Quartz Is Not the Enemy. Your Watch Snobbery Is!
Mechanical watches are emotionally compelling because they are tiny machines powered by springs, gears and controlled inefficiency. Quartz watches are often objectively better at timekeeping, convenience and low-cost ownership.
The problem is, a personal preference has incorrectly turned this difference into a hierarchy.
Quartz has a branding problem.
In almost every practical sense, it is the grown-up technology, more accurate, lower-maintenance, generally cheaper to own and ready to go when you pick it up. But say you prefer quartz in a room full of watch enthusiasts and there is a reasonable chance someone will react as though you have announced a fondness for Velcro shoes.
Mechanical watches, meanwhile, get away with being spectacularly impractical because they are charming. They need servicing. They can be thrown off by magnetism. They lose or gain time. Leave one in a drawer for a few days and it may require the sort of morning reset normally associated with old boilers.
And yet, most of us still love them.
That is not irrational. It just means we should stop pretending quartz is inferior simply because it does its job too well.
My 5 points of reasoning:
A quartz watch is usually more accurate than a mechanical one.
Quartz is genuinely useful for work, travel, exercise, holidays and busy routines.
A battery-powered movement does not prevent a watch from being well designed, historically significant or emotionally meaningful.
Solar and high-accuracy quartz options make the old “battery-powered means cheap” argument even weaker.
The romance of mechanical watchmaking is real, but it is not the same thing as practical superiority.
The Point
A mechanical watch is not that it is the best possible instrument for measuring time. A phone is more accurate still, and nobody is writing love letters to their iPhone’s clock app.
Mechanical watches matter because they make an ordinary task feel tangible. You can see the result of human engineering at work on your wrist. That is a perfectly good reason to own one. It just is not a reason to look down on quartz.
Winding things up!
Mechanical watches may be the heart of the hobby. But quartz is often the watch you actually need when you leave the house.
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