Post #1186067 · Elektrine

2026-04-15 11:11 UTC

Let&#39;s talk about watch movements. Many of you are likely aware that watches come in 2 basic variants: quartz and mechanical. - Quartz watches use electricity (usually from a battery) to make a tiny quartz tuning fork vibrate really fast and create oscillating electric currents that can be used to keep track of time. They tend to be cheaper to produce. - Mechanical watches use the energy stored in a spring to power a complex mechanism of gears which can only move in tiny increments at the frequency dictated by an oscillating wheel with a tiny spring in it. They&#39;re much more expensive to produce. In either case time is kept thanks to an oscillator with a set frequency. For mechanical watches that frequency ranges from 3 to 5 Hz whereas for quartz watches it&#39;s usually 32,768 Hz or more. Because of this quartz watches are significantly more accurate, usually losing less than 1 second per day compared to mechanical watches which can lose up to 30 seconds per day. Still, many people prefer mechanical watches and I can think of many very understandable reasons for that. Making them requires impressive craftsmanship, fully analogue, mechanical devices are super cool, they have a sweeping seconds hand that&#39;s satisfying to look at, they don&#39;t need to have batteries changed etc. Most people who own mechanical watches have them not for practical reasons but rather because they appreciate the craft of mechanical watchmaking and I fully get it. BUT!!! There is a &quot;but&quot; and it&#39;s important for me to address for the benefit of future mechanical watch owners: Some people invest in a mechanical watch, specifically an automatic one where the spring is wound through the movement of one&#39;s wrist, because they believe the watch is this perfect closed system that will keep going indefinitely since there&#39;s no need to change batteries. That it&#39;s a one time purchase that gets you a timepiece for life. This isn&#39;t the case. More in the follow up post.

Replies (2)

@njion@bark.lgbt 2026-04-15 11:19

Mechanical watches require maintenance. They have lubricants in them that deteriorate over time and have to be replenished. They're also far more likely to break from shocks or magnetic fields. Mechanical watch repair and maintenance has to be done by experienced experts and their services are neither cheap or easy to find locally depending on where you live. In comparison, changing a battery in a quartz watch costs spare change and you'll likely find a service that can do it in any town or city. Many mechanical watch owners are ok with this but many aren't aware in the first place and face a very unpleasant surprise when their "eternal" watch suddenly halts after 5 years of no maintenance.. Please, if you intend to get a mechanical watch do your own research on how much maintenance is gonna cost, how often you'll have to have it done and where you can have it done. Be aware that these are things you're signing up for with a purchase like this.

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@Owlor@meow.social 2026-04-15 12:48

@njion Something I find fascinating about mechanical watches as jewellery is how much of their appeal and their function as a status symbol comes not from being obviously flashy or made from expensive material, but from the craftsmanship, design and sense of history and culture. I think that, to a lot of men in particular, mechanical watches represents jewellery with more "substance" than a simple, obviously expensive golden chain (that's become somewhat associated with women, people of color and working class people to an extent), which makes it kind of funny that they are in many ways less accurate and reliable than other kinds of watches. Like, there's still a fair amount of vanity there, just with more plausible deniability. (This is probably why most insults about expensive watches are about watches covered in gold and diamonds, what I think irks people isn't just that they are expensive, it's that they are tacky. (There's probably something to be said about how a lot of 'bling' is done with more self-awareness than it gets credit for. It's about this complex sort of signalling where they are showing that they are rich, but still part of, in the case of bling, hip hop culture.)) And like, this isn't me dunking on mechanical watch owners, I'd totally get one if I had more money (mine's quartz), there is a lot of appeal in the promise of something that's both well-made and cannot possibly send you push notifications, track your movements or harass you about not walking long enough. I just think it's kind of interesting how much mechanical watchmaking lives on because of what it represents to people, even when it's not strictly necessary.

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