Small seconds need to be a thing AGAIN

Yes, I agree, because I love railroad-style pocket watches, and small seconds makes it look like you're wearing one of those pocket watches on your wrist! 😍 😎

100%. I just upgraded to an Omega 1948... Also with small seconds. I think they look great!

I actually agree with this article primarily because of point no3 (which you can read below)

If not an in-house movement, a modern three-hander movement has been bastardized with extra parts and complexity to achieve the look of simpler, outdated tech.

I’m not one to talk of mechanical objects having soul or character, but this retrofit is dishonest, inauthentic and pretentious. It’s a lie, and a stupid one at that. It’s like faking a limp or a stutter, adopting a Mockney accent. This shunning of true design and function is technological slumming that should make anyone hate small seconds hands.

Extra effort and expense are required, making this is as loathsome as expensive designer jeans with contrived tears, or the metrosexual that primps for an hour to get that tousled bedhead look. It’s just a terrible waste to achieve something that shouldn’t be desirable in the first place.

Absolutely. I love my Baltany 36mm Automatic Field Watch.

100% I love small seconds!

I even think more brands should include small seconds options on non-vintage inspired watches, like this:

@OscarKlosoff - did you really mean all that? That’s a bit harsh.

Early doors, sweeping seconds was the bastardisation, with the sub-second dial reflecting the position of the gear train. To get a sweep second you had to add gearing. I know they got there in the end by eventually developing a direct centre seconds, and now, ironically, we have indirect sub-seconds, but surely you can see the beauty of going full-circle? Why not inject a little bit of style into your life?

I like small seconds especially for my quartz analog watches. It makes the tick of the seconds hand less visible if they don't exactly hit their marks. Also, I do like the look.

Agree, my nomos club campus is 36mm and has small second hand 😊

Hell yes. The look may be a nostalgic thing, but functionally small seconds suck and there is a reason they are properly obsolete. Very recently I got yet another family drawer find, a Hamilton pocket watch, sans stem and crown. The only thing that truly draws me to it is that the small seconds are markedly less small than on my other pocket watches.

I could make the argument that quartz watches should adopt small seconds subdials to minimize the appearance of the dead beat second hand motion that annoys a certain type of person.

I think you’re going too far. The whole point they existed was due to original movement complication, and sweep seconds was indirect; you cannot just malign an entire generation of watches now because the configuration changed. If you want to dismiss indirect gearing then you actually do the movements a disservice, it’s all very clever.

I love them. If anything, I'm looking for more watches with them.

I dismiss the modern generation as it is a step backward. In most things vintage there is a very good argument to be made for why older ways were superior. I guess one could say there is a tad of thinness gained (exhibit A is Bulgari Octo Finissimo) so I'll concede that. But fakey complication for ye olde look is too twee for me.

I like the ascetic….. It’s not Twee to me , all this stuff is very subjective.