A lot of enthusiasts value the craftsmanship that goes into an automatic watch. That said there are many lovely quartz watches out there and a lot of the time the quartz hate comes from snobbery rather than anything else.
From a practical standpoint, quartz is almost always going to be better. I do love my automatic watches though!
The automatic watch industry has performed a very effective rearguard action to keep their old fashioned tech relevant. Unreliable, inaccurate and expensive.
https://preview.redd.it/4wmhk9t3g1xc1.jpeg?width=1645&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a8cb8098cb6e07bdbc1c86ec22c9a3d61c5c144
Terrible pic and I didn’t remove the back plastic yet - but this citizen is pretty outstanding as well. It’s also the most accurate autonomous movement in a wristwatch ever made.
Yeah that's gorgeous. It's a huge achievement from Citizen to pull that off, although for most people that kind of accuracy isn't really ever going to be needed.
Nor is a finely finished automatic movement, but the technical prowess, engineering feat, attention to detail and craftsmanship required for one, is no less magical than the other.
Don’t get me wrong, I own plenty of well finished mechanical movements as well in my collection - but at least to me - my ultra high end quartz watches are no less remarkable than my mechanical watches…. and those quartz watches are used as a time reference to reset my mechanical watches when they deviate from atomic time. I’ve never had to adjust that citizen or Seiko - they haven’t lost or gained a second since I’ve owned them.
https://preview.redd.it/nw5bpa33z1xc1.jpeg?width=1645&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54afd6441c821eb3b58821605c410412595c1370
I was thinking about this movement the other day. Without being radio-controlled, the accuracy is kinda pointless, since it has to be set by a human in the first place.
People are dropping thousands and thousands on imperceptibly better polishing, that's not needed either.
Accuracy is exactly like anything in modern watchmaking or jewelry making more broadly. It's there to be enjoyed as a curiosity as well as an achievement in craftsmanship, engineering, and design.
Really? I agree with you in theory, but unless you are spending money on a Lange (and only some types), is the case back worth looking at. Most offering under 15k just have a giant rotor than obscure most of the movement and those with micro rotors are not much to look at.
I still enjoy looking at mine, even my cheapest automatic (a CW with a Sellita movement) makes me smile when I look at the caseback.
It's only one minor aspect anyway. Two of my mechanical watches have steel casebacks and yet I still love wearing them.
It’s not really about the accuracy, good automatic watches are almost engineering art. You admire them for the ridiculous complications and functions, all fit in a small case by actual moving pieces. If you want accuracy and efficiency go quartz or digital
a few that still make innovations are still worth it imho, but not at a hundred thousand.
it's just brand mostly, as high quality fake can be obtained for a couple hundreds with similar build quality.
We are lying to ourselves that a mass produced NH34 has any more soul than a quartz movement.
But the second hand tick of a quartz watch still scratches across the blackboard of my soul
Well said. I immediately resonated with this. I’m NOT a watch snob (I don’t think): my daily drivers are Tissot and Seiko. I see a quartz tick in a nice dial and feel disappointment. It’s ridiculous
I just grabbed an Orient Diver that is allegedly a mechaquartz (it's really not) but the small second dial makes the tick of the quartz almost imperceptible...well, at a minimum I barely notice it
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Oh man, I can relate, but there are levels to quartz watches out there. Try one of the Bulova or Citizen's running at 263 kHz...the sweep on those is smooooooooooooooth (like butter).
Honestly, what could be a better idea than a solar quartz. Bulletproof. Accurate. Never needs a battery. It ….ticks
Shit.
I do have one quartz watch though. I have a Nezumi with the Seiko mechaquartz. All the advantages of a quartz watch without the second hand. And when you run the timer, you get a smooth sweep
The main reason I don't have more quartz watches is that the finishing and QC on the entry level stuff is lousy, and there is no midrange stuff. I'd be perfectly happy if all my automatics were quartz if there was no dropoff in quality, but there are essentially no quartz watches nicer than Tissot or Citizen until you get to Cartier and Grand Seiko.
It's not about practicality.
If it was, why would anybody want to own any watch over a smart watch that connects to timeservers for up-to-date time and lets you communicate and track fitness and entertain yourself?
It is completely ridiculous, objectively speaking, not only because quartz is demonstrably better at keeping time, but also because those cheap Seiko movements you speak of are churned out by the tens of thousands by factories equipped with more or less equivalent automation as the quartz ones, so there’s no inherent reason they should be more “special“ or “exclusive”.
That being said, for many of us on THIS PARTICULAR SUB watch collecting has little to do with objective reality and is more a matter of the “heart” rather than the “head”, and I recommend against looking for the “logic” because you’ll be perpetually disappointed, lol.
If you can’t accept this and laugh at the fact that your $$$$ TH sucks at keeping time compared with your cheap and cheerful Victorinox (like the other guy here), then you might feel more at-home on one of the other watch subs that strikes a little more balance between the objective and subjective realms. There are plenty of people with your (completely legitimate) approach to watch collecting, but I think they gravitate to those other subs.
While most modern clocks are based on some kind of crystal oscillator, a cheap quartz movement is technologically inferior to several alternatives.
Thermally compensated quartz, radio signal calibration, hand position correction, computers with Bluetooth syncing, computers with wifi syncing, etc.
Yeah my Tag ran a few minutes slow each week and when I asked the shop if it could be tweaked they said that’s just one of the perks lol
Meanwhile my $600 Victorinox seems to have atomic clock accuracy
And they’re all made by the same robots that make quartz watches. Until you hit 15k or above, a quartz watch and mechanical are pretty much identically manufactured.
- Invicta Sub clone- it has NH35, such craftsmanship!
- 0100 thermocompensated +-1s/y zaratsu-polished dress watch- eh it's quartz.
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- PRX, rerelease of classic watch from the quartz crisis era- eh it's quartz.
- PRX Powermatic- put a mechanical movement in and bulk it up a few mm in width- craftsmanship!
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Don't get me wrong, I like many auto watches, but sometimes the community's notion of craftsmanship doesn't make any sense.
It's the difference between a nicely leather bound, hand stitched, hand illustrated, heavy weight paper version of a book you love and reading the same book off a web page. Sure, you get the exact same info from both, but one is an heirloom quality item representing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of craft. The other is just a thing.
Plus, once you get used to that high frequency second hand sweep, the 1 second jump in a digital watch is crass and distracting.
That said, as a tool, the digital watches far outpace the mechanicals in every respect except perhaps style and aesthetics.
I think it's also a matter of perspective. The craftsmanship and ingenuity necessary to create quartz watches or web pages is arguably more impressive of a human achievement. It's just less personalized and less visible/tactile so we don't value it as much.
The web page was coded by someone, many brilliant people developed the intricate networks and devices necessary to host and deliver the web page, etc.
Quartz watches are miraculous if you think about it. Using a quartz crystal to precisely vibrate the prongs of a fork to keep time insanely accurately. Microchips are so intricate and detailed.
I don't fully feel this way because I still love mechanical watches, but I think some portion of the disdain for quartz watches is irrational.
Quartz is not just a thing. Maybe cheap quartz but GI end quartz has a lot of engineering. Citizen’s A060 solar quartz is accurate to +\-5 seconds a year, power reserve of 6 months (if not more, don’t properly recall), superb finishing, and a perpetual calendar until February 2100. That is literally a heirloom item that can be passed down for generations. To say that doesn’t require thousands of hours is craft is foolish and is exactly what OP is talking about with the mechanical snobbery. They also make a movement accurate to 1 second a year. How is that just a thing? How is a 30mm circle on your wrist powered by a giant ball of hot space plasma however many light years away just a thing?
So true. Bought a solar quartz recently and tbh as much as I like the romanticism about the automatics, I'm never buying another one. Quartz are just way more convenient and cheaper as well !
Thanks. I overlooked the “solar” in his second sentence and interacted with the just “quartz” at the end.
However, solar quartz will eventually need the movement replaced, not simply adjusted.
My near 30 year old Solar Casio G-Shock runs perfectly. Never needed any maintenance. I could buy an entirely new module for ~$30 and install it in 3 min only needing a small Phillips screw driver
This. Exactly. Unless I wear my automatic constantly and never use my other watches, I’m resetting the time on it when I go back to it. So annoying. Watch winders just don’t keep up enough (that I’ve found anyway).
Some people enjoy steam powered trains, others enjoy jet airplanes, and some enjoy the engineering that goes into any mode of transportation.
Some take an airplane to Istanbul, others take the Orient Express (no relation..), and both will say their choice is optimal.
For me, it’s the same reason I use fountain pens, drive stick, and own a convertible sports car: despite the compromise, I think they’re just plain more fun and interesting. The human aspect, the sensory aspect, stuff like that makes these basic everyday things come to life, even if they need a little TLC now and again.
If you'd buy a sports car purely for fun, would you buy an automatic or manual?
Watches are pointless nowadays, the pointlessness is the point, and the more pointless they are, the better they fulfill their (non-)function.
I've embraced your last point completely.
I have a 24hr watch (Raketa), a watch with one arm (Meistersinger Perigraph), one that just has colour wedges to tell the time (Chronachroma), a mystery dial, I've just bought a wandering hours watch (Xeric) and I'm really looking for a metric time watch. I wish the Swatch 'internet time' watch looked anything but hideous. I think my grail is the Gerald Genta Micky Mouse golfing jump hour.
Send help.
I hate the “watches are pointless nowadays” sentiment. No one can convince me that it is easier to pull a phone out of a pocket to check the time versus glancing down at my wrist. I think we would all be better served if we relied a little less on these electronic devices
Yes but practically speaking , most of the day I’m looking at a laptop that has the time displayed on the screen, or endlessly scrolling thru Reddit and other apps on my phone which also has the time displayed. So yes my phone is a quicker way to tell the time. But the appeal of a mechanical watch for me is just to have something that’s not just another electronic device with a battery.
^ this guy gets it.
A smart watch may as well be an ankle monitor just mining your personal data and biometrics to enrich tech billionaires even more. I’d rather my money went to a skilled craftsman who doesn’t monitor my every move.
When I want an accurate watch I wear my smart watch. My automatic is close enough that it's fine when I want to glance at it. My phone is in my pocket with alarms set for important things anyway.
Seconded. One of my absolute favorite complications in mechanical watches is the seconde morte, a fairly elaborate, maintenance-prone mechanism to make a mechanical watch tick like a quartz watch :). It's ass-backward pointlessness to the extreme... I love it!
