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There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand (in the case of "automat

There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand (in the case of "automatic" mechanical watches). Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch. If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (though prices have been going up), a Vostok Amphibia (might be hard with the ukraine conflict) or a Timex Marlin.

zppln 5y ago
An SKX isn't gonna outlive you and once it fails they'll just replace the entire movement anyway. Mechanical watches are still indeed cool though. :)
- ghostpepper 5y ago
  As an owner of an SKX who doesn’t know much about watch longevity, how long can I expect it to last? Are there other automatics that will outlast a person’s life? It still blows my mind that you can take the SKX scuba diving, especially when you factor in the price. This may sound cynical but as I get older and see the world becoming more and more digital and connected, I find myself appreciating analog, mechanical things like watches and old cars more and more.
  - criddell 5y ago
    If you are going to take your SKX diving, you probably want to have a watchmaker pressure test it once in a while and make repairs as needed. The seals dry out and water will get in.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    I think maintenance requirements are overstated. I wore a relatively cheap (~£120) mechanical watch continuously for about 8 years, and never had a single problem with it. I only stopped wearing it about 2 years ago when I finally bought a smartwatch. It still works fine, I just don't wear it except on special occasions. If your watch is a sizable investment then maybe you care about maintenance more, but otherwise I wouldn't worry that it's going to stop working in short order.
  - kijin 5y ago
    Mechanical watches can last a lifetime (or more) if properly maintained and periodically serviced, just like old cars. People all over the world pass down their Rolexes and Omegas, still ticking, to their children and even grandchildren. Patek Philippe is well known for their slogan, "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation," showing confidence in the longevity of their watches. Of course those are very expensive brands, but I think part of what makes expensive watches last longer is that their owners take good care of them. Few people bother to get their SKX checked up on a regular schedule, on the other hand, because they're so cheap and easily replaceable by first-world standards.
    - approxim8ion 5y ago
      They also cost a ton to service. It's nice if the sentiment of carrying something through the years appeals to you, but the thing that keeps me away from mechanical watches is the service costs compared to the odd battery replacement on a quartz.
  - yobbo 5y ago
    I have a 7s26A movement out of a late 90s SKX which was unserviceable, and another 7s26C became unusable after 4-5 months of use. I also have a replacement 7s26C which worked flawlessly [-5,+5] s/d out of the box and a year so far, and another watch with NH35 which still holds [-5,+5] s/d after seven years of daily use. There are stories of SKX:s which hold good time after 20 years. There are much cheaper watches than SKX (at their current prices) that will withstand the depth, see "Beyond on the press" pressure chamber tests, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GdfGbj4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GdfGbj4Y
  - mmcgaha 5y ago
    My father's Seiko from the late 70s still keeps time at around 30 seconds per day. It has never been serviced so I am sure it is bone dry and really should not be run. I regularly wear a 2015 Seiko that used to be 8 seconds per day fast but has fallen to 5 seconds per day slow so it is probably time to service it. My two newest watches are from 2017 and 2021 and they are consistent since break in. So given my limited number of data points, I would say 5-7 years between service but if you just want to wear it until it dies, 10+ years is probably reasonable. On a side note, I have read about 40 year old Seikos being worn daily without service but that sure feels outside of the norm.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    > Are there other automatics that will outlast a person’s life? Very unlikely. You do hear the occasional story of a mechanical watch running fine for several decades without requiring any servicing, but there's a lot of survivorship bias at play there. It's extremely unlikely to go ~8 decades without needing servicing. Keep in mind there are lubricants at various places in the movement that are essential to proper operation that evaporate/denature over time.
iamben 5y ago
Agree with you so much. It still feels absolutely magical wearing one. The SKX007 was my first automatic watch and I wore it daily for 10 years. Incredible thing.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  I actually have an SKX013 which I like wayyy more than the 007. Basically the same watch but that 39MM size is perfect.
  - iamben 5y ago
    I wear a 39mm watch as my daily now. I agree - fantastic size!
- karolist 5y ago
  Still love my SKX007J though I don't wear it as much once I got in the habit of step counting, maybe I should start wearing two watches...
bluetomcat 5y ago
> Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand It's a mechanical device which stores energy in a spring barrel, and consumes it through a set of gears to produce constant velocity motion.
criddell 5y ago
A mechanical watch needs regular service which is usually just cleaning, lubricating, replacing seals and springs. Eventually it will need replacement parts and that is probably the end of life for the watch. There are a some brands that will service every watch they've ever made, fabricating new parts as needed. Few of us can afford one of those.
- snemvalts 5y ago
  A solar quartz fits this more. Those don't even require movement or correcting as often as with mechanical watches. Just light
  - kijin 5y ago
    The solar Casio I bought as a teenager stopped holding a usable charge after a few winters. Maybe it was just bad luck. I'll see if the new Citizen Eco-Drive in my collection lives up to the 40 years claim I saw elsewhere. :)
