Welcome to this Watch live. Hi, I'm Lydia Winters.
And I'm Boo Booey. And today we're talking about
movements. If you were a movement, what
movement would you be? Wait.
You don't know. You would obviously be quartz
most accurate. Oh, to the second.
Although that feels a little bit like an insult.
Wow, OK, I guess we know where you stand on Quartz.
No, on that. My biggest quality is that I'm
accurate. Oh, well, I was going to say I
would be manual wound because I like attention daily.
OK, as long as they're. Both.
Yeah. Yeah.
I yeah I think it's definitely self deprecation here.
OK, we have a question from Jill at only passing time and it's
about movements. Hi, Lydian Vu, this is Jill.
At only passing time, automatic hand wound courts.
How do you feel about these three types of movements, and
how do these feelings manifest in your collections?
That's a really cool question. Thank you Jill for this
question. I think I it makes sense to 1st
categorize these. These.
Very quickly, very. Quickly, because I definitely
know very specifically the difference between them.
You know most. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know.
But in a like loosey goosey way. That that is your.
You see, If only there was a movement that represented loosey
gooseyness, that would be true. You are.
But OK, OK, there's going to be a bunch of generalizations here
because there there's always these cool things that are being
done by people and it it changes the the the typical standard.
But in in general there's three main types of movements.
You have the fully mechanical movements, you have either
automatic or manual winding. Automatic essentially has a self
winding capacity. So usually due to the movement
of your wrist, it will wind itself.
Therefore automatic, it automatically powers itself as
long as it's being worn. And then you have manual winding
or hand wound movements which you have to usually turn the
crown and you give it power. And you either do that every
day, which I typically do if it's a hand wound, because
otherwise I'll forget because I don't have a hand wound movement
that has a power reserve indicator.
So I just do it every day. I did that with my speedy for
many years. And then you have Quartz.
But first of all, both of those are considered mechanical.
Yes. And then you have quartz which
is typically fully battery powered and runs electronically
and uses. The reason it's called quartz is
because it actually uses a quartz crystal in it.
I won't go into the scientific details that probably more
people, but that's how the time keeping happens.
You heard it here. Vu believes in crystals, the
magic of crystals magic. This is the one crystal that I
believe in, the magic of it, because when done right, it can
be incredibly accurate. Then there's other types of
movements as well, but that's not what Jill was asking.
But you have Spring Drive by Grand Seiko, which combines some
of the benefits of both mechanical and quartz.
You have Mecca quartz movements that are most of the ones we see
are made by Seiko, although others do make them.
And that's where you actually have different parts of the
movement, Like a part of it is mechanical and a different part
is quartz. Like you could have a quartz
time keeping, but then a mechanical chronograph.
I like that. That's kind of picking and what
you think is best for the move. For that part, yeah, yeah.
It's like what? What do you need for the
different parts? And you, you take the best of
each. But that's how we're talking
about. We're going to.
Jill only asked about the three main ones, which is automatic,
manual winding and quartz. But.
Yes, but. When it comes to all of these, I
think one of the things that makes it more difficult, because
she's specifically was asking about how we feel about these
different types of movements. I grew up wearing quartz
watches. Yeah, like.
Me too. I I don't.
I didn't have my first mechanical watch until, well, I
don't, I don't know. I was like 30 or something, you
know? Mine would have been.
Around that, yeah. Around I was like, what?
Yeah, pretty much even. Though we're not the same age.
Yeah, so like, quartz. Just kind of like was the thing.
And then what often happens with people is they get into
mechanical movements and then they shun quartz because it is
seen as inferior. But just like with mechanical
movements where you can buy very, very affordable mechanical
watches, there are affordable quartz and there's also much
less affordable quartz And and you have the high accuracy
quartz, which is on another level, usually not just in the
time keeping, but also in how they're made and how beautiful
they are and how serviceable they are.
So again, I'm going to bring up Grand Seiko because they're very
well known for this, although they're not the only ones.
They are making beautiful quartz movements that are serviceable,
that are super accurate. So a typical, like if you spend
like 40-50 bucks on, you know, U.S.
Dollars on a quartz watch like that movement will probably be
accurate within about 15 seconds a month, which is better than
most mechanical movements, yeah. Right.