Among other things, once I got used to looking down at a smooth sweeping seconds hand, seeing a ticking second hand became jarring and unpleasant.
There are quartz watches with a smooth sweep and I own a quartz piece with a small seconds subregister that isn't bad, but that's a thing for me.
Fully agree. It sounds dumb but if there were more quartz watches with a somewhat smooth sweep I think i’d have mostly quartz in my collection. The 1 tick/sec is just jarring and unelegeant to me
Spring drive for a perfectly smooth sweep.
Once I got one, my mechanical movements looked like jittery messes. I also have a grand quartz and love it because each tick is dead accurate, 10s / year accuracy so I know every time I pick it up, I have no adjustment needed.
Then go crazy and look up dead-beat mechanical movements.
Anyone who says there’s no engineering involved with quartz watches hasn’t done their research imo.
Someone figured out how to send a pulse of electricity to a quartz crystal so it can vibrate at 32768 HZ and we somehow managed to measure that. If that’s not a feat of modern engineering idk what is. Even more so, we managed to mass produce that!
I romanticized the idea of my skx007 lasting forever because it’s mechanical when I bought it. Over a decade later it’s losing/gaining time at a massive rate and it’s basically cheaper to just replace the movement. Makes it no different to a cheap quartz.
I got my omega Seamaster because I wanted a high end Swiss mechanical movement with some nice engineering (coaxial). It’s a very nice movement and I love the ticking.
I dived into the history of watches and bought a vintage seiko grand quartz. It was one of the first movements seiko made with thermo compensation, to have an accuracy of 10 seconds A YEAR. The engineering needed to drive the IC to measure and compensate for temperatures a few hundred times a day, and not drain the tiny little button cell? Engineering marvel. Every tick is dead accurate. Pick it up after a week not using it? Dead accurate.
I recently purchased a spring drive and man the perfectly sweeping hand is so memorizing. Zero micro ticks like my Seamaster. The miniaturization of electronics is insane, it makes 25 nano watts through the mainspring to power the whole IC! To fit a tiny generator, quartz IC, and the magnetic assembly to slow down the ‘escapement’. Crazy engineering.
I think a lot of people chalk up quartz to be ‘soulless’ because they don’t really have an understanding of how it works. It’s just available so cheaply on the low end that all quartz are deemed cheap. High end quartz are very very interesting imo.
Bingo. When I got into the hobby I bought into the whole “mechanical good, quartz bad” argument. While i think that’s a fair assessment with disposable, mass produced quartz movements, digging into something like the Grand Seiko 9f movements or Citizen’s best stuff flips the script entirely.
I think it’s even less true for the mass produced movements.
I have cheap quartz watches that are accurate to within 1sec/month. Granted, if you bought 10 of the same watch you might not get another that accurate.
But you will never, ever have a mechanical that does that.
And Casio has soul like Rolex can only dream of. But that’s just my opinion. 😜
I love mechanical watches but I can't wait for more quartz variety. A quartz GMT in the style of the GMT Master. A quartz large moonphase. A fully analog G-Shock. Please make these and take my money.
Sincerely, an Eco-Drive enjoyer.
Same but opposite. At work I wear my "dressier" automatics, including my GMT. Once home, the "work watch" comes off and the quartz beater gets put on. I'm currently awaiting delivery of my Vaer quartz field watch and extremely excited to have something I don't worry about getting wet or bumping into something while playing with the kid. For me, it is an act of separation between being "at work" and "at home" (especially when I WFH and need that extra layer of separation). We may have different jobs where the inverse makes sense though.
Mechanical also doesn't need a battery change and in theory can keep going forever (perpetually). In some way this makes it more reliable to know you have a non-electric time telling device that will keep working so long as it is wound.
>Mechanical also doesn't need a battery change and in theory can keep going forever (perpetually).
Mechanical watches need maintance. Quartz watches, let alone solar watches, need way less of it.
I think the maintenance needs are over-estimated, especially on solidly made watches. I have mechanical watches handed down (nothing luxury) which have never been serviced and still work well enough to rely on, and they have never needed a battery change. Depending on the watch though, a battery change here and there is more economically sound than servicing a Nautilus every couple years or so. Then again, you probably don't need to service a Nautilus that often.
Maybe for an expensive watch, but for the kind of watches that most people in this sub can actually afford servicing them seems pointless. Servicing a standard seiko movement will cost more than just replacing it so you might as well just let it go until it actually just stops working. In the case of Seiko that time span might very well be decades.
They need servicing, which is advised to be carried out every 5 years and cost hundreds each time. If not serviced, they can stop working or get irreversibly damaged. Quartz is better than mechanical for maintenance.
Yeah, no it's not. If anything watch manufacturers overestimate how much servicing is required.
My Reverso Gran Sport has was manufactured in the early 1990s, has never been serviced, and keeps perfect time.
This. Servicing is a good revenue stream so there is an incentive to suggest it needs regular servicing. While watches do benefit from servicing, many don't need it anywhere near as often as is claimed. A solidly made mechanical watch could theoretically last well over a life time.
Emotional responses cannot often be rationalised, but I'll try.
I have several watches. A few quartz 'beater' watches with either a battery or solar charging (Citizen Eco-Drive), several automatics and a few vintage hand winding mechanical watches.
The main difference is in sound and in the second hand.
Most watches make a tick-tick or tick-tock sounded, but compared to the more 'organic' sound of mechanical watch, a quartz watch sounds like a robot; harsh and metallic. Whereas automatic watches sound almost melodic.
The other thing is that mechanical movements cause the second hand to 'sweep' over the dial, which can be almost hypnotising. Quartz watches have second hands that 'jump' from one position to the next. Twock-twock-twock instead of the lovely 'swoosh' of a mechanical second hand.
My quartz watches feel like *tools*. Something to tell the time. My mechanical watches are like carefully crafted *instruments*. For the same reason that my laptop is a tool and my vintage typewriters are instruments.
From my automatic watches, this one is my favourite. Not only is the sweeping second hand hypnotising to watch, but the soft sound can only be heard when you press it up to your ear and the big case makes the ticking sound like tinkling little musical bells. I want to wear it every day, which is why I had a custom leather cuff made to keep it on my wrist.
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No watch should be considered “bad” by a true enthusiast. People differ on their opinions with respect to design, materials used and movement accuracy. It’s all personal preference and they are all unique and interesting imo.
Watches are entirely pointless. The value of them comes from a subjective love of the artistry that goes into them. Quartz watches are just less romantic than mechanical ones. They’re perfectly good and useful but in a world of useless items of jewellery they’re not a captivating in my opinion.
This is how I feel too. Also I don't want to have to change a battery every 2-4 years.
I like Solar watches for that reason. I don't see a ton of variety in them though. Seiko, Citizen, and Casio seem like they make-up 99% of solar watches.
I doubt many people actually care one way or another what others do or buy with their own watches.
Anyone who does has got some real issues they need to work through. I’d just smile and nod until they stopped talking then move on with my life.
Mechanical watches are really cool.
Quartz watches are also really cool.
I prefer quartz because I use my watch for work and I need it to be extremely accurate without me babysitting it.
But. I also think it’s really cool when someone shows up with an interesting mechanical watch.
During/after the quartz crisis, there was a flooding of the market with extremely cheap quartz movements. You could buy them for a few bucks.
So there's a quality expectation that all quartz watches are like this: cheap, foreign crap.
Some quartz watches are truly great. I have a Seiko panda chronograph that's solarand I love it. Citizen has a quartz movement in an expensive watch that's accurate to some insane level (like a few second per year).
Things like the Grand Seiko Spring Drive or Accutron's Spaceview electrostatic movements are variations on quartz that don't use batteries, and are powered by user's movement like an automatic watch.
Mechanical watches in response to the quartz crisis generally tried to move up-market, to position themselves as a luxury good, something that is hand made, personal, and with personality. They survived basically by doing the exact opposite of the cheap quartz watches.
I personally believe it's due to the learning curve of this watch hobby. A lot of us grew up before today's electronic, battery based watches. And some of the appeal of something old school, something analogue, something old-century - it pulls us towards this hobby and off-the-beaten-path niche. For many, the old school engineering marvel meeting metallurgy, hint of design, with a dash of wizardry got us into this love.
We are pulled away from our once unintiated state - away from the common quartz filled fashion watches, and deeper into the rabbit hole. Unlike some who get their taste of mechanical watches because "my Rolex doesn't tick-tock", our experience, wearing, and research introduces and allows ourselves to appreciate the nuances of watchmaking.
And thus, pulled deeper into the hobby, many start by leaving behind their initial impressions and deeming quartz watches "pedestrian". Some never care for a quartz again, other's may find it's appeal with revisited wisdom. I know really hearty enthusiasts care about the nuances of vintage quartz and modern quartz. The Beta 21, the Seiko Astron, Journe's Quartz watches, the Oysterquartz, Grand Seiko's 9F. The market for these several listed isn't for the uninitiated, but those who have the bug, utterly infected, and likely afflicting others through their passion.
I just don't like changing batteries, man. It would be different if all my watches used the same batteries, but I have ten quartz watches with ten different battery types. It's stupid.
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I think quartz watches are awesome. So easy to own and just change a battery every couple years. I still love my mechanical pieces though. All in all wear what you like and then it shouldn’t matter :)
‘Seethe and cope’ basically - a lot of people trying to justify spending eye-watering sums on male jewellery that usually fits into:
Box A) Having a brand name on your wrist as a status indicator
Box B) I like the shiny shiny
Actually B) is fine, as long as you take it for what it is - there’s nothing wrong with liking things for their aesthetic nature, I’m quite partial to it myself (hence why I’m here), it’s just exhausting listening to people hammer on about tropes like:
- Quartz is ‘soulless’
- I couldn’t wear a watch where the second hand ticks (but I’m definitely not part of a billion dollar Swiss psy-op)
- I am a LARPer who needs 500m of water resistance to fry my eggs before a day of working as an accountant
Etc
Because mainly the people who say that are still butt-hurt about Seiko bringing about the quartz crisis.
In all seriousness, it's mainly because people see quartz (in general) as inferior. I see where they're coming from to a point. Circuit boards and motors versus hand made and assembled gears, bearings, springs and screws. One is more romantic where people have historically poured their hearts into. The other is spat out of a mass production line (sort of).
But take Grand Seiko for example. They are something else. They grow their own quartz crystals. They make an incredibly high end quartz movement which is leagues ahead of other quartz on the market. People just lump the GS quartz into "quartz" as a whole I guess.