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Solar Casios(I own two) have a replaceable rechargable battery, it costs very little and isn't more difficult to replace than any other watch battery. It usually is this one in almost all their models: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080GQBTU/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX5JJ70VV0TV87H0W1FY https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080GQBTU/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX5J...
    - onosendai 5y ago
      The first Eco-Drives came out in the mid 90s. If you look around you'll find quite a few reports from people who bought the very first ones, and which are still ticking away virtually maintenance-free for 25+ years and counting. My own, a dive watch with around 10 years, which has actually been used for its stated purpose, is also still problem-free and with zero maintenance so far. The only thing you need to be mindful of with Eco-Drives is that you can't let it lose all charge. It can keep functioning in complete darkness for around 6 months, according to the specs, but if you do this enough times the battery will lose the ability to hold charge and will need to be replaced, and there are plenty of reports to this effect. If you're not planning on wearing it, just leave it somewhere that it can get natural light, instead of a drawer, and you should be good. While mechanical watches are undoubtedly cool and elegant, they're not perfect timekeepers, and when they do need maintenance it's not something trivial which you can perform yourself. For my day-to-day watch I'll take an accurate quartz movement with virtually zero maintenance any day. In other words an Eco-Drive, or something similar.
NoGravitas 5y ago
I have an automatic mechanical watch - a Seiko 5. It loses about 5 minutes a day. It might only need an adjustment to calibrate it, but that would require a watchmaker. I think the last one in town just went out of business, and even if he hadn't, the cost of his labor would be greater than the cost of the watch.
- yobbo 5y ago
  > It loses about 5 minutes a day This suggests it's completely out of spec, and maybe beyond saving. However, regulating functioning Seiko movements is certainly within reach for enthusiasts using a timegrapher device, or software with a microphone. Persistently adjusting over a few days, it should be able to get within -10,+10 seconds per day. The timegrapher will also reveal the condition of the movement and whether further work is worthwhile. Servicing these movements is likely more expensive than replacing them.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  It's not hard to make the adjustment, but you need a timegrapher to measure the results in a reasonable time. I've adjusted a couple of my watches over the course of a week or two by making small adjustments, noting the time, wearing it for a day, and then noting how much the time had changed versus a "known good" time. It's a pain but doable. There are mobile apps that use the phone's microphone to measure the watch's "ticks" and graph them for you. They aren't anywhere near as accurate as a "real" timegrapher but they'll get you close enough. At one point I had about a dozen mechanical watches. These days I have three, and only one that I wear almost exclusively. It's a Maratac Mid-Pilot, which uses a Miyota 8245 movement. I've used the "adjust and check later" method to adjust it, and it loses about 10s per week - well within the acceptable range. The other two that I've kept are a Seagull 1963, which I wear as a "dress watch", and a Vostok Retro 1934, which I sometimes wear when I want a change of pace. It has a white face and I have a variety of brightly-colored straps for it. One day I'll step up and buy a Hamilton, but I'm still savoring the serotonin from looking at them and anticipating :).
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    > but you need a timegrapher to measure the results in a reasonable time. This is just an app now. All a timegrapher is is a microphone and software, and, well, your phone has all that. This is the app I use; I highly recommend it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchaccuracymeter.app&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchaccur...
jclardy 5y ago
I feel the same way, I write software for a living and I'm sure an outsider browsing through the thousands of lines of code in my codebases everyday would be confused, but I get that same feeling when looking at a mechanical watch. To think that people were building the first mechanical timepieces 500 years ago, just a hundred or so years after the printing press is incredible to me. How did they even create parts that tiny so accurately?
CydeWeys 5y ago
> I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX Sadly this advice is a little bit out of date, as the SKX has been out of production now for a few years and the price on uses examples has risen above what one is worth (except to collectors). The newer advice is to grab a Seiko 5*. There's a million different choices, and all the current ones come with the 4R35 or 4R36 movement, which are better than the 7S26 which was in the SKX divers. * https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/products/5sports/lineup https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/products/5sports/lineup
rkangel 5y ago
I keep considering a mechanical watch, but I think I'd find the accuracy a bit tedious - having to continually adjust it every week so that I didn't arrive late to appointments. I like a watch that gets out of the way - it just works. I've got a Citizen watch a little like this: https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html It's a quartz watch, powered by solar power through the face. It has 'just worked' for as long as I've had it. From an accuracy point of view, it loses negligible amounts over the several month interval between me being forced to adjust it anyway (daylight savings, international travel).
- alfalfasprout 5y ago
  It depends on the movement in the watch. Any COSC chronometer movement will hold +4/-6s per day which worst case is under a minute lost per week. Typically the error is much smaller.
- 93po 5y ago
  You can always get a spring drive from grand seiko - it's mechanical (with an "brake" driven by an integrated circuit, but still no battery) but basically only gets a few seconds off per year. Lowest price point for those is like $5k though.
  - rkangel 5y ago
