What is your time reference? Poll Results
Okay WatchCrunchers, it’s been about three weeks since I posted the poll and the responses have pretty much dwindled. The official results are shown in the image above. It seems like most of us are pretty obsessed with making sure our watches are accurate. I guess that’s just part of the hobby. I wasn’t surprised by the number of respondents that use their cell phones, cell phones are generally ± 2 seconds between syncs. I was surprised how many of us use the NIST website. The largest number of “other” responses was the use of atomic watches as the reference, usually G-Shocks or Citizens. This didn’t surprise me either. I would have included this as a choice but we only have four categories available in the poll so I had to leave something out. The other written responses covered sources such as computer clock, phone app, apple watch, worldclock website, time.is, Emerald Time, and Hodinkee app. There were a few particularly humorous responses that deserve to be mentioned: Jason558 responded with
“As an engineer I too am a little obsessed with accuracy, add in some OCD and it can be a little unhealthy 😂 I never use my phone to set the time on my watches, it can drift anywhere between +0.25 and +2.00 seconds daily (I appreciate that this is not significant to many but try telling my brain, haha). So, I use the website you shared in this post. Interestingly the timepiece that can keep in almost perfect agreement with the website is my trusty Casio F-91W! Followed by another trusty Casio analogue quartz which wasn't an expensive watch either.”
Obviously, he suffers from the same OCD I (and many of the rest of us apparently)have, and on the other end of the spectrum kentuckyman30 seem to be a bit mor laid back with:
“I kind of set my watches to whatever time I "feel" like it is. Usually, I'm not far off from reality, probably 10 or 15 minutes.”
This is kind of like a phrase we have in the cal lab when we can’t find the spec for an instrument: Set it to plus-or-minus in-the-ball-park. Of course, we would never actually do that 🤒
Thanks everybody for participating!
Born in 1962 in Detroit. I'm a gear-head to the core. I love everything with wheels. Off-roading, fast cars, motorcycles, etc. I always have a vehicle project or two in the works. Professionally I'm a...
I can't remember if I answered that or not, but I used to use a cell phone app, but now I have a Casio that is solar-powered and auto-sets twice a day using the WWV signal, so it is perfect accuracy on my wrist. It is what I used to set all my watches by, and it might be something you could consider since you need something perfect to the second.
I had at one time used the NRC web clock(https://nrc.canada.ca/en/web-clock/), but came to realize that within a minute or two ahead of actual time was good enough for me.
Time.gov for the win! Something about that ritual makes the exercise of setting my watch feel authentic and validated. If I in a rush I do what I can with a watch or referencing my g shock but it’s not as satisfying.