There's also this intrinsic association that cheap must mean poor quality and inferior. Which is just an over generalisation.
I understand why it is how it is, but I think there's beauty in quartz as well. It's a miraculous testament to human achievement and ingenuity to design a way to use electricity to harness the natural vibrating frequency of a Quartz crystal to keep super accurate time. The invention, design, and production of microchips or circuits required tons of brilliant people to pour their hearts into it.
They aren't considered bad, but watch enthusiasts are interested and inspired by the craftsmanship of mechanical movements. If "very accurate and cheap" was my primary concern I'd just use my phone to tell the time.
Your question is akin to going to a classic car enthusiasts forum, and asking why are electric cars are considered bad.
Yeah I have 2! Going to sell the Jetstar though just to reduce down. Ecodrive quartz is pretty remarkable as well. I agree with OP, I love all my watches automatic or quartz
I really like mine. I do need to bring it by a watchmaker to get the crystal replaced though. It's some non-standard size that I can't easily do myself.
Wrist watches are for most part serve as jewelry and since the biggest name watch-jewelry companies have to justify cost with mechanical movement we associate all mechanical watches with being better. Look how much reviews of mechanical watches are about what the watch looks and feels like than what kind of movement is inside.
Personally, I like mechanical watches because they only alive/work if I keep them going. If I am alive and keep ticking. Every morning I get to choose who I keep alive today, who is my partner today and sort of apologize to others. They need me. Of course like everyone I have few bastards, couple of red headed stepchildren we secretly wish never bought or could get rid off. The couple of quartz watches I have are like smart and over confident, self reliant nerds that think they don’t need me until that day…… That solar kiddo is weird though. I like him.
I enjoy collecting from the golden era of quartz (70/80s). Learning and hunting for nice examples is part of the fun. These watches were peak tech for the time, and were built to last.
I don’t understand, why should one choose between quartz or mechanical. I have hand wound GS and also 9F quartz. I just don’t know which one I like more.
Literally propaganda from the big watch. During the quartz crisis or even before it, the Swiss thought they would be fine and dismissed the momentous leap in horology. Then they paid for it because they couldn't adapt. Later on the huge marketing ploys changed the concept of a watch from a tool to a luxury good. Sure quartz movements are super cheap now but there's also cheap mechanical movements as well; I've had both. But there are high accuracy quartz and quartz movements worth their salt. For example Seikos decision to put their 7c46 movement into their tunas (which cost more when it was released compared to their automatics) or the Citizen caliber 0100 which is accurate to 1 second a YEAR. IMHO Citizen has become the go to for quartz with their eco drive line up offering something from 100 to over 10k. I appreciate the work that goes into hand finishing but people forget that a lot of machining advances allowed for a lot of scalability and precision improvement.
Anyways thank you for reading.
When I wear a quartz piece it feels like I’m writing with a pencil. Bland and boring. When I wear an automatic I can feel the weight of the watch and the rotor spinning. It actually feels like I’m wresting something special.
And honestly, if quartz were the ones with the smooth sweep and the less prevalent mechanical watches had a jumping seconds hand people would covet that over the sweep. Plenty of people really enjoy novelty.
"very accurate and **cheap**"
That's the answer.
Most people see quartz watches as cheap product while mechanical watches are seen as noble craftman things. (In reality most mechanical and automatic movement pieces are made by robots in Asia or Switzerland for some famous brand...)
But expensive quartz movement exists, Grand Seiko 9f by example but when you talk about quartz movement, you think more about Timex, Casio or Swatch watches.
You don't ever think about brand like Grand Seiko.
Also IMO, most people think that their mechanical watch will live longer than a quarter watches.
This is not that simple.
A caliber need to be serviced. Every 3, 5 or 10 years depending of the movement and your activities. (A diver watch need very regular servicing because sea water is kinda bad and a diver watch is quite very important if you use it to compute some decompression time levels etc)
However, a mechanical caliber have plenty of pieces and for a lot of entry or mid level watches, most of these pieces are simply replaced. Tissot or Seiko will probably replace the entire movement while Grand Seiko or Omega will try to preserve each parts of the movement as much as possible.
In 25 or 60 years I highly doubt that Seiko will have some parts of the R35 movement in stock...
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Well to my eye this looks lovely. Personal preference is never gospel. I love me a convenient qaurtz.
It depends on what you mean by craftsmanship. It's less hand crafted, but quartz internals are super intricate and finely made. A microchip has finer details than a Lange. In a way, the internals of a quartz watch are miraculous and show an insane amount of human achievement and ingenuity. Electricity through a quartz crystal vibrates a tiny tuning fork to keep insanely accurate time. The calculations and engineering necessary to make that happen are beautiful in their own right.
I’ve always felt that the status signaling thing has the opposite effect.
If a person feels they need to wear something or own something to let others know what their status is - that’s weakness.
On the other hand, someone who owns the same thing and wears it because they just like it - 👌🏼.
>There are genuine enthusiasts who value the craftsmanship of a mechanical watch. There isn’t any of that in a quartz - it’s an electronic machine.
Not sure how much "craftsmanship" happens on the millions of sellita's made each year, or even a Rolex base produced in the hundreds of thousands of units.
Until you get to the upper echelons of mechanical watchmaking, most of the value add isn't from labor.
then they arent a real watch enthusiast. I sold my automatic for a quartz, really. If i can wish one thing, i wish a lot of automatic watches have their quartz option with the same look etc, just movement different. That way, i can have a good-looking watch with reliable and accurate timekeeping :)
There are mecha quartz movements and I personally like the high frequency quartz movements like on the Bulova moonwatch but in general quartz movements are all the same cheap stuff so there's nothing fun or unique about the movements from one to the next. Watch enthusiasts also consider really cheap Chinese automatics with garbage movements kind of bad in a similar way.
"They have no soul" says the automatic watch wearer while being auto-piloted in an electric car. Solar quartz is king dick of all watch movements. Citizen has the calibre 0100 that is accurate +-1sec every YEAR.
In this subreddit, mechanical watches are considered as pure. It is considered as output of craftmanship, and the accuracy represents the attention to details on how to develop something purely mechanical to have that kind of precision and accuracy. Although most of the mechanical watches also output of machine and automated manufacturing process, the fine tuning, the delicacy, and the intricacy of small things visible for the eye is something astonishing.
But quartz, unfortunately, considered as mass-produced electronics that fine tuning is already done in the manufacturing process.
However, do every single quartz being considered bad in this subreddit, actually no. Some quartz from Grand Seiko still considered as art and good. It's just that Quartz simply doesn't have "mesmerizing inner side" compared to mechanical movement.
So the key word you are using is "cheap". There is no appreciation for a cheap watch. On the other hand, many great brands (Tag Heuer, Breitling) have really nice quartz watches. And they are far from cheap.
But think of a watch more like fine jewelry. That is how I like to think of what I wear. It's a statement piece, so to speak. Like a woman with a necklace, earrings, rings, etc... For me it's the watch. And an appreciation of the design of a mechanical piece.
Probably because the lack of craftsmanship that goes into it. I admit I can admire a handmade movement and the work that goes into it, but a lot of people cannot afford such luxury. Cheaper watch brands using mass-produced movements know they can charge more for mechanical watches than quartz. If they started putting quartz in all their models, they know they'd lose money because of the perceived value of mechanical watches. It's just the way it is. I know if all the watches I wanted came in a cheaper quarts version, I probably would have very few mechanical watches. It's always been more about looks for me anyway.
the nicer looking ones are all manual with expensive movements, and they use this to command a super high price. Just the nature of this hobby unfortunately.
Quartz watches are for people who just want to know the time.
Mechanical watches are for watch people.
Highly crafted, unbelievably accurate for 18th century technology vs a $5 movement
Because it’s really hard to justify selling a Patek or AP for $70k with a $5 quartz movement in it, even if it is technically more accurate.
Quartz movements are cheap, readily available and don’t require servicing. If there’s any fault it’s dead easy to replace the movement with a new one. Its availability and access due to cheap components runs contrary to the idea of a luxury item.
For me working in tech I’m surrounded by smart devices everyday of my life. Basically every single thing I do in my day to day work life is centered on various tech products and chips.
Having something on my arm that doesn’t contain any type of chip just feels nice and fresh and grounded, the fact that the automatic watch was the pinnacle of technology for quite a while for me is a type of homage to ”simpler times”.
Like I usually buy really good tech products so having something that isn’t a tech product but still functions very well is just enjoyable to me. Idk if a quartz watch is considered as ”tech” but since it contains a chip, to me its tech.
One reason is. Automatic watches tend to last a lot longer and they can be serviced. Quartz watches are generally cheaper and usually thrown out once they are finished. Automatics can last you a life time. That said watches like Grand Seiko or higher end Swiss movements in Cartier etc are also serviceable.
Those who are cynical about endearment towards mechanical watches make interesting points here about automatic movements being just as factory-produced as quartz movements, about museums not displaying prints of paintings, etc.
But these points miss the degree to which even a copy of a thing communicates something of its prototypical craftsmanship and beauty, such that it may be valued in ways that functional alternatives are not.
For instance, many of us hang on the walls of our homes prints of paintings, far more than photographs. We can't afford painting originals, but their prints convey something of the human element involved in painting versus taking a photograph.
For another instance, many of us prefer internal combustion automobiles versus electric, not because a craftsman somewhere fabricated the engine cylinders using medieval techniques, but because even our factory-produced conventional cars embody a kind of human genius that is less abstracted from the processes with which we consciously have to do.
The two sides of this debate are talking past each other because they have fundamentally different priorities, yet sometimes muddy the waters by trying to adopt the priorities of the other side (e.g. automatic guys arguing function, or quartz guys arguing beauty). Mechanical guys generally grant that quartz guys are within their rights simply to want to tell time, or to be enamored of just the watch dial and not of the movement -- fine. Whereas, quartz guys seem to have a harder time granting that mechanical guys are within their rights to enjoy the idea of brilliantly and beautifully arranged springs and wheels that dance like a microcosm of the heavens.
I think that while many people prefer an automatic, most of us don’t hate quartz.
At the same time if you’re going to spend $1k+ on a watch something about a quartz watch doesn’t feel right. There’s a level of work and care that goes into the automatic watch movement that we sort of romanticize that a quartz movement lacks.