    I do love Seiko watches. That's probably a little steep for me but I'll have a look!
- _gy5c 5y ago
  you can expect a quality automatic movement (imo seiko is lowest end of quality) to be off on the order of single digit minutes per month
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  This is of course a matter of personal taste, but: I usually set my watch a few minutes fast on purpose. I just use it to get an approximation of the time: "oh, it's nearly 5" When I need the exact time I look at my phone, and naturally that's where my calendar reminders and such live as well. So I'm not missing any appointments if my watch is off, and if I did rely on my watch I'd be a few minutes early. The two work well in tandem for me. Of course, I also know lots of watch owners who prioritize accuracy from their wristwatches. If I was one of those people, I really couldn't imagine wanting to deal with a mechanical watch. They are wonderful, wonderful little machines and it's a miracle they're as accurate as they are... but, they are not as accurate as a $10 digital watch.
Prcmaker 5y ago
I've been using the same mechanical watch, more or less every day, for a little over 12yrs now. Miyota movement, stainless body, Sapphire window, about $300. In years of machine shop work the movement survived fine, and has one scratch on window from some tungsten carbide. Has kept brilliant time, maybe a minute a month, and taught me that my watch being accurate to the second was something that, for me, just didn't matter. I started working around pulsed high voltage last year (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week.
- eganist 5y ago
  > one scratch on window from some tungsten carbide. Checks out. Tungsten Carbide and Corundum (sapphire watch crystals, the hardest watch crystal in use) have the same Mohs hardness of 9 and will scratch each other. And I'd guess that a $300 watch probably doesn't use Corundum but rather mineral glass.
  - Prcmaker 5y ago
    County comm mid pilot watch, it's advertised as Sapphire. Comparing with colleagues at the time, it was a far sight tougher than their watches.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Lot of microbrands offer sapphire glass and very decent Miyota or Seiko automatic movements for $300-$500. Prices have crept up the last few years. Orient has a few automatic models (Kamasu, etc) that can be had for under $300 with sapphire.
- cyounkins 5y ago
  > I started working around pulsed high voltage last year (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week. Are these two things somehow related to one another?
  - brchr 5y ago
    Watch movements are generally sensitive to magnetic fields, and can become magnetized and lose accuracy. Some watch models explicitly advertise their level of resistance to magnetism, for instance the Rolex Milgauss, which is designed to withstand 1,000 ("mille") gauss.
sparker72678 5y ago
This rings especially true when you live and work in an ephemeral digital environment. I find mechanical devices of all kinds grounding. No batteries, no upgrades, no security vulnerabilities, no dependency hell.
rusticpenn 5y ago
Not to defend Apple watch or other smart watches, but they have been my dream since my childhood watching James Bond movies. So I love both mechanical watches for their engineering and smart watches for what they bring to the table. We dont have to diss one to make the other feel better.
domh 5y ago
I have a couple of Seiko automatic watches, but I recently picked up an SNK809 as a new daily driver: https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review. For £120/$130, it's cheap enough to wear every day and it looks great. The amount of mechanical complexity and engineering that goes into it for that price is mind blowing.
rauhl 4y ago
> Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch. I don’t know how many mechanical watches really will last a lifetime, but they will easily last longer than a so-called ‘smart’ watch. Six years ago I seriously considered purchasing a ‘smart’ watch. Eventually I realised that they were just another money sink and attention leash, and put the money into a couple of automatic watches instead. I still have them, and wear them regularly. Had I bought an Apple or Android watch, I would have replaced it multiple times by now. That’s the plus side. The minus side is that I don’t wear one of those two every single day because … I gotten bitten by the watch bug, and now I have a pile of other watches, and I wear those too! I still think that I am ahead of the game, though. BTW, I write ‘smart’ watch because I don’t think they are really that smart; if anything, they should be called unwise watches, because they are an unwise expenditure of resources, money and attention. Also they just don’t look good. I predict that in thirty years we’ll look back on them much as we do digital watches: as a fad.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  The minus side is that I don’t wear one of those two every single day because … I gotten bitten by the watch bug, and now I have a pile of other watches, and I wear those too! This was a big part of the fun for me. Different watches for different days. It's ridiculous, even embarrassing to admit this but -- I feel like the richest, luckiest man in the world when I look at a drawer full of watches from which I can choose each day. As a child I would never have dreamed of it. In reality they are all very modest watches, most under $100. The entire collection is not worth more than a nice laptop. But whatever. As a bonus mechanical watches, unless I'm mistaken, will last longer if not running 24/7/365.
turok 4y ago
As mentioned the SKX is no longer produced, and the replacements for it are inferior as the 5 series has increased in price beyond inflation and are not true dive watches anymore. Orient is better if you want a dive watch in the spirit of the Seiko SKX. The best current advice for beginners is probably on the Just One More Watch youtube channel, most watches are in the price bracket that the SKX occupied, and you will learn about micro-brands that exceed Seiko in quality, beat them on price, and under the hood have Seiko movements that are easily replaced & serviced for decades to come. My Helm Komodo reccomended by Jodi of JOMW gets as much wear as my Rolex Submariner and at a fraction of the price. It isn't the same price or quality, but I enjoy it just as much.

