On the left is hours, going from 1 to 12. On the right is minutes going up in 5's.