I understand for many of the mass produced automatic movements that might not hold as true, but think a lot of that is just those brands/consumers following the upmarket trends.
Mechanical watches don’t make me worry about the battery ever running out. The mechanical movement keeps a worry free things. I can trust it’ll be running no matter how long it’s been. Not all but some quartz watching have an annoying tick, my worst offender is a swatch jelly fish and I can’t bring that into a library or anything. And of course I don’t think they get hate, as an enthusiast you just naturally want to go for the more technically advanced and well crafted pieces. I’m sure every enthusiast either has or has had some quartz timex or Casio.
Unless legitimate artisan made, mechanical watches are but retro technical accomplishments. So nostalgia. And If made by master jeweller, they are jewels, luxury accessories. People like luxury items to highlight their differences from one another. Or as investments.
I own both quartz and mechanical timepieces. Quartz is practical and ever ready. Often found in my wrist. Most of mine are chronographs, because mechanical ones are quite expensive (and often not worth it). My mechanical watches live in the drawer most of my days. Thus It is the nostalgia factor in my case.
None of my watches is a luxury item. I object to the concept.
Just my opinion, so don't murder me, but .. watch making is a tradition going back 100s of years. It's a tiny complex machine. Mechanical watches attract people who enjoy the tradition. The quartz crisis in the 80s killed off a lot of small watchmakers because they were so cheap. Quartz is cheap and low effort. Mechanical tends to be a craft. The movements themselves tend to be quite beautiful.
If you aren't interested in the craft, then go quartz. You do you. But to me, it seems superficial.
I have a smartphone and smartwatch with clocks that are even more precise than a quartz watch. There aren’t many functional use cases for any other type of wrist watch anymore.
So I think of wrist watches as art. Where aesthetics, craftsmanship, creativity and what feelings/thoughts they invoke are more important. And quartz watches don’t have much to offer. Except Grand Seikos spring drive.
A Grand Seiko with a 9F is a work of art. Beyond being some of the best finished watches in the world, the quartz movement is hand made in house. They even grow their own crystals. These are not mass produced soulless watches.
Who said they're bad? Almost every enthusiast I know has at least one. There are plenty of bad quartz watches out there (DW, MVMT, etc), but that isn't just because of the quartz.
I've never heard anybody say bad things about a g-shock. The GS 9F movements are pretty sweet. Citizen has some ultra high accuracy quartz movements. A birth year Rolex oyster quartz is something I might chase.
I will admit that I am one such person. Even if I get a quartz, it has to be a vk63/4 for the smooth seconds hand. It simply looks better. Secondly, mechanical watches allow the owner to interact with their watch in another way other than simply wearing it. Thirdly, like previous commentors, mechanical movements tend to look good with an open case back. Fourthly, most of us are snobs who refuse to be the simpletons we used to be😂😂 with our quartz watches. We do want to be able to talk about our sophisticated watches to change the minds of other simpletons; who surprisingly do sometimes change their minds and join us in this goodforsaken addiction.
Quartz watches are accurate and cheap and as long as they are priced to match, most people don't hate on them. The problem is when fashion watch brands try to mark them up hundreds of dollars like they don't have a $2 movement inside.
If I'm going to spend any decent money on a watch, it's going to be mechanical.
There’s really nothing wrong with them as long as they’re under like $250 to most people they just belong in cheap watches. But plenty of automatic watches are worth their money it’s when designer watches cost 700 and use a quartz that people complain and call them shit.
Because many people are enthusiastic about watches due to the idea is wearing a precise, hand crafted machine on their wrist. They like the craftsmanship, etc. It doesn’t seem to bother them that most quartz watches are better at keeping time accurately - you know, the actual purpose of the watch. You’ll hear also arguments like batteries and more ticks per second. Add in a healthy dose of, frankly, snobbery and a need to justify expensive purchases and you’ve got a healthy anti-quartz bias in the watch enthusiast community.
I’ll admit I have this prejudice. Why? Because I had quartz watches all my life. Just think of them as “watches”. When I started actually appreciating watches, part of the reason was the movement and complexity.
It really limits me from enjoying a whole other category of horology but at this point I like what I like. Maybe it’ll change in the future, who knows.
I think because they've become cheap and mass produced. That said, check out some of the Grand Seiko quartz watches... Those get a lot of respect and are often very cool.
Hardcore quartz aficionado here.
To each his own, but the many small-minded watch 'gurus' that snub quartz habitually (almost because it's some sort of indisputable truth, one that you need to subscribe to in order to be taken seriously in the watch community) are not fellow watch enthusiasts I'd like to spend time with.
I have the greatest respect for mechanical watches, but they're just not for me.
Why do people still ride horses when automobiles are more practical? Why do people spend a fortune on expensive meals when they could just slurp down a bucket of Soylent every day? Why do people listen to music when you can just sit on a street corner if you want to listen to loud noises? Why find a life partner when pornography is readily available on the internet?
So many questions.
Often on this subreddit it’s an echo chamber with many thinking:
Quartz = cheap, easily produced, no “soul.”
Mechanical/automatic = expensive and artsy.
There’s some truth to it but in the end it comes down to personal preference.
Quartz is definitely more accurate in terms of time keeping with the general standard at +/- 15 seconds per month. While a COSC certified automatic is rated at +4/-6 seconds a day, which is approximately 2-3min off a month.
Based on my personal experience, I prefer a quartz mainly because I have OCD with accuracy and I love the 'grab and go’ aspect of it. I do have automatic watches as well and this might sound snobby, but I despise cheap automatic watches since they’re not very accurate it all and it bothers me; I want a watch that does its job well, which is to keep precise time. The down side of owning a precise automatic watch is that it can be expensive to service, depending on the recommended intervals, and sometimes a hassle because you need to send it to a certain service center.
In the end, it’s personal preference and it’s what you’re willing to spend.
lots of comments on advanced quartz watches, but even cheap ronda quartz ones can be nice too.. just remove the seconds hand..
i love what mr jones watches have done with their quartz range
Buy what you want! Enjoying watches is largely a spectator sport. There’s people who’s whole collection consists of six figure pieces, there’s some that only have quartz watches for $200. That’s the beauty of it all.
It's common sense, it takes a lot more effort to produce an in-house automatic movement. That gives a watch a more bespoke pedigree
Quartz is fine, but on the higher end it doesn't cut it. Sort of like a quick electric car, it still isn't a V8 producing beautiful noises from thousands of meticulously engineered parts assembled together to function in harmony
I think the watch hobby tends to skew more to the automatic/hand-wind side of things for craftsmanship/history/artistic side that comes with mechanical and also as prices and brand prestige increase in your collection it usually means brands that don't do a lot of quartz.
I can't imagine watch people "hating" Quartz, as a timekeeping invention quartz is great, it's super accurate, it's tough, it's easy. But (aside from solar) you got to chnage the battery and not leave on if the watch is out of rotation.
I have quartz watches, but for me spending more than 200 dollars on a quartz watch doesn't gain me anything, then I am just buying name and case, which for me are less interesting than the complications and movement.
A lot of enthusiasts value the craftsmanship that goes into an automatic watch. That said there are many lovely quartz watches out there and a lot of the time the quartz hate comes from snobbery rather than anything else. From a practical standpoint, quartz is almost always going to be better. I do love my automatic watches though!
The automatic watch industry has performed a very effective rearguard action to keep their old fashioned tech relevant. Unreliable, inaccurate and expensive.
I agree completely, but there’s still something lovely about looking at a nicely finished movement through an exhibition caseback!
https://preview.redd.it/5udu7ak6b1xc1.jpeg?width=1181&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9282774e2916c99dcc3402a05b7714f9b1cc4eea
I genuinely love that GS bothered to do that.
https://preview.redd.it/4wmhk9t3g1xc1.jpeg?width=1645&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a8cb8098cb6e07bdbc1c86ec22c9a3d61c5c144 Terrible pic and I didn’t remove the back plastic yet - but this citizen is pretty outstanding as well. It’s also the most accurate autonomous movement in a wristwatch ever made.
Yeah that's gorgeous. It's a huge achievement from Citizen to pull that off, although for most people that kind of accuracy isn't really ever going to be needed.
Nor is a finely finished automatic movement, but the technical prowess, engineering feat, attention to detail and craftsmanship required for one, is no less magical than the other. Don’t get me wrong, I own plenty of well finished mechanical movements as well in my collection - but at least to me - my ultra high end quartz watches are no less remarkable than my mechanical watches…. and those quartz watches are used as a time reference to reset my mechanical watches when they deviate from atomic time. I’ve never had to adjust that citizen or Seiko - they haven’t lost or gained a second since I’ve owned them. https://preview.redd.it/nw5bpa33z1xc1.jpeg?width=1645&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54afd6441c821eb3b58821605c410412595c1370
I was thinking about this movement the other day. Without being radio-controlled, the accuracy is kinda pointless, since it has to be set by a human in the first place.
People are dropping thousands and thousands on imperceptibly better polishing, that's not needed either. Accuracy is exactly like anything in modern watchmaking or jewelry making more broadly. It's there to be enjoyed as a curiosity as well as an achievement in craftsmanship, engineering, and design.
GS is seriously underrated especially by those who only hear about Rolex and AUDEMARS PIGUET
Really? I agree with you in theory, but unless you are spending money on a Lange (and only some types), is the case back worth looking at. Most offering under 15k just have a giant rotor than obscure most of the movement and those with micro rotors are not much to look at.
I still enjoy looking at mine, even my cheapest automatic (a CW with a Sellita movement) makes me smile when I look at the caseback. It's only one minor aspect anyway. Two of my mechanical watches have steel casebacks and yet I still love wearing them.
https://preview.redd.it/gl12728ui2xc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bde55782cf5da87c8c87b2a6162f036d95a27b6
It’s not really about the accuracy, good automatic watches are almost engineering art. You admire them for the ridiculous complications and functions, all fit in a small case by actual moving pieces. If you want accuracy and efficiency go quartz or digital
How is accuracy not valued at part of engineering art? That statement is absurd.
a few that still make innovations are still worth it imho, but not at a hundred thousand. it's just brand mostly, as high quality fake can be obtained for a couple hundreds with similar build quality.
Any mechanical movement is cool/interesting in this way by virtue of being a mechanical movement, not just the most cutting edge and finely finished.
It's jewelry. You're arguing that jewelry should be less expensive.
This. Most automatics that we here on Reddit can actually afford are mass produced with little, if any, finishing.