zppln 5y ago

An SKX isn't gonna outlive you and once it fails they'll just replace the entire movement anyway. Mechanical watches are still indeed cool though. :)

ghostpepper 5y ago
As an owner of an SKX who doesn’t know much about watch longevity, how long can I expect it to last? Are there other automatics that will outlast a person’s life? It still blows my mind that you can take the SKX scuba diving, especially when you factor in the price. This may sound cynical but as I get older and see the world becoming more and more digital and connected, I find myself appreciating analog, mechanical things like watches and old cars more and more.
- criddell 5y ago
  If you are going to take your SKX diving, you probably want to have a watchmaker pressure test it once in a while and make repairs as needed. The seals dry out and water will get in.
- jstanley 5y ago
  I think maintenance requirements are overstated. I wore a relatively cheap (~£120) mechanical watch continuously for about 8 years, and never had a single problem with it. I only stopped wearing it about 2 years ago when I finally bought a smartwatch. It still works fine, I just don't wear it except on special occasions. If your watch is a sizable investment then maybe you care about maintenance more, but otherwise I wouldn't worry that it's going to stop working in short order.
- kijin 5y ago
  Mechanical watches can last a lifetime (or more) if properly maintained and periodically serviced, just like old cars. People all over the world pass down their Rolexes and Omegas, still ticking, to their children and even grandchildren. Patek Philippe is well known for their slogan, "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation," showing confidence in the longevity of their watches. Of course those are very expensive brands, but I think part of what makes expensive watches last longer is that their owners take good care of them. Few people bother to get their SKX checked up on a regular schedule, on the other hand, because they're so cheap and easily replaceable by first-world standards.
  - approxim8ion 5y ago
    They also cost a ton to service. It's nice if the sentiment of carrying something through the years appeals to you, but the thing that keeps me away from mechanical watches is the service costs compared to the odd battery replacement on a quartz.
- yobbo 5y ago
  I have a 7s26A movement out of a late 90s SKX which was unserviceable, and another 7s26C became unusable after 4-5 months of use. I also have a replacement 7s26C which worked flawlessly [-5,+5] s/d out of the box and a year so far, and another watch with NH35 which still holds [-5,+5] s/d after seven years of daily use. There are stories of SKX:s which hold good time after 20 years. There are much cheaper watches than SKX (at their current prices) that will withstand the depth, see "Beyond on the press" pressure chamber tests, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GdfGbj4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti-GdfGbj4Y
- mmcgaha 5y ago
  My father's Seiko from the late 70s still keeps time at around 30 seconds per day. It has never been serviced so I am sure it is bone dry and really should not be run. I regularly wear a 2015 Seiko that used to be 8 seconds per day fast but has fallen to 5 seconds per day slow so it is probably time to service it. My two newest watches are from 2017 and 2021 and they are consistent since break in. So given my limited number of data points, I would say 5-7 years between service but if you just want to wear it until it dies, 10+ years is probably reasonable. On a side note, I have read about 40 year old Seikos being worn daily without service but that sure feels outside of the norm.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  > Are there other automatics that will outlast a person’s life? Very unlikely. You do hear the occasional story of a mechanical watch running fine for several decades without requiring any servicing, but there's a lot of survivorship bias at play there. It's extremely unlikely to go ~8 decades without needing servicing. Keep in mind there are lubricants at various places in the movement that are essential to proper operation that evaporate/denature over time.

