How to judge the quality of a watch

Shopping for a watch can be overwhelming. Just a quick search on Amazon.com reveals 350,000 results, ranging in price from less than $10 to more than $10,000. So what makes a watch good? How do you judge the quality of a watch?  There are several factors to consider: chief among them movement, materials, and brand.

Watch movements

A watch’s movement is the internal mechanism of the watch, the moving parts inside which make it work. Watch movements can be digital, automatic, or quartz. Until the mid/late 20th century, all watch movements were mechanical (not electronic), and the quality of the automatic movement could be judged by the number and complexity of the moving parts, and by the accuracy of the timekeeping.

A handy guide to judging the quality of a mechanical movement, is by the number of jewels. The jewels inside a watch (traditionally rubies, but often artificial or “grown” jewels in modern watches) are used to prevent wear and friction on the moving parts, so the more jewels a watch has, the better a watch can keep time and absorb shocks. An automatic watch might be listed as 17-jewel (about the minimum needed to make a decent watch today), 19-jewel, 21-jewel, etc. Higher numbers help indicate watch quality. (Though be wary of too-high numbers listed as a marketing ploy).

Today, most mechanical watches are automatic, that is, self-winding. Self-winding watches do not need a battery, and do not need to be wound frequently. They power and sustain movement with each movement of the wrist.

Unlike mechanical watches, quartz watches use a small quartz-crystal oscillator, which vibrates at a cycle of precisely two cycles a second (or some other divisor of a second), to drive the second hand. Invented in the 1920s and introduced into wristwatches in the late 1960s, quartz movements are much more accurate than automatic watches. In the 1960s and 1970s, most quartz watches were labeled “QUARTZ” as a sign of quality. Today, most wrist watches use quartz movements, and mechanical watches are now seen as more recherche products, because they require more expertize and expense to manufacture.

Digital watches use electronic mechanisms and digital displays, expressing the time with LED (light-emitting diode) or LCD (liquid crystal displays) faces. The first digital watch, inspired by a futuristic clock in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, hit the wristwatch market in 1970 (it was priced at over $2,000). By the late 1970s, digital watches were available at reasonable prices to the mass consumer, and by the 1990s were seen as inexpensive, functional devices. This image has begun to change again with the release of stylized watch displays using dot-matrix or LCD displays (cf. Tokyo Flash watches or the Cadence Josh Chadwick Digital Analog Watch).

Movement origin is another indicator of a watch’s quality. Watch manufacture is concentrated in just a few countries, the major players being Switzerland, Japan, Germany, and China. (Other producers include Russia, India, and USA, although some “made in USA” movements originate in the U.S. Virgin Islands.) Among these, Swiss watches still maintain the best reputation, followed by Germany and Japan, then China.

But there are several problems with judging a watch’s quality by movement origin. Within each country there is a wide range of quality, so there are many quality Chinese movements better than poorly made Swiss ones. The “Made In…” mark on a watch refers to a watch’s movement, so a “Swiss made” watch can have a case, strap, face, bezel, and buckle made elsewhere as long as the movement is assembled in Switzerland. This also means that individual parts of the movement can be made elsewhere, further complicating the issue.

Few watchmakers actually make their own movements; most use movements made by one of the few major manufacturers in the world. Major movement makers include ETA (Switzerland), Miyota (Japan), Seiko (Japan), HMT (India), and Tianjin (China). Movements are often numbered, making it easy to compare like watches. For example, the Miyota 8215 is used many watches. Do a quick search on Google or Amazon to compare prices of watches using the same movement.

Materials

The next step in judging the quality of a watch is the material from which the watch—the case, bezel, strap, buckle, and crown—is made. All movement types can be housed in a range of cases.

Is the bezel and case made from solid gold? Is is steel? Or is it a plastic or metal alloy material? The bezel and case material along with movement is where your pricing comes from on expensive watches. You will tend to notice watches made of a good steel or gold will generally have well made movements. Does your watch include any diamonds or other jewels to enhance the design? This obviously will raise the price of the watch, and the quality too. Does your watch include any gold coats?

The last step in judging the quality of a watch is the brand it comes from. Does that brand have unmeasurable appeal? Is it a well known watch brand? The better known watch brand will have a faithful following and will generally have good quality items, and the watch will hold its value better.

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