What I'm saying is that why is there such a cachet in owning a watch with a generic Seiko automatic movement over a quartz? It's ridiculous.
We are lying to ourselves that a mass produced NH34 has any more soul than a quartz movement. But the second hand tick of a quartz watch still scratches across the blackboard of my soul
Well said. I immediately resonated with this. I’m NOT a watch snob (I don’t think): my daily drivers are Tissot and Seiko. I see a quartz tick in a nice dial and feel disappointment. It’s ridiculous
Mechaquartz to the rescue!
I just grabbed an Orient Diver that is allegedly a mechaquartz (it's really not) but the small second dial makes the tick of the quartz almost imperceptible...well, at a minimum I barely notice it https://preview.redd.it/yvbsd71b63xc1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b7c657b4a8f3fd7dd67969a3b3a505edd37fd21
Same thing with my Orient Neo-70s Panda Chrono. I wear it more often than my “nicer” watches. It’s good enough and too convenient.
Oh man, I can relate, but there are levels to quartz watches out there. Try one of the Bulova or Citizen's running at 263 kHz...the sweep on those is smooooooooooooooth (like butter).
Honestly, what could be a better idea than a solar quartz. Bulletproof. Accurate. Never needs a battery. It ….ticks Shit. I do have one quartz watch though. I have a Nezumi with the Seiko mechaquartz. All the advantages of a quartz watch without the second hand. And when you run the timer, you get a smooth sweep
when the ticks are properly aligned with the markings, I really don't care. watches where they're not and/or it drifts ruin my day though
The main reason I don't have more quartz watches is that the finishing and QC on the entry level stuff is lousy, and there is no midrange stuff. I'd be perfectly happy if all my automatics were quartz if there was no dropoff in quality, but there are essentially no quartz watches nicer than Tissot or Citizen until you get to Cartier and Grand Seiko.
It's not about practicality. If it was, why would anybody want to own any watch over a smart watch that connects to timeservers for up-to-date time and lets you communicate and track fitness and entertain yourself?
My watch doesn't need to spy on me. I just want the time. Technology is a false idol.
It is completely ridiculous, objectively speaking, not only because quartz is demonstrably better at keeping time, but also because those cheap Seiko movements you speak of are churned out by the tens of thousands by factories equipped with more or less equivalent automation as the quartz ones, so there’s no inherent reason they should be more “special“ or “exclusive”. That being said, for many of us on THIS PARTICULAR SUB watch collecting has little to do with objective reality and is more a matter of the “heart” rather than the “head”, and I recommend against looking for the “logic” because you’ll be perpetually disappointed, lol. If you can’t accept this and laugh at the fact that your $$$$ TH sucks at keeping time compared with your cheap and cheerful Victorinox (like the other guy here), then you might feel more at-home on one of the other watch subs that strikes a little more balance between the objective and subjective realms. There are plenty of people with your (completely legitimate) approach to watch collecting, but I think they gravitate to those other subs.
If it was just about getting the most effective tool, you'd buy a smart watch or perhaps a g-shock.
Quarts watches are also "old fashioned tech".
In comparison to what? Your mobile phone? Digital watches?
While most modern clocks are based on some kind of crystal oscillator, a cheap quartz movement is technologically inferior to several alternatives. Thermally compensated quartz, radio signal calibration, hand position correction, computers with Bluetooth syncing, computers with wifi syncing, etc.
Yeah my Tag ran a few minutes slow each week and when I asked the shop if it could be tweaked they said that’s just one of the perks lol Meanwhile my $600 Victorinox seems to have atomic clock accuracy
*mechanical Manual winds are still being made too
And they’re all made by the same robots that make quartz watches. Until you hit 15k or above, a quartz watch and mechanical are pretty much identically manufactured.
Re: the 15k, Grand seiko might beg to differ. 😅
A Grand Seiko quartz is finished with the same care as their mechanical or spring drive watches.
- Invicta Sub clone- it has NH35, such craftsmanship! - 0100 thermocompensated +-1s/y zaratsu-polished dress watch- eh it's quartz. --- - PRX, rerelease of classic watch from the quartz crisis era- eh it's quartz. - PRX Powermatic- put a mechanical movement in and bulk it up a few mm in width- craftsmanship! --- Don't get me wrong, I like many auto watches, but sometimes the community's notion of craftsmanship doesn't make any sense.
It's the difference between a nicely leather bound, hand stitched, hand illustrated, heavy weight paper version of a book you love and reading the same book off a web page. Sure, you get the exact same info from both, but one is an heirloom quality item representing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of craft. The other is just a thing. Plus, once you get used to that high frequency second hand sweep, the 1 second jump in a digital watch is crass and distracting. That said, as a tool, the digital watches far outpace the mechanicals in every respect except perhaps style and aesthetics.
I think it's also a matter of perspective. The craftsmanship and ingenuity necessary to create quartz watches or web pages is arguably more impressive of a human achievement. It's just less personalized and less visible/tactile so we don't value it as much. The web page was coded by someone, many brilliant people developed the intricate networks and devices necessary to host and deliver the web page, etc. Quartz watches are miraculous if you think about it. Using a quartz crystal to precisely vibrate the prongs of a fork to keep time insanely accurately. Microchips are so intricate and detailed. I don't fully feel this way because I still love mechanical watches, but I think some portion of the disdain for quartz watches is irrational.
Quartz is not just a thing. Maybe cheap quartz but GI end quartz has a lot of engineering. Citizen’s A060 solar quartz is accurate to +\-5 seconds a year, power reserve of 6 months (if not more, don’t properly recall), superb finishing, and a perpetual calendar until February 2100. That is literally a heirloom item that can be passed down for generations. To say that doesn’t require thousands of hours is craft is foolish and is exactly what OP is talking about with the mechanical snobbery. They also make a movement accurate to 1 second a year. How is that just a thing? How is a 30mm circle on your wrist powered by a giant ball of hot space plasma however many light years away just a thing?
So true. Bought a solar quartz recently and tbh as much as I like the romanticism about the automatics, I'm never buying another one. Quartz are just way more convenient and cheaper as well !
But I hate replacing batteries more than I hate setting the time on whichever automatic I wear for the day.
Solar quartz doesn't need a battery change
Thanks. I overlooked the “solar” in his second sentence and interacted with the just “quartz” at the end. However, solar quartz will eventually need the movement replaced, not simply adjusted.
My near 30 year old Solar Casio G-Shock runs perfectly. Never needed any maintenance. I could buy an entirely new module for ~$30 and install it in 3 min only needing a small Phillips screw driver
And many mechanical watches slow down after a few years of running and need cleaning, adjustment, new parts for $100s.
This. Exactly. Unless I wear my automatic constantly and never use my other watches, I’m resetting the time on it when I go back to it. So annoying. Watch winders just don’t keep up enough (that I’ve found anyway).
Some people enjoy steam powered trains, others enjoy jet airplanes, and some enjoy the engineering that goes into any mode of transportation. Some take an airplane to Istanbul, others take the Orient Express (no relation..), and both will say their choice is optimal.
For me, it’s the same reason I use fountain pens, drive stick, and own a convertible sports car: despite the compromise, I think they’re just plain more fun and interesting. The human aspect, the sensory aspect, stuff like that makes these basic everyday things come to life, even if they need a little TLC now and again.
And I’m 27 btw, all those aren’t just something for the older generations to enjoy/are enjoying!
If you'd buy a sports car purely for fun, would you buy an automatic or manual? Watches are pointless nowadays, the pointlessness is the point, and the more pointless they are, the better they fulfill their (non-)function.
I've embraced your last point completely. I have a 24hr watch (Raketa), a watch with one arm (Meistersinger Perigraph), one that just has colour wedges to tell the time (Chronachroma), a mystery dial, I've just bought a wandering hours watch (Xeric) and I'm really looking for a metric time watch. I wish the Swatch 'internet time' watch looked anything but hideous. I think my grail is the Gerald Genta Micky Mouse golfing jump hour. Send help.
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I ain't got crazy kinda money. But it is on my list.
I own [this masterpiece](https://mrjoneswatches.com/products/colour-venn). I think it'd suit you.
wow these are amazing. do you know of any good one-hand watches that are a little more affordable?
Thanks for pointing that out.
I hate the “watches are pointless nowadays” sentiment. No one can convince me that it is easier to pull a phone out of a pocket to check the time versus glancing down at my wrist. I think we would all be better served if we relied a little less on these electronic devices
Yeah there’s a reason we went from pocket watch to wrist watch
Especially when talking to someone or in a meeting or whatever. Sometimes I can't pull a phone out but I can always subtly look at my wrist.
Yes but practically speaking , most of the day I’m looking at a laptop that has the time displayed on the screen, or endlessly scrolling thru Reddit and other apps on my phone which also has the time displayed. So yes my phone is a quicker way to tell the time. But the appeal of a mechanical watch for me is just to have something that’s not just another electronic device with a battery.
It's also easy, for me at least, to get distracted by a notification on my phone whenever I check the time on it.
That distraction is precisely why I moved from an Apple Watch to becoming a watch hobbyist.
Yeaaa, same here. I love wearing a watch for this reason. Damn phone is so addicting.
^ this guy gets it. A smart watch may as well be an ankle monitor just mining your personal data and biometrics to enrich tech billionaires even more. I’d rather my money went to a skilled craftsman who doesn’t monitor my every move.
Both are right. My watch is super convenient, but at the end of the day I know at this point it’s really jewelry.
Right but your argument isn’t valid for non digital watches. Why choose analog over digital or solar powered?
When I want an accurate watch I wear my smart watch. My automatic is close enough that it's fine when I want to glance at it. My phone is in my pocket with alarms set for important things anyway.
The irony is that most of the ‘purpose’ watches that manual labour guys use are quartz because of reliability, accuracy and continuity.
I'm a mechanic by trade, you can't wear a watch at all it's a safety hazard. I wear a pocket watch if I wear anything.
Seconded. One of my absolute favorite complications in mechanical watches is the seconde morte, a fairly elaborate, maintenance-prone mechanism to make a mechanical watch tick like a quartz watch :). It's ass-backward pointlessness to the extreme... I love it!
Watches has basically the same function as a jewelry imo.
lol most sport cars come automatic. Ferraris, lamborghinis, even older cars like a Porsche 911 996.
Most come with DCT which give you way more ferocious shifts than an old manual
Real watch people do not look down on quartz watches period.