iamben 5y ago

Agree with you so much. It still feels absolutely magical wearing one. The SKX007 was my first automatic watch and I wore it daily for 10 years. Incredible thing.

_fat_santa 5y ago
I actually have an SKX013 which I like wayyy more than the 007. Basically the same watch but that 39MM size is perfect.
- iamben 5y ago
  I wear a 39mm watch as my daily now. I agree - fantastic size!
karolist 5y ago
Still love my SKX007J though I don't wear it as much once I got in the habit of step counting, maybe I should start wearing two watches...

bluetomcat 5y ago

> Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand It's a mechanical device which stores energy in a spring barrel, and consumes it through a set of gears to produce constant velocity motion.

criddell 5y ago

A mechanical watch needs regular service which is usually just cleaning, lubricating, replacing seals and springs. Eventually it will need replacement parts and that is probably the end of life for the watch. There are a some brands that will service every watch they've ever made, fabricating new parts as needed. Few of us can afford one of those.

snemvalts 5y ago
A solar quartz fits this more. Those don't even require movement or correcting as often as with mechanical watches. Just light
- kijin 5y ago
  The solar Casio I bought as a teenager stopped holding a usable charge after a few winters. Maybe it was just bad luck. I'll see if the new Citizen Eco-Drive in my collection lives up to the 40 years claim I saw elsewhere. :)
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Solar Casios(I own two) have a replaceable rechargable battery, it costs very little and isn't more difficult to replace than any other watch battery. It usually is this one in almost all their models: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080GQBTU/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX5JJ70VV0TV87H0W1FY https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0080GQBTU/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XX5J...
  - onosendai 5y ago
    The first Eco-Drives came out in the mid 90s. If you look around you'll find quite a few reports from people who bought the very first ones, and which are still ticking away virtually maintenance-free for 25+ years and counting. My own, a dive watch with around 10 years, which has actually been used for its stated purpose, is also still problem-free and with zero maintenance so far. The only thing you need to be mindful of with Eco-Drives is that you can't let it lose all charge. It can keep functioning in complete darkness for around 6 months, according to the specs, but if you do this enough times the battery will lose the ability to hold charge and will need to be replaced, and there are plenty of reports to this effect. If you're not planning on wearing it, just leave it somewhere that it can get natural light, instead of a drawer, and you should be good. While mechanical watches are undoubtedly cool and elegant, they're not perfect timekeepers, and when they do need maintenance it's not something trivial which you can perform yourself. For my day-to-day watch I'll take an accurate quartz movement with virtually zero maintenance any day. In other words an Eco-Drive, or something similar.

