How much do watch hands affect your love/hate for a watch?

Cathedral hands need not apply.

Hands that are too short will turn me off instantly.

It literally is what you stare at to “use” the watch. It better be something I like.

I feel like you’re asking if I’ve gotten over the snowflake hands. I still dislike them but I can tolerate them if I don’t look too closely. Or if I’m not wearing my bifocals.

Tudor blunt hands = 😝

Dauphine hands = 🥰

Make or break for me. Shocking i know

Sartory Billard solved the Problem.

By the Way I couldn't by a watch I don't like the hands on.

Snowflake and Mercedes hands in top of my dislike list.

Alpha and broad arrow hands are some of my favourite from the generic ones, leaf also for dress watches.

But love the proprietary (Journe, Sarpaneva, Kurono, PF, Moritz Grossman, Ferrier...)

I don't have handsets that I necessarily don't like however if they don't blend well with other aesthetics of the dial that could be the final decision maker for me.

It's not the hands by themselves, but as part of of the overall appearance of the watch face. But they are a VERY important part.

It depends on the hands.

I know that this is a stupid thing to say but I cannot get behind tudors snowflake hands.

Why love/hate? Or, more to the point, why hate? Where does hate enter into it?

I’m tired of people throwing the word hate around so easily, as if it were nothing.

Do we have to hate that which we do not choose or don’t care for? It seems to me that we’d be better off if we dropped words like ‘hater’ and ‘hate’.

Do you hate your neighbour for having a blue car just because you don’t care for or dislike blue cars?

Our discourse is being poisoned by the heedless use of such negativity.

Oh, and I say this with kindness, not judgment or a hard heart.

🕊️

It depends if the hands go well with the rest of the watch. For example I don’t really like the snowflake hands on the Black Bay range with the round indices, but on the Pelagos with the square indices it looks fine to me.

I would say it’s a semi-dealbreaker. I wouldn’t buy any Tudor Black Bay for that reason, but if someone gifted me one I could get over it 😂

To me shape of the hands although matter but not as much as matching the overall coloring. I wasn't even aware of it but few months ago I installed the rose gold hands on one of my built watches and I really got into the point that I had to change them. Here on first picture is how it looked and then what I changed the hands.

What I realized was that I don't like the skeleton hands on this dial as well because its kind of hard to read the time at a quick glance. Very first hands I had on this watch was the following

But I installed them on an other watch so I've been looking on aliexpress to get some new but I can't really decide between so many options, reply to this comment please if you have an idea what would suit well on this dial and would look somehow outstanding and extremely good at the same time

Tudor and Rolex managed to rule out most of their lines from my collection with their handsets. I'm not a fan of the Omega weird skeletons either.

CW’s old onion hour hands turned people off but I was OK with those. The new stub sword hour hands are a major turnoff for me. It’s like looking at dwarfs welding a short sword around…

Hate Mercedes hands, or owt overly ornate, but that's about it. As long as they're not too short.

Same here, on all 3

I like this question. They are definitely in the "deal breaker" category for me.

There are several watches I didn't buy because of the hands.

Don't care what hands as long as the fit the style and are proportionaly balanced.

Dislike if it is too short for the intended use, seiko navigator gmt hand.

The Explorer was bad, but I think this one is even worse

Makes or breaks. Anything with cathedral or mercedes hands is an immediate pass. Too many beautiful watches out there to compromise with elements I dislike.

To call snowflake a square on a stick is the triumph of marketing over reason.

Thats what she said 😭

That's a tough call on that one. I love the dial face, but not exactly sure what hands would suit it. I do like the contrasting seconds hand.

For me, legibility of the hands is a make or break. I liked some of the Timex Waterbury watches, but some have terrible hand choices because they blend into the dial too much.

Using dislike or don't care for is mere argument of semantics given the synonymous nature of their usage in this context.

In this usage love/hate is a mere binary. A 1 or a 0. As any living creature has preferences we generally assign most things to such categories in quick determinations.

For example: touching a hot frying pan with a bare hand would be something that would universally be categorized as a sensation that people would hate. I don't know anyone who would definitely is as "slightly less than pleasant" or "a sensation I don't care for."

I don't believe in people hating each other or hating as in the definition of hostility or the implication of loathing.

Hate does contain the definition of strongly disliking something, which is in the context in which I used it in the question, unlike the previous definition to which you ascribed to it and implied as my intention.

Negatives are used in discourse to counter point positives. Even the word "no" is a negative and projects negativity and so is a "con" in a pros and con list too. Dislike, don't care for, etc all carry negative connotations.

Without ways to express positives or negatives we have no discourse and only conformity.

I have some hands that I'm not fond of, but would still get the watch. Then there have been watches where the hands made me not want it. For example, the Timex Waterbury GMT had some hands that blended into the background too much that would make it not very legible that made me pass. I don't like the idea of having to stop and really take a lot of time sorting out where the hands are.

The good thing about the assembled watches is that I can choose whichever hands I want, the only problem is my lack of the design talent so therefore often I install non matching hands lol

Timex have some nice watches, I like them as well but with that blending hands for instance like the one on this picture...

...are pretty much useless for me as it takes too long to read the time on them with my eyesight 🤷‍♂😊