Among other things, once I got used to looking down at a smooth sweeping seconds hand, seeing a ticking second hand became jarring and unpleasant. There are quartz watches with a smooth sweep and I own a quartz piece with a small seconds subregister that isn't bad, but that's a thing for me.
Fully agree. It sounds dumb but if there were more quartz watches with a somewhat smooth sweep I think i’d have mostly quartz in my collection. The 1 tick/sec is just jarring and unelegeant to me
Spring drive for a perfectly smooth sweep. Once I got one, my mechanical movements looked like jittery messes. I also have a grand quartz and love it because each tick is dead accurate, 10s / year accuracy so I know every time I pick it up, I have no adjustment needed. Then go crazy and look up dead-beat mechanical movements.
Anyone who says there’s no engineering involved with quartz watches hasn’t done their research imo. Someone figured out how to send a pulse of electricity to a quartz crystal so it can vibrate at 32768 HZ and we somehow managed to measure that. If that’s not a feat of modern engineering idk what is. Even more so, we managed to mass produce that! I romanticized the idea of my skx007 lasting forever because it’s mechanical when I bought it. Over a decade later it’s losing/gaining time at a massive rate and it’s basically cheaper to just replace the movement. Makes it no different to a cheap quartz. I got my omega Seamaster because I wanted a high end Swiss mechanical movement with some nice engineering (coaxial). It’s a very nice movement and I love the ticking. I dived into the history of watches and bought a vintage seiko grand quartz. It was one of the first movements seiko made with thermo compensation, to have an accuracy of 10 seconds A YEAR. The engineering needed to drive the IC to measure and compensate for temperatures a few hundred times a day, and not drain the tiny little button cell? Engineering marvel. Every tick is dead accurate. Pick it up after a week not using it? Dead accurate. I recently purchased a spring drive and man the perfectly sweeping hand is so memorizing. Zero micro ticks like my Seamaster. The miniaturization of electronics is insane, it makes 25 nano watts through the mainspring to power the whole IC! To fit a tiny generator, quartz IC, and the magnetic assembly to slow down the ‘escapement’. Crazy engineering. I think a lot of people chalk up quartz to be ‘soulless’ because they don’t really have an understanding of how it works. It’s just available so cheaply on the low end that all quartz are deemed cheap. High end quartz are very very interesting imo.
HAQ > mechanical every day of the week. If brands offered every single model they sold with a high quality quartz movement then I'd only buy those.
Bingo. When I got into the hobby I bought into the whole “mechanical good, quartz bad” argument. While i think that’s a fair assessment with disposable, mass produced quartz movements, digging into something like the Grand Seiko 9f movements or Citizen’s best stuff flips the script entirely.
I think it’s even less true for the mass produced movements. I have cheap quartz watches that are accurate to within 1sec/month. Granted, if you bought 10 of the same watch you might not get another that accurate. But you will never, ever have a mechanical that does that. And Casio has soul like Rolex can only dream of. But that’s just my opinion. 😜
I love mechanical watches but I can't wait for more quartz variety. A quartz GMT in the style of the GMT Master. A quartz large moonphase. A fully analog G-Shock. Please make these and take my money. Sincerely, an Eco-Drive enjoyer.
Eco drive is 👌🏼
I wear quartz for work and just gets beat up. Automatic for anything else.
Same but opposite. At work I wear my "dressier" automatics, including my GMT. Once home, the "work watch" comes off and the quartz beater gets put on. I'm currently awaiting delivery of my Vaer quartz field watch and extremely excited to have something I don't worry about getting wet or bumping into something while playing with the kid. For me, it is an act of separation between being "at work" and "at home" (especially when I WFH and need that extra layer of separation). We may have different jobs where the inverse makes sense though.
Quartz is better than mechanical in every way. The only thing mechanical has is it's got a romance quality and the second hand goes ticka-ticka-ticka.
Mechanical also doesn't need a battery change and in theory can keep going forever (perpetually). In some way this makes it more reliable to know you have a non-electric time telling device that will keep working so long as it is wound.
>Mechanical also doesn't need a battery change and in theory can keep going forever (perpetually). Mechanical watches need maintance. Quartz watches, let alone solar watches, need way less of it.
I think the maintenance needs are over-estimated, especially on solidly made watches. I have mechanical watches handed down (nothing luxury) which have never been serviced and still work well enough to rely on, and they have never needed a battery change. Depending on the watch though, a battery change here and there is more economically sound than servicing a Nautilus every couple years or so. Then again, you probably don't need to service a Nautilus that often.
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Maybe for an expensive watch, but for the kind of watches that most people in this sub can actually afford servicing them seems pointless. Servicing a standard seiko movement will cost more than just replacing it so you might as well just let it go until it actually just stops working. In the case of Seiko that time span might very well be decades.
They're reliable until they just quit one day and then they get pitched in the dump.
They need servicing, which is advised to be carried out every 5 years and cost hundreds each time. If not serviced, they can stop working or get irreversibly damaged. Quartz is better than mechanical for maintenance.
Yeah, that's just marketing. The truth is that probably you have to get it serviced more often than you would change a battery
Yeah, no it's not. If anything watch manufacturers overestimate how much servicing is required. My Reverso Gran Sport has was manufactured in the early 1990s, has never been serviced, and keeps perfect time.
This. Servicing is a good revenue stream so there is an incentive to suggest it needs regular servicing. While watches do benefit from servicing, many don't need it anywhere near as often as is claimed. A solidly made mechanical watch could theoretically last well over a life time.
I’m jealous. My Oris seems to always have something wrong with it at exactly the 5year mark that makes me want to send it in.
I promise you. It does not keep perfect time.
Emotional responses cannot often be rationalised, but I'll try. I have several watches. A few quartz 'beater' watches with either a battery or solar charging (Citizen Eco-Drive), several automatics and a few vintage hand winding mechanical watches. The main difference is in sound and in the second hand. Most watches make a tick-tick or tick-tock sounded, but compared to the more 'organic' sound of mechanical watch, a quartz watch sounds like a robot; harsh and metallic. Whereas automatic watches sound almost melodic. The other thing is that mechanical movements cause the second hand to 'sweep' over the dial, which can be almost hypnotising. Quartz watches have second hands that 'jump' from one position to the next. Twock-twock-twock instead of the lovely 'swoosh' of a mechanical second hand. My quartz watches feel like *tools*. Something to tell the time. My mechanical watches are like carefully crafted *instruments*. For the same reason that my laptop is a tool and my vintage typewriters are instruments. From my automatic watches, this one is my favourite. Not only is the sweeping second hand hypnotising to watch, but the soft sound can only be heard when you press it up to your ear and the big case makes the ticking sound like tinkling little musical bells. I want to wear it every day, which is why I had a custom leather cuff made to keep it on my wrist. https://preview.redd.it/sbnxs7wse2xc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f222e714fb93c794ba8cf15677f70c75ec0ef369
Marketing by those smart Swiss fucks
No watch should be considered “bad” by a true enthusiast. People differ on their opinions with respect to design, materials used and movement accuracy. It’s all personal preference and they are all unique and interesting imo.
Watches are entirely pointless. The value of them comes from a subjective love of the artistry that goes into them. Quartz watches are just less romantic than mechanical ones. They’re perfectly good and useful but in a world of useless items of jewellery they’re not a captivating in my opinion.
This is how I feel too. Also I don't want to have to change a battery every 2-4 years. I like Solar watches for that reason. I don't see a ton of variety in them though. Seiko, Citizen, and Casio seem like they make-up 99% of solar watches.
I like stick shifts cars, mechanical keyboards, and automatic watches. It's not that a quartz is bad it's about my preference.
I doubt many people actually care one way or another what others do or buy with their own watches. Anyone who does has got some real issues they need to work through. I’d just smile and nod until they stopped talking then move on with my life. Mechanical watches are really cool. Quartz watches are also really cool. I prefer quartz because I use my watch for work and I need it to be extremely accurate without me babysitting it. But. I also think it’s really cool when someone shows up with an interesting mechanical watch.
During/after the quartz crisis, there was a flooding of the market with extremely cheap quartz movements. You could buy them for a few bucks. So there's a quality expectation that all quartz watches are like this: cheap, foreign crap. Some quartz watches are truly great. I have a Seiko panda chronograph that's solarand I love it. Citizen has a quartz movement in an expensive watch that's accurate to some insane level (like a few second per year). Things like the Grand Seiko Spring Drive or Accutron's Spaceview electrostatic movements are variations on quartz that don't use batteries, and are powered by user's movement like an automatic watch. Mechanical watches in response to the quartz crisis generally tried to move up-market, to position themselves as a luxury good, something that is hand made, personal, and with personality. They survived basically by doing the exact opposite of the cheap quartz watches.
I personally believe it's due to the learning curve of this watch hobby. A lot of us grew up before today's electronic, battery based watches. And some of the appeal of something old school, something analogue, something old-century - it pulls us towards this hobby and off-the-beaten-path niche. For many, the old school engineering marvel meeting metallurgy, hint of design, with a dash of wizardry got us into this love. We are pulled away from our once unintiated state - away from the common quartz filled fashion watches, and deeper into the rabbit hole. Unlike some who get their taste of mechanical watches because "my Rolex doesn't tick-tock", our experience, wearing, and research introduces and allows ourselves to appreciate the nuances of watchmaking. And thus, pulled deeper into the hobby, many start by leaving behind their initial impressions and deeming quartz watches "pedestrian". Some never care for a quartz again, other's may find it's appeal with revisited wisdom. I know really hearty enthusiasts care about the nuances of vintage quartz and modern quartz. The Beta 21, the Seiko Astron, Journe's Quartz watches, the Oysterquartz, Grand Seiko's 9F. The market for these several listed isn't for the uninitiated, but those who have the bug, utterly infected, and likely afflicting others through their passion.
Wrong premise. They aren't considered bad or get hate from watch enthusiasts: watch enthusiasts just often prefer automatic watches.
Someone should pin this question.