That's why you're Quartz. But then you can get high
accuracy quartz movements, which typically cost quite a bit more,
and then they're accurate to like 10 seconds per year.
That's amazing. Which is, which is like super
accurate. And then there's the upper
echelon of that, which will be accurate to within like a second
a year and there's there's not too many of those.
I think there's been, I would say it because I've been part of
the watch community for let's say three years.
I do think there has been a shift in the perception of
courts. I've it could be because of this
like very big Cartier boom that all of a sudden it's like, well,
if you want a lot of the older Cartier models that are small.
Even many of the. Many of the current ones,
they're courts, so you have to, just like you can't be a snob
about it if you like the design. So I have.
I have definitely noticed that a lot.
I mean, there are real benefits to courts besides the accuracy.
Not everyone cares about accuracy, as we have seen.
True. I don't.
I mean if you don't even set. Your watch.
I do set it. I do set it.
This is fake. News.
I'm saying if you don't set your watch to the second, oh.
Yes, I don't. Certainly don't need something
that's accurate to within a couple seconds a year, right?
Like that that that's not necessarily a big consideration
for you? A quartz is set it and forget
it. So however many years it is, if
if it get goes off, that's just. Luckily, that's what happens.
Unless it's like a a digital watch, then most quartz watches
will still need to be set when the time changes.
Oh yeah, that is OK. So then it does you're.
Probably going to be fixing that.
Right. And if we definitely,
definitely, probably. I mean, one of the things that
like I think people go through is this, these stages, right,
where you you kind of the romanticism of a mechanical
movement becomes so great that you're like quartz is garbage.
Like that's just digital nothing, you know, like there
there's no art in that mechanical.
You see how intricate these movements are and and you can
understand how exactly how they work fairly easily.
You watch your YouTube video and you're like, oh all these tiny
little gears and springs and all of these tiny parts come
together to tell the time and it is kind of a miracle, right?
Like it's it's really amazing that that as humans we invented
these tiny things that can do this.
Well, the crystals are doing it. That's in the.
Course, I know. I'm just kidding.
So, like, I think though over time, the magic of the
mechanical movement, as you get to know it more and more, maybe
that goes down, the romanticism maybe doesn't, but the magic of
it does, and that maybe that can open you up to, oh, OK spring
Dr. Quartz. Like that.
They're still awesome, and it depends on what's important to
you in a watch. Yeah, I mean, for me, I
definitely think hand wound watches.
I really love them because they can be so much thinner, smaller,
you know, you can have these tiny, like I'm wearing the
tiniest Omega right now. I didn't even notice what you're
wearing. Bought for me, I guess.
I think this was my first mechanical watch, 'cause I had
the tag Hoyer, which was quartz. And then Boo gave me the, I mean
probably 13 millimeters, 15. No, it's probably 20.
That's probably a 20mm watch. Maybe.
Maybe it's. It's.
Very, very tiny and I really like.
I mean the only way you can have a movement this small is for it
to be manual wound. Yeah, I think so.
I think. Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure they could make.
An automatic movement at the at a price point that is
successful. And that's what ends up being,
because that's one of the benefits of courts, you can also
make them incredibly small. So they can be small, super
accurate and they're very durable because they have no
moving parts. But that hand wound watch from,
I don't even remember when it's from.
I think it has an engraving, I guess in the 1960s like.
This is the 60s. Some of the benefits of a hand
wound is they can be more quiet because you don't have this
oscillating weight that and some watches can be quite noisy.
Which I have to say, I'm going to say that my favorite movement
is actually hand wound. Sometimes the the the rotors
just getting in the way of seeing the movement if you have
an open case back. I do feel it a lot, actually, on
certain watches, and I'm kind of like clunk, clunk, yeah.
Or if you, you know, sometimes if you move just right, it'll
spin really rapidly and you can feel that.
My IWC 37 O Six really does that where I'm like, whoa for a
second. It kind of, yeah, throws me off
of it. So I do think I really love hand
wound. But to get back to Jill's
question of like how it manifests in my collecting, I
would say because I switch watches so often, I don't really
mind. Yeah, like I don't mind if I
need to wind it because I'm probably not doing it every day.
