Question: how much you care about the accuracy of a watch?

98% of my watches are quartz, which is good for me because they are so accurate. When i found out that watches can lose or gain time, i was always a bit chuffed to think my cheap Casio kept better time than a Rolex. I like my mechanical watches too and the ones I have seem to keep good time even though they are inexpensive, but I'd be a bit bothered if they were more than a minute off. At my parents house and in their car the clocks are anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes ahead. I used to keep my alarm clock with a 5 minute lead time as well, but what ended up happening was that I'd think, I got 5 more minutes before I have to get up, then I'd roll over and back to slumber land. But in the end absolute max precision is good, but a few seconds a day appearing or disappearing doesn't bother me at all.

Depends upon the watch. For a cheap fashionable beater, don’t care that much. For more a more expensive watch, it maters greatly.

When I put on a watch and it's an automatic, I set the time via the NIST time widget:

( https://time.gov/widget/widget.html , Give it two or three seconds to determine your network delay.)

And during the day I know I'm accurate to within seconds.

My quartz watches I don't do that because they're generally with 30 seconds of the actual time, even sitting around for a while, so I don't bother.

I like to arrive a few minutes (up to 10 minutes) before the agreed upon time so i dont have a problem if my watch is running fast. If i find out my watch is running slow i adjust it immediately.

If I lose or gain 10 minutes in the course of a day with one of my vintage watches then I'm happy. Though I would rather it ran fast than slow as I'm OCD about punctuality. Quartz for accuracy as others have said.

My relation with time and watches evolved as I got older. I still value punctuality but it's on my own terms, which changed from the accuracy of a second to "sometime around noon". Therefore I don't mind if my watch isn't very accurate because I don't really use it anymore to keep appointments or time tasks.

While I don't set my clocks or watches ahead for the sake of punctuality, I do have a policy with any time piece to set it to the time.gov reference whenever I notice they're off by 1 minute or more. Within one minute it's fine for my purposes. Surprisingly enough things like cheap wall clocks and car dashboard clocks can really end up inaccurate after only a couple weeks, which speaks to just how dirt cheap the oscillators in them can sometimes be. My bedside digital alarm clock I've noticed gaining about 3 minutes over 2 months. I actually just yesterday ordered a little Seiko brand alarm clock to replace it - sweeping seconds hand, lumibrite, and what I hope is the same cheap but reliable quartz movement found in their watches. We shall see.

Post it when you get it, sounds cool. I requested an Invicta wall clock for Valentine's Day.

These comments are giving me blurry vision and a headache lol. I NEED my watches to be as close as possible to atomic time. I don't know why, just has to. Most of my quartz are reset every week and my go to autos are with +/- 5 a days. I'll fix it in the middle of the day if it gets away from set time from too much activity or the opposite. I'v gone as far as learning how to adjust the regulator, and i'm planning on getting a timegrapher. It's a problem, but its not a bad one ...

For me, it really depends on the watch. A new quartz, even if it is a budget watch, should not be gaining or losing more than a few seconds per day. I am more forgiving of mechanical watches, and I will forgive losing or gaining 20-30 seconds per day. For vintage watches, I am even more forgiving, and am used to some of them gaining or losing more than a minute per day (for some of them, much more than a minute 😂). I have a couple of watches that are multiband equipped to receive the atomic clock signal, and I use those to set my other watches when needed.

Given that I am a navigator, accuracy is important to me. For me, a watch is a tool that tells time. If a watch is not accurate and legible, it is useless to me.

I only care about accuracy while I travel, have a single watch, and really will not focus on a watch. That's when I use a quartz watch.

Rotating through my collection on a daily basis I don't care about +/- 5 spd, as it makes no practical difference.

Shall do. In the meantime here is Seiko's clock website and the model I ordered from Amazon.

https://www.seikoclocksusa.com/

https://a.co/d/20xRvBb

I have around 30ish watches in my collection 😂 and 90% are automatic so by the time I wear one of them again it's probably already be dead haha. Joke aside, yes if my watch is premium I expect it to be no more than +10/-10 sec per day.

I fully agree with you.

Accuracy is also not my main concern in watches. Actually, I do the same with time setting as you do. Mostly one or two minutes ahead :)

I have absolutely no need for "to the second" accuracy, but I value accuracy in my watches as I see it as a sign of quality.

Retired... I'm ok if it gets the day right but they surprize me all time.