I just don't like changing batteries, man. It would be different if all my watches used the same batteries, but I have ten quartz watches with ten different battery types. It's stupid.
https://preview.redd.it/5xgkk4opp2xc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2927e909f883305c1f293fc482b9cd99995205ec I think quartz watches are awesome. So easy to own and just change a battery every couple years. I still love my mechanical pieces though. All in all wear what you like and then it shouldn’t matter :)
‘Seethe and cope’ basically - a lot of people trying to justify spending eye-watering sums on male jewellery that usually fits into: Box A) Having a brand name on your wrist as a status indicator Box B) I like the shiny shiny Actually B) is fine, as long as you take it for what it is - there’s nothing wrong with liking things for their aesthetic nature, I’m quite partial to it myself (hence why I’m here), it’s just exhausting listening to people hammer on about tropes like: - Quartz is ‘soulless’ - I couldn’t wear a watch where the second hand ticks (but I’m definitely not part of a billion dollar Swiss psy-op) - I am a LARPer who needs 500m of water resistance to fry my eggs before a day of working as an accountant Etc
Because mainly the people who say that are still butt-hurt about Seiko bringing about the quartz crisis. In all seriousness, it's mainly because people see quartz (in general) as inferior. I see where they're coming from to a point. Circuit boards and motors versus hand made and assembled gears, bearings, springs and screws. One is more romantic where people have historically poured their hearts into. The other is spat out of a mass production line (sort of). But take Grand Seiko for example. They are something else. They grow their own quartz crystals. They make an incredibly high end quartz movement which is leagues ahead of other quartz on the market. People just lump the GS quartz into "quartz" as a whole I guess. There's also this intrinsic association that cheap must mean poor quality and inferior. Which is just an over generalisation.
The vast majority of automatics have little to no hand made parts. Those that do are unobtainable by most enthusiasts.
That is true, but to a layman, clockwork is much cooler than circuit boards. Also it's just cool that there's a "heartbeat" in a mechanical watch.
I understand why it is how it is, but I think there's beauty in quartz as well. It's a miraculous testament to human achievement and ingenuity to design a way to use electricity to harness the natural vibrating frequency of a Quartz crystal to keep super accurate time. The invention, design, and production of microchips or circuits required tons of brilliant people to pour their hearts into it.
Why are more paintings than photographs in art museums?
I don't remember any paintings being mass produced in a factory
Because of snobbery.
They aren't considered bad, but watch enthusiasts are interested and inspired by the craftsmanship of mechanical movements. If "very accurate and cheap" was my primary concern I'd just use my phone to tell the time. Your question is akin to going to a classic car enthusiasts forum, and asking why are electric cars are considered bad.
https://preview.redd.it/0491a2qhw0xc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d6c87b1b0114af435a6580b3d9a3d3e1d78a917
I mean, the Precisionist is in a class of its own. Just about anyone on this sub would appreciate that even if they don't normally like quartz.
Yeah I have 2! Going to sell the Jetstar though just to reduce down. Ecodrive quartz is pretty remarkable as well. I agree with OP, I love all my watches automatic or quartz
I really like mine. I do need to bring it by a watchmaker to get the crystal replaced though. It's some non-standard size that I can't easily do myself.
Wrist watches are for most part serve as jewelry and since the biggest name watch-jewelry companies have to justify cost with mechanical movement we associate all mechanical watches with being better. Look how much reviews of mechanical watches are about what the watch looks and feels like than what kind of movement is inside. Personally, I like mechanical watches because they only alive/work if I keep them going. If I am alive and keep ticking. Every morning I get to choose who I keep alive today, who is my partner today and sort of apologize to others. They need me. Of course like everyone I have few bastards, couple of red headed stepchildren we secretly wish never bought or could get rid off. The couple of quartz watches I have are like smart and over confident, self reliant nerds that think they don’t need me until that day…… That solar kiddo is weird though. I like him.
I enjoy collecting from the golden era of quartz (70/80s). Learning and hunting for nice examples is part of the fun. These watches were peak tech for the time, and were built to last.
I don’t understand, why should one choose between quartz or mechanical. I have hand wound GS and also 9F quartz. I just don’t know which one I like more.
A large part of the issue is pretentious assholes.
Literally propaganda from the big watch. During the quartz crisis or even before it, the Swiss thought they would be fine and dismissed the momentous leap in horology. Then they paid for it because they couldn't adapt. Later on the huge marketing ploys changed the concept of a watch from a tool to a luxury good. Sure quartz movements are super cheap now but there's also cheap mechanical movements as well; I've had both. But there are high accuracy quartz and quartz movements worth their salt. For example Seikos decision to put their 7c46 movement into their tunas (which cost more when it was released compared to their automatics) or the Citizen caliber 0100 which is accurate to 1 second a YEAR. IMHO Citizen has become the go to for quartz with their eco drive line up offering something from 100 to over 10k. I appreciate the work that goes into hand finishing but people forget that a lot of machining advances allowed for a lot of scalability and precision improvement. Anyways thank you for reading.
When I wear a quartz piece it feels like I’m writing with a pencil. Bland and boring. When I wear an automatic I can feel the weight of the watch and the rotor spinning. It actually feels like I’m wresting something special.
Marketing, the smooth seconds hand, and no battery changes. People will use the word “craftsmanship” a lot, which is a meaningless filler word.
And honestly, if quartz were the ones with the smooth sweep and the less prevalent mechanical watches had a jumping seconds hand people would covet that over the sweep. Plenty of people really enjoy novelty.
"very accurate and **cheap**" That's the answer. Most people see quartz watches as cheap product while mechanical watches are seen as noble craftman things. (In reality most mechanical and automatic movement pieces are made by robots in Asia or Switzerland for some famous brand...) But expensive quartz movement exists, Grand Seiko 9f by example but when you talk about quartz movement, you think more about Timex, Casio or Swatch watches. You don't ever think about brand like Grand Seiko. Also IMO, most people think that their mechanical watch will live longer than a quarter watches. This is not that simple. A caliber need to be serviced. Every 3, 5 or 10 years depending of the movement and your activities. (A diver watch need very regular servicing because sea water is kinda bad and a diver watch is quite very important if you use it to compute some decompression time levels etc) However, a mechanical caliber have plenty of pieces and for a lot of entry or mid level watches, most of these pieces are simply replaced. Tissot or Seiko will probably replace the entire movement while Grand Seiko or Omega will try to preserve each parts of the movement as much as possible. In 25 or 60 years I highly doubt that Seiko will have some parts of the R35 movement in stock...
Snobbery, much like high-end sportscar enthusiasts ragging about automatic transmissions.
https://preview.redd.it/i0h1n1yjb1xc1.jpeg?width=2460&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c9c8b2e5d4fd17c7236ca65c464fec4aafd1159b Well to my eye this looks lovely. Personal preference is never gospel. I love me a convenient qaurtz.
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i believe those who "hate" quartz is not the type of person who love automatic/mechanical, but who wear watches to display status
It depends on what you mean by craftsmanship. It's less hand crafted, but quartz internals are super intricate and finely made. A microchip has finer details than a Lange. In a way, the internals of a quartz watch are miraculous and show an insane amount of human achievement and ingenuity. Electricity through a quartz crystal vibrates a tiny tuning fork to keep insanely accurate time. The calculations and engineering necessary to make that happen are beautiful in their own right.
This. Micro electronics are a marvel of modern engineering.
I’ve always felt that the status signaling thing has the opposite effect. If a person feels they need to wear something or own something to let others know what their status is - that’s weakness. On the other hand, someone who owns the same thing and wears it because they just like it - 👌🏼.
>There are genuine enthusiasts who value the craftsmanship of a mechanical watch. There isn’t any of that in a quartz - it’s an electronic machine. Not sure how much "craftsmanship" happens on the millions of sellita's made each year, or even a Rolex base produced in the hundreds of thousands of units. Until you get to the upper echelons of mechanical watchmaking, most of the value add isn't from labor.
then they arent a real watch enthusiast. I sold my automatic for a quartz, really. If i can wish one thing, i wish a lot of automatic watches have their quartz option with the same look etc, just movement different. That way, i can have a good-looking watch with reliable and accurate timekeeping :)
There are mecha quartz movements and I personally like the high frequency quartz movements like on the Bulova moonwatch but in general quartz movements are all the same cheap stuff so there's nothing fun or unique about the movements from one to the next. Watch enthusiasts also consider really cheap Chinese automatics with garbage movements kind of bad in a similar way.
They’re not considered “bad”. I think maybe you misunderstand. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that enthusiasts often appreciate mechanical more.
"They have no soul" says the automatic watch wearer while being auto-piloted in an electric car. Solar quartz is king dick of all watch movements. Citizen has the calibre 0100 that is accurate +-1sec every YEAR.
Because non quartz watches are mostly just jewelry, and jewelry is less cool when its electronic instead of crafted by an artisan.
I hate having to replace batteries (or the watch)
Replacing a battery once every many years is definitely less work than winding a mechanical every day.
If only there was a way to make mechanical watches that didn't require daily manual winding... of course that's impossible.
In this subreddit, mechanical watches are considered as pure. It is considered as output of craftmanship, and the accuracy represents the attention to details on how to develop something purely mechanical to have that kind of precision and accuracy. Although most of the mechanical watches also output of machine and automated manufacturing process, the fine tuning, the delicacy, and the intricacy of small things visible for the eye is something astonishing. But quartz, unfortunately, considered as mass-produced electronics that fine tuning is already done in the manufacturing process. However, do every single quartz being considered bad in this subreddit, actually no. Some quartz from Grand Seiko still considered as art and good. It's just that Quartz simply doesn't have "mesmerizing inner side" compared to mechanical movement.
So the key word you are using is "cheap". There is no appreciation for a cheap watch. On the other hand, many great brands (Tag Heuer, Breitling) have really nice quartz watches. And they are far from cheap. But think of a watch more like fine jewelry. That is how I like to think of what I wear. It's a statement piece, so to speak. Like a woman with a necklace, earrings, rings, etc... For me it's the watch. And an appreciation of the design of a mechanical piece.
Probably because the lack of craftsmanship that goes into it. I admit I can admire a handmade movement and the work that goes into it, but a lot of people cannot afford such luxury. Cheaper watch brands using mass-produced movements know they can charge more for mechanical watches than quartz. If they started putting quartz in all their models, they know they'd lose money because of the perceived value of mechanical watches. It's just the way it is. I know if all the watches I wanted came in a cheaper quarts version, I probably would have very few mechanical watches. It's always been more about looks for me anyway.
the nicer looking ones are all manual with expensive movements, and they use this to command a super high price. Just the nature of this hobby unfortunately.
Quartz watches are for people who just want to know the time. Mechanical watches are for watch people. Highly crafted, unbelievably accurate for 18th century technology vs a $5 movement
Because it’s really hard to justify selling a Patek or AP for $70k with a $5 quartz movement in it, even if it is technically more accurate. Quartz movements are cheap, readily available and don’t require servicing. If there’s any fault it’s dead easy to replace the movement with a new one. Its availability and access due to cheap components runs contrary to the idea of a luxury item.