NoGravitas 5y ago

I have an automatic mechanical watch - a Seiko 5. It loses about 5 minutes a day. It might only need an adjustment to calibrate it, but that would require a watchmaker. I think the last one in town just went out of business, and even if he hadn't, the cost of his labor would be greater than the cost of the watch.

yobbo 5y ago
> It loses about 5 minutes a day This suggests it's completely out of spec, and maybe beyond saving. However, regulating functioning Seiko movements is certainly within reach for enthusiasts using a timegrapher device, or software with a microphone. Persistently adjusting over a few days, it should be able to get within -10,+10 seconds per day. The timegrapher will also reveal the condition of the movement and whether further work is worthwhile. Servicing these movements is likely more expensive than replacing them.
Ancapistani 5y ago
It's not hard to make the adjustment, but you need a timegrapher to measure the results in a reasonable time. I've adjusted a couple of my watches over the course of a week or two by making small adjustments, noting the time, wearing it for a day, and then noting how much the time had changed versus a "known good" time. It's a pain but doable. There are mobile apps that use the phone's microphone to measure the watch's "ticks" and graph them for you. They aren't anywhere near as accurate as a "real" timegrapher but they'll get you close enough. At one point I had about a dozen mechanical watches. These days I have three, and only one that I wear almost exclusively. It's a Maratac Mid-Pilot, which uses a Miyota 8245 movement. I've used the "adjust and check later" method to adjust it, and it loses about 10s per week - well within the acceptable range. The other two that I've kept are a Seagull 1963, which I wear as a "dress watch", and a Vostok Retro 1934, which I sometimes wear when I want a change of pace. It has a white face and I have a variety of brightly-colored straps for it. One day I'll step up and buy a Hamilton, but I'm still savoring the serotonin from looking at them and anticipating :).
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  > but you need a timegrapher to measure the results in a reasonable time. This is just an app now. All a timegrapher is is a microphone and software, and, well, your phone has all that. This is the app I use; I highly recommend it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchaccuracymeter.app&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.watchaccur...

jclardy 5y ago

I feel the same way, I write software for a living and I'm sure an outsider browsing through the thousands of lines of code in my codebases everyday would be confused, but I get that same feeling when looking at a mechanical watch. To think that people were building the first mechanical timepieces 500 years ago, just a hundred or so years after the printing press is incredible to me. How did they even create parts that tiny so accurately?

CydeWeys 5y ago

> I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX Sadly this advice is a little bit out of date, as the SKX has been out of production now for a few years and the price on uses examples has risen above what one is worth (except to collectors). The newer advice is to grab a Seiko 5*. There's a million different choices, and all the current ones come with the 4R35 or 4R36 movement, which are better than the 7S26 which was in the SKX divers. * https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/products/5sports/lineup https://www.seikowatches.com/us-en/products/5sports/lineup

rkangel 5y ago

I keep considering a mechanical watch, but I think I'd find the accuracy a bit tedious - having to continually adjust it every week so that I didn't arrive late to appointments. I like a watch that gets out of the way - it just works. I've got a Citizen watch a little like this: https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html It's a quartz watch, powered by solar power through the face. It has 'just worked' for as long as I've had it. From an accuracy point of view, it loses negligible amounts over the several month interval between me being forced to adjust it anyway (daylight savings, international travel).

alfalfasprout 5y ago
It depends on the movement in the watch. Any COSC chronometer movement will hold +4/-6s per day which worst case is under a minute lost per week. Typically the error is much smaller.
93po 5y ago
You can always get a spring drive from grand seiko - it's mechanical (with an "brake" driven by an integrated circuit, but still no battery) but basically only gets a few seconds off per year. Lowest price point for those is like $5k though.
- rkangel 5y ago
  I do love Seiko watches. That's probably a little steep for me but I'll have a look!
_gy5c 5y ago
you can expect a quality automatic movement (imo seiko is lowest end of quality) to be off on the order of single digit minutes per month
JohnBooty 4y ago
This is of course a matter of personal taste, but: I usually set my watch a few minutes fast on purpose. I just use it to get an approximation of the time: "oh, it's nearly 5" When I need the exact time I look at my phone, and naturally that's where my calendar reminders and such live as well. So I'm not missing any appointments if my watch is off, and if I did rely on my watch I'd be a few minutes early. The two work well in tandem for me. Of course, I also know lots of watch owners who prioritize accuracy from their wristwatches. If I was one of those people, I really couldn't imagine wanting to deal with a mechanical watch. They are wonderful, wonderful little machines and it's a miracle they're as accurate as they are... but, they are not as accurate as a $10 digital watch.