Sure. Here's Seiko's clock site - I think all of their clocks have sweeping seconds hands. https://www.seikoclocksusa.com/collections/bedside-alarm/

Here's the specific one I bought. https://a.co/d/gCVz4YA

I tend to set watches to within a couple of minutes of the correct time, but always a little ahead. Based on that, I have no idea how accurate my watches actually are. I suppose I should time them at some point, but I don't really care.

I’m fanatical about my watches accuracy. Since I prefer to purchase luxury mechanical timepieces I very much have the expectation that they are going to run within quoted accuracy standards. I measure all of my watches for their daily deviation rate every morning and keep a record of it all using an app called Twixt. I’ve had to send multiple watches in for warrantied service because they were regularly running out of either Rolex Superlative Chronometer or COSC standards. Now, most of my watches run 0/+5sec a day accuracy and that’s good enough for me. I will however reset most of my watches every week or so to make sure my watches don’t go more than 30 seconds out of atomic time. I’ve even been able to learn which watches I can set crown up overnight, and they’ll lose the time they gain during the day making them virtually as accurate as my phone. Amazing! And my Spring Drive watches usually run +0.2-0.4sec a day. They never lose time.

If you'd just choose to arrive 10-15m early (which is best practice for anyone, anywhere, anytime), you wouldn't need to have your watch set to the wrong time to compensate because even if it's out 30 seconds a day or whatever, arriving early will always compensate for any discrepancies. That would seem the most logical way to deal with situations where arriving by a certain time is of any importance.

I get a strange satisfaction from keeping my watch in a certain window of accuracy and going as long as possible without having to set the time. My current daily driver runs about -2 sec per day in normal use. I used to set it about 30 secs fast and reset the time about once a month. But it's fun getting to know the characteristics of a particular watch over time and how it gains/loses. I don't have a timegrapher, but I noticed my watch gains a little when left dial-up, so on days when I wear a different watch I leave it dial-up all day to get a few seconds back. I just checked and my watch is currently 3 seconds fast and I don't think I have set the time this year yet, and that makes me far more happy than it probably should.

I want my watches to be accurate at least within 5 minutes. 5 minutes is a good grace period for regular life. If go into a meeting 3 minutes late, I'm not really late. The opposite is also true. I arrive at a meeting 3 minutes early, I'm not really early. The movie started 4 minutes ago, that's fine since I didn't miss anything at all. But over 5 minutes, people are less magnanimous.

I don't see the point of accuracy on a watch (especially an automatic one) when my phone is there if I needed "to-the-second" time. My take is, I look at my watch to see "is it lunchtime yet", I check my phone to make sure "the risotto has been cooking for precisely 27 minutes".

set my watch in the morning.... mostly accurate for the day... choose a new watch the next day... I assume I am +-15/30 seconds by the end of the day... not worried about spending thousands on servicing when there are other watches that can be acquired with that money...

yep, if everyone would start doing this, world would be a little bit of a better place tbh

I really want accuracy in a watch - that way I can arrive to things early but only just (sort of 2 mins early is perfect.)

This post gives me faith in humanity again lol. My brain doesn't compute the fact that people don't care that the watch is inaccurate even a few minutes from UTC ... I know everyone has their preferences but mine wouldn't allow for such disrespect from one of my watches.

Accuracy barely matters to me. My two quartz watches are accurate, but if there is something very very important I need to time or an event I have to be punctual to, I just use my phone. I just ordered a vintage Oris military watch, which I'm excited and nervous about. 1950s timekeeping is probably not the best, but that'll never stop me. If I was buying new however, accuracy would matter to me; I don't like adjusting a watch every two to three days

So far I only own two watches – one with a Sellita movement and one with a COSC in-house movement. I’ve decided that if I’m going to spend big coin on another watch, I really really care about accuracy. And if small coin, I’d rather save up for something truly special.

None of this is logical and I recognize that I’m privileged to be OCD about my “timepieces”. But whatevs

I’d like my mechanical watches to be at least as accurate as their stated rating. I have a few quartz watches but I haven’t worn them in years. I have 4 certified chronometers and 1 “superlative chronometer” and they perform well within COSC standards. I have some Seiko’s with 6R movements and they perform way better than their stated rate. They all run fast, and I like that better than if they were slow.

I was in Army for 26 years and I’m still working, and I’ve never needed quartz accuracy to be on time. Truth be told I’ve hardly ever needed quartz accuracy, well other than setting my relatively inaccurate mechanical watches. ☺