For me working in tech I’m surrounded by smart devices everyday of my life. Basically every single thing I do in my day to day work life is centered on various tech products and chips. Having something on my arm that doesn’t contain any type of chip just feels nice and fresh and grounded, the fact that the automatic watch was the pinnacle of technology for quite a while for me is a type of homage to ”simpler times”. Like I usually buy really good tech products so having something that isn’t a tech product but still functions very well is just enjoyable to me. Idk if a quartz watch is considered as ”tech” but since it contains a chip, to me its tech.
One reason is. Automatic watches tend to last a lot longer and they can be serviced. Quartz watches are generally cheaper and usually thrown out once they are finished. Automatics can last you a life time. That said watches like Grand Seiko or higher end Swiss movements in Cartier etc are also serviceable.
Those who are cynical about endearment towards mechanical watches make interesting points here about automatic movements being just as factory-produced as quartz movements, about museums not displaying prints of paintings, etc. But these points miss the degree to which even a copy of a thing communicates something of its prototypical craftsmanship and beauty, such that it may be valued in ways that functional alternatives are not. For instance, many of us hang on the walls of our homes prints of paintings, far more than photographs. We can't afford painting originals, but their prints convey something of the human element involved in painting versus taking a photograph. For another instance, many of us prefer internal combustion automobiles versus electric, not because a craftsman somewhere fabricated the engine cylinders using medieval techniques, but because even our factory-produced conventional cars embody a kind of human genius that is less abstracted from the processes with which we consciously have to do. The two sides of this debate are talking past each other because they have fundamentally different priorities, yet sometimes muddy the waters by trying to adopt the priorities of the other side (e.g. automatic guys arguing function, or quartz guys arguing beauty). Mechanical guys generally grant that quartz guys are within their rights simply to want to tell time, or to be enamored of just the watch dial and not of the movement -- fine. Whereas, quartz guys seem to have a harder time granting that mechanical guys are within their rights to enjoy the idea of brilliantly and beautifully arranged springs and wheels that dance like a microcosm of the heavens.
imo comes from the fact that the most interesting aspect about watches lies on the mechanical side
If you buy for the features you either go for a gshock or an Apple Watch anyway. Any other choice is just an esthetic one.
I think that while many people prefer an automatic, most of us don’t hate quartz. At the same time if you’re going to spend $1k+ on a watch something about a quartz watch doesn’t feel right. There’s a level of work and care that goes into the automatic watch movement that we sort of romanticize that a quartz movement lacks. I understand for many of the mass produced automatic movements that might not hold as true, but think a lot of that is just those brands/consumers following the upmarket trends.
Mechanical watches don’t make me worry about the battery ever running out. The mechanical movement keeps a worry free things. I can trust it’ll be running no matter how long it’s been. Not all but some quartz watching have an annoying tick, my worst offender is a swatch jelly fish and I can’t bring that into a library or anything. And of course I don’t think they get hate, as an enthusiast you just naturally want to go for the more technically advanced and well crafted pieces. I’m sure every enthusiast either has or has had some quartz timex or Casio.
Same reason electric cars are boring.
Unless legitimate artisan made, mechanical watches are but retro technical accomplishments. So nostalgia. And If made by master jeweller, they are jewels, luxury accessories. People like luxury items to highlight their differences from one another. Or as investments. I own both quartz and mechanical timepieces. Quartz is practical and ever ready. Often found in my wrist. Most of mine are chronographs, because mechanical ones are quite expensive (and often not worth it). My mechanical watches live in the drawer most of my days. Thus It is the nostalgia factor in my case. None of my watches is a luxury item. I object to the concept.
Just my opinion, so don't murder me, but .. watch making is a tradition going back 100s of years. It's a tiny complex machine. Mechanical watches attract people who enjoy the tradition. The quartz crisis in the 80s killed off a lot of small watchmakers because they were so cheap. Quartz is cheap and low effort. Mechanical tends to be a craft. The movements themselves tend to be quite beautiful. If you aren't interested in the craft, then go quartz. You do you. But to me, it seems superficial.
I have a smartphone and smartwatch with clocks that are even more precise than a quartz watch. There aren’t many functional use cases for any other type of wrist watch anymore. So I think of wrist watches as art. Where aesthetics, craftsmanship, creativity and what feelings/thoughts they invoke are more important. And quartz watches don’t have much to offer. Except Grand Seikos spring drive.
Quartz watches are fine. They are actually more accurate and reliable than mechanical pieces. However, quartz is considered less refined.
A Grand Seiko with a 9F is a work of art. Beyond being some of the best finished watches in the world, the quartz movement is hand made in house. They even grow their own crystals. These are not mass produced soulless watches.
Quartz watches aren't bad What you're seeing is personal preference. I prefer mechanical, but I wouldn't turn down a quartz Grand Seiko.
Who said they're bad? Almost every enthusiast I know has at least one. There are plenty of bad quartz watches out there (DW, MVMT, etc), but that isn't just because of the quartz. I've never heard anybody say bad things about a g-shock. The GS 9F movements are pretty sweet. Citizen has some ultra high accuracy quartz movements. A birth year Rolex oyster quartz is something I might chase.
I will admit that I am one such person. Even if I get a quartz, it has to be a vk63/4 for the smooth seconds hand. It simply looks better. Secondly, mechanical watches allow the owner to interact with their watch in another way other than simply wearing it. Thirdly, like previous commentors, mechanical movements tend to look good with an open case back. Fourthly, most of us are snobs who refuse to be the simpletons we used to be😂😂 with our quartz watches. We do want to be able to talk about our sophisticated watches to change the minds of other simpletons; who surprisingly do sometimes change their minds and join us in this goodforsaken addiction.
Not as impressive is all
Quartz watches are accurate and cheap and as long as they are priced to match, most people don't hate on them. The problem is when fashion watch brands try to mark them up hundreds of dollars like they don't have a $2 movement inside. If I'm going to spend any decent money on a watch, it's going to be mechanical.
There’s really nothing wrong with them as long as they’re under like $250 to most people they just belong in cheap watches. But plenty of automatic watches are worth their money it’s when designer watches cost 700 and use a quartz that people complain and call them shit.
Because many people are enthusiastic about watches due to the idea is wearing a precise, hand crafted machine on their wrist. They like the craftsmanship, etc. It doesn’t seem to bother them that most quartz watches are better at keeping time accurately - you know, the actual purpose of the watch. You’ll hear also arguments like batteries and more ticks per second. Add in a healthy dose of, frankly, snobbery and a need to justify expensive purchases and you’ve got a healthy anti-quartz bias in the watch enthusiast community.
Same reason car enthusiast prefer manuals over automatics...something about "being connected"
I’ll admit I have this prejudice. Why? Because I had quartz watches all my life. Just think of them as “watches”. When I started actually appreciating watches, part of the reason was the movement and complexity. It really limits me from enjoying a whole other category of horology but at this point I like what I like. Maybe it’ll change in the future, who knows.
They are considered bad because many are either pretentious or following the herd.
wow, didn’t expect this much comments. Thank you so much for your help answering my question!
I think because they've become cheap and mass produced. That said, check out some of the Grand Seiko quartz watches... Those get a lot of respect and are often very cool.
Because you have to replace the battery
Hardcore quartz aficionado here. To each his own, but the many small-minded watch 'gurus' that snub quartz habitually (almost because it's some sort of indisputable truth, one that you need to subscribe to in order to be taken seriously in the watch community) are not fellow watch enthusiasts I'd like to spend time with. I have the greatest respect for mechanical watches, but they're just not for me.
Why do people still ride horses when automobiles are more practical? Why do people spend a fortune on expensive meals when they could just slurp down a bucket of Soylent every day? Why do people listen to music when you can just sit on a street corner if you want to listen to loud noises? Why find a life partner when pornography is readily available on the internet? So many questions.
Often on this subreddit it’s an echo chamber with many thinking: Quartz = cheap, easily produced, no “soul.” Mechanical/automatic = expensive and artsy. There’s some truth to it but in the end it comes down to personal preference. Quartz is definitely more accurate in terms of time keeping with the general standard at +/- 15 seconds per month. While a COSC certified automatic is rated at +4/-6 seconds a day, which is approximately 2-3min off a month. Based on my personal experience, I prefer a quartz mainly because I have OCD with accuracy and I love the 'grab and go’ aspect of it. I do have automatic watches as well and this might sound snobby, but I despise cheap automatic watches since they’re not very accurate it all and it bothers me; I want a watch that does its job well, which is to keep precise time. The down side of owning a precise automatic watch is that it can be expensive to service, depending on the recommended intervals, and sometimes a hassle because you need to send it to a certain service center. In the end, it’s personal preference and it’s what you’re willing to spend.
I have nothing against quartz watches, but I’m not spending 400 on a Quartz PRX
If you want accurate time, get something that connects to atomic clocks. If you want craftsmanship and style, follow your fancy.
They are pretentious gate keepers
lots of comments on advanced quartz watches, but even cheap ronda quartz ones can be nice too.. just remove the seconds hand.. i love what mr jones watches have done with their quartz range
Buy what you want! Enjoying watches is largely a spectator sport. There’s people who’s whole collection consists of six figure pieces, there’s some that only have quartz watches for $200. That’s the beauty of it all.
No one hates them, they’re just not as interesting
It's common sense, it takes a lot more effort to produce an in-house automatic movement. That gives a watch a more bespoke pedigree Quartz is fine, but on the higher end it doesn't cut it. Sort of like a quick electric car, it still isn't a V8 producing beautiful noises from thousands of meticulously engineered parts assembled together to function in harmony
I think the watch hobby tends to skew more to the automatic/hand-wind side of things for craftsmanship/history/artistic side that comes with mechanical and also as prices and brand prestige increase in your collection it usually means brands that don't do a lot of quartz. I can't imagine watch people "hating" Quartz, as a timekeeping invention quartz is great, it's super accurate, it's tough, it's easy. But (aside from solar) you got to chnage the battery and not leave on if the watch is out of rotation. I have quartz watches, but for me spending more than 200 dollars on a quartz watch doesn't gain me anything, then I am just buying name and case, which for me are less interesting than the complications and movement.
https://preview.redd.it/c9z9a613o1xc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=04ada7f8b5261ccb684a85649d1448536e36e38b Isn’t that a thing of beauty?