Watch Accuracy… Important or Overhyped?

I care about accuracy on watches with more than ~ 60 hours of power reserve. I’m likely to wear a watch twice before it runs down if I can get it three days later.

If you have a decent sized collection of watches and rotate through them regularly, I don't think it matters very much. This is my situation. At most, I'll wear the same watch once a week. I prefer my watches to be accurate of course, but whether they're as precise as a certified chronometer or deviate by 30+ seconds a day has very little actual impact on me.

My Seiko is the least accurate of all of my watches, so I feel this in my bones!

I love that you are so tuned into your watches. I, unfortunately am not. I was measuring my automatics against my Casio Royale and then found that it was even losing time over the course of a week so I gave up, lol.

I care. My quartz GS is spot on to the second five months after setting it. My Tudor BB58 is exactly 2 seconds slow every single day. My Rolex is exactly 8 seconds fast. I set my Cartier Tank once when I got it and it's still correct (it has no seconds hands so I'm not sure to the second) to the minute.

My cheap watches are not as accurate and that is okay, but if my expensive ones weren't it would really piss me off. I do care

Part of the romanticism of our silly hobby to me is the perfect imperfections of the little machines on our wrists. I appreciate the act of setting and winding my watches!

Oooo can you tell me more about your GS?

How do you measure the accuracy? I measure against time.gov every few days. I agree and hold my higher end watches to a higher standard.

I have a 29mm ladies GS quartz. The whole thing is impressive. The dial and hands are impeccable. I set the time on March 1st and it is still to the second. If you've considered GS quartz, I highly recommend

Same… ironically I just checked my watch box and realized I forgot to wind my watches yesterday and they’re all stopped except for the one I wore today. Damnit!

Yup, got to pull up world time and check it like an obsessive lunatic 😉

You my friend possess a skill I do not!

My rotation seems to be longer than that so I end up setting and winding them mid cycle. I have found the the closer they get to the end of their power reserve the more they are off. Have you experienced the same?

Looks great! My only wish is that it has a sweeping seconds hand but you can’t beat that level of accuracy that’s for sure. I have not bought a GS before do ADs negotiate lower prices pretty easily?

Okay so, super stupid GS quartz question. I’ve not had a GS in hand, as the closest AD is 4 hours away. On the quartz, does the second hand sweep, or tick away second by second?

If within advertised specs no problem, no matter what they are. If not I have an issue, especially if watch is on more expensive side

Put me in the important but overblown category.

Yes, it should be as accurate as possible, but there is a reason COSC & METAS certs don't require dead on accuracy. A couple, actually.

First, a mechanical watch has so many moving parts that it's very difficult to engineer everything to the nth detail to make one run dead accurate. Too much or too little lubrication can affect this & no watchmaker can lube a movement the exact same every single time. It's just human nature to be imperfect.

Second, can you imagine the waiting list for a Rolex if every single watch that left their shop was METAS reviewed & certified? And the cost of that process?

So, anyone that expects +/-0 from their watch, no matter how expensive, is just expecting to be perpetually disappointed.

This topic has come up on WC a few times and my answer is always the same. My life is not so tight that a difference of a few seconds a day, or even a few minutes a day would make a difference or even be noticed by me. Heck, I figure it may take me 5-7 seconds to cleanly open a bag of Oreos, but if it took me 9 seconds I wouldn't care.

Wind and rotate forms, so not really effected by the inaccuracy of time Keeping.

you are my kind of people

everyone says you shouldn't care about timing, use your phone etc etc. but damn don't I love a good +1spd watch.

My Submariner is running +3.3spd and that annoys me, and I'm tempted to take it back for service. My Christopher Ward is surprisingly at +3.1spd and it's not even chronometer certified. So it does depend on the price and specification of the watch in terms of what I demand from it. [Grand seiko spring drive is phenomenal, 0.0spd over 3 months].

Agree that it is a person problem not a watch problem though!

I really don't see accuracy as an issue. I'm in the fortunate position to have multiple mechanical watches and setting them is part of the fun.

I'm in the middle of my Four Watches Four Weeks experiment and after a week of wear, my Zulu Time was 8 seconds out. My Spinnaker which is not COSC was only 17 seconds out and I wore that 24/7 for the last 5 days on a long weekend in Switzerland.

I've just moved on to my Longines Master Collection, also not COSC, so we'll see how that does (though it is purely for interest purposes).

It's more interesting... it's ticking 2 time per second but you can only one with your eyes and it's ticking dead on markers (every time).

Better to see one time rather then 100s words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXNgcGLODUA

If you want sweeping hand look at their SpringDrive, actually it's continuously gliding without stoping

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fc31yb4JhHI

Beautiful… thanks for the response!

It's not a fluke either. One of mine lost 0.5s in 59 days, whilst the other lost 1.1s in 3 months. They are rated for +/-15s per month. And that's just Spring Drive, their high accuracy quartz movements are rated for +/-10s per year!

If i don't have to set the time every day it's fine with me, at the same time, i do try to regulate the movement to at least +6s/day, that's a minute every 10 days, pretty good in my book

I am OCD about my watch accuracy. I seriously cannot stand it if my watch is more than 5 seconds fast or slow.

I deliberately put my watch crown down every night to lose time, as it typically picks up a second or two each day.

I use this app (Twelve O Clock) to check the timekeeping. As you can see, i am anal AF about it.

For context, my daily is a Tudor BB Pro. Before that it was a Citizen Attesa Radio controlled solar powered quartz. The citizen gave me super accurate time, and I got used to that. Now, i kinda make sure i get the absolute most out of my Tudor.

What app do you use? I’m not nearly the stickler you are, but it would be interesting to know what each of my watches are doing. Typically every few days (planning on doing it tonight), I’ll get them all out, wind and set them.

Its called “Twelve O Clock” on IOS. I find it so fascinating monitoring the deviations, and what i can attribute the deviation to.

(Tried providing link to app on app store but seems to just not work for some reason)

Im sure if you type twelve of clock watch app in google it should bring you to it

Thanks! Just downloaded it!

I care. Especially since my only automatic has a 6R35 which is notorious for not being regulated. The part that bothers me is that i never feel i can get an exact time. It's only about 11:57 or whatever, never exact. That watch isn't going anywhere and i will pay to get it regulated at some point