And I also it's great if it's automatic, but typically I still
need to set it because I haven't worn it.
Yeah, I think for for the way that I wear watches hand wound
versus automatic, there is no difference maybe the number of
times I wind it in the morning, but I I essentially wind them
both, right, because I switch watches every day.
But Quartz is the grab and go. Yeah, that's true.
And. Pre Pandemic, like when we were
going to the office every day, there was a period of time where
I was like, OK, if I don't have time to wind my watch and set
it, then I can just grab a quartz watch and run out the
door and not have to think like oh am I going to remember to set
this later? Because I hate that moment
halfway through the day when I would look at my watch.
This has happened to me a few. Times Oh, whoa.
This just in. I look at my watch.
You know, maybe sometime around lunch.
And I'm like, oh, I never set my watch today.
And I just feel so sad that I ignored my watch for hours.
Oh, no. Yeah.
Like. It doesn't deserve to be ignored
for so long. It feels so sad, right?
So. Sometimes the grab and go is the
quartz watch because it's just always pretty accurate.
Yeah, I mean, we're huge Nomos fans and a lot of them are hand
wound. Yeah, the Alpha caliber, I mean,
one of the other things I really like about hand wound movement
watches is that they feel more solid.
They don't have anything moving inside of them, so typically for
me they feel more solid. They're usually much thinner as.
Well, that's the selling point. For me, yeah.
I mean, there are very thin automatic, yes, of course, but
in general, hand round movements are thinner, but with automatic
movements because you're not winding them every day.
Well, it depends. But then it wears out the gasket
less like each of them. Has their own, yeah, merit.
That's why they're still all used.
They are still all used. They are still all used.
But what? Wait, so you have, Yeah, we both
have all three in our collections.
What? What?
So back to Jill's question, like how do you think about it when
you're buying a new watch? Yeah, I do think that I still am
in the phase where I don't mind quartz, but sometimes when I
look at the price of a quartz watch, I'm a bit more like why
doesn't it have a mechanical movement, just and that's more
of the feeling because again, it does not actually matter to me.
I, I, I am not typically like comparing movements, but there's
something about it and it's mainly related to Cartier and a
lot of it has to do with many of most of the smaller models are
quartz. But then if you go to like the
medium size like Santos for example, then all of a sudden
it's automatic. And so you're like oh, but you
know, so I think that's the only time I really think about it.
I still forget to change the battery.
Change the battery. Yeah or change the yeah to
change the to get the to get the quartz, change the battery
changed. In the watches.
So like some of them are just set to 1010 old.
Dead watches that are just sitting around, but you don't
wear them. Yeah, no, my Vasheron,
Constantine. I need.
That one's dead. Yeah.
But so I just have it set to 10:10 and then it's just pretty,
it's just pretty jewelry. Yeah, exactly.
Well, I I I don't. I'm not going to say that I
don't care at all. I do think about that.
And I do also think about like it feels wrong to pay a lot for
a quartz watch unless you can see that somehow it's special.
So. There are grand circle.
Watches where when they show the movement there, there's
typically not an open case back on quartz watches, but you can
see photos of the movements and they are beautifully finished
and you know that they there's a lot of work put into it.
Then you feel like, oh OK, I'm paying more for that.
But it's still just this programming that we think that
quartz is cheap and mechanical is expensive.
Yeah. But then you look at like the
Cartier Benoit, Bengal and you're like, so much engineering
goes into making this like perfect piece of gold that wraps
around the wrist. Yes, it's quartz, but that
doesn't take away all of the beauty.
So I'm team. Any movement, Yay.
I I. Also am because on yeah, we.
Both are. It doesn't matter at all because
at the end of the day, most of the watches I own, I own because
I like how they look and feel as opposed to what's inside of
them. But then on another level, it
matters so, so much. Yeah, it's.
Both. It's both.
It's Yes and. Well, we thank Jill so much for
submitting this question. And a reminder to everyone else,
you can easily submit audio questions.
Just record them on your phone and e-mail them to questions at
this Watch life.com. Yes.
And you can tell us which movement you would be and why.
Or your favorite. Yeah, or.
Your favorite. Bye.
Bye everyone.