Prcmaker 5y ago

I've been using the same mechanical watch, more or less every day, for a little over 12yrs now. Miyota movement, stainless body, Sapphire window, about $300. In years of machine shop work the movement survived fine, and has one scratch on window from some tungsten carbide. Has kept brilliant time, maybe a minute a month, and taught me that my watch being accurate to the second was something that, for me, just didn't matter. I started working around pulsed high voltage last year (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week.

eganist 5y ago
> one scratch on window from some tungsten carbide. Checks out. Tungsten Carbide and Corundum (sapphire watch crystals, the hardest watch crystal in use) have the same Mohs hardness of 9 and will scratch each other. And I'd guess that a $300 watch probably doesn't use Corundum but rather mineral glass.
- Prcmaker 5y ago
  County comm mid pilot watch, it's advertised as Sapphire. Comparing with colleagues at the time, it was a far sight tougher than their watches.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Lot of microbrands offer sapphire glass and very decent Miyota or Seiko automatic movements for $300-$500. Prices have crept up the last few years. Orient has a few automatic models (Kamasu, etc) that can be had for under $300 with sapphire.
cyounkins 5y ago
> I started working around pulsed high voltage last year (100kV+) and now it loses a couple minutes a week. Are these two things somehow related to one another?
- brchr 5y ago
  Watch movements are generally sensitive to magnetic fields, and can become magnetized and lose accuracy. Some watch models explicitly advertise their level of resistance to magnetism, for instance the Rolex Milgauss, which is designed to withstand 1,000 ("mille") gauss.

sparker72678 5y ago

This rings especially true when you live and work in an ephemeral digital environment. I find mechanical devices of all kinds grounding. No batteries, no upgrades, no security vulnerabilities, no dependency hell.

rusticpenn 5y ago

Not to defend Apple watch or other smart watches, but they have been my dream since my childhood watching James Bond movies. So I love both mechanical watches for their engineering and smart watches for what they bring to the table. We dont have to diss one to make the other feel better.

domh 5y ago

I have a couple of Seiko automatic watches, but I recently picked up an SNK809 as a new daily driver: https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review https://www.benswatchclub.com/blog/seiko-5-military-review. For £120/$130, it's cheap enough to wear every day and it looks great. The amount of mechanical complexity and engineering that goes into it for that price is mind blowing.

rauhl 4y ago

> Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch. I don’t know how many mechanical watches really will last a lifetime, but they will easily last longer than a so-called ‘smart’ watch. Six years ago I seriously considered purchasing a ‘smart’ watch. Eventually I realised that they were just another money sink and attention leash, and put the money into a couple of automatic watches instead. I still have them, and wear them regularly. Had I bought an Apple or Android watch, I would have replaced it multiple times by now. That’s the plus side. The minus side is that I don’t wear one of those two every single day because … I gotten bitten by the watch bug, and now I have a pile of other watches, and I wear those too! I still think that I am ahead of the game, though. BTW, I write ‘smart’ watch because I don’t think they are really that smart; if anything, they should be called unwise watches, because they are an unwise expenditure of resources, money and attention. Also they just don’t look good. I predict that in thirty years we’ll look back on them much as we do digital watches: as a fad.

JohnBooty 4y ago
The minus side is that I don’t wear one of those two every single day because … I gotten bitten by the watch bug, and now I have a pile of other watches, and I wear those too! This was a big part of the fun for me. Different watches for different days. It's ridiculous, even embarrassing to admit this but -- I feel like the richest, luckiest man in the world when I look at a drawer full of watches from which I can choose each day. As a child I would never have dreamed of it. In reality they are all very modest watches, most under $100. The entire collection is not worth more than a nice laptop. But whatever. As a bonus mechanical watches, unless I'm mistaken, will last longer if not running 24/7/365.

turok 4y ago

As mentioned the SKX is no longer produced, and the replacements for it are inferior as the 5 series has increased in price beyond inflation and are not true dive watches anymore. Orient is better if you want a dive watch in the spirit of the Seiko SKX. The best current advice for beginners is probably on the Just One More Watch youtube channel, most watches are in the price bracket that the SKX occupied, and you will learn about micro-brands that exceed Seiko in quality, beat them on price, and under the hood have Seiko movements that are easily replaced & serviced for decades to come. My Helm Komodo reccomended by Jodi of JOMW gets as much wear as my Rolex Submariner and at a fraction of the price. It isn't the same price or quality, but I enjoy it just as much.