How Long Do Automatic Watches Last? - Jack Mason

To understand how long automatic watches last, it’s important to first understand what an automatic watch is, how it works, and what differentiates high-quality watches from cheap ones.

What Is an Automatic Watch?

The first thing you need to know is exactly what an automatic watch is. In simple terms, an automatic watch is a watch with a mechanical movement that powers itself by using the kinetic energy you generate from swinging your arm.

What Is a Watch Movement?

Just to briefly touch on this—there are three basic types of movements in watches. These are manual, automatic, and quartz.

A quartz watch uses a quartz crystal and battery to keep time. You’ll find this in less expensive watches, and these will have a “tick” motion in the second hand. The biggest benefit of quartz watches is the price point.

Quartz is a much less expensive movement to manufacture than automatic. You’ll find these in your fast-fashion and department store watches.

Manual and automatic movements are similar. They are both mechanical watches that use mechanical elements to keep time. There is a mainspring in the watch that builds tension and slowly releases it in order to power the watch.

The difference between the two is how they store energy. In a manual watch, as the name suggests, you have to manually wind up the crown on the side of the watch in order to build that tension.

In contrast, an automatic watch does that for you through a self-winding power reserve. There is usually some kind of weight or ball bearing within the watch that moves back and forth as you move. The watch takes that energy and puts tension on the mainspring that it can release later in order to power the watch.

Are Automatic Watches Less Accurate Than Quartz Watches?

Given that quartz watches are powered on an electrical circuit and automatic are mechanical, it’s natural to wonder if it can really be as accurate. This is an ongoing debate in the watch world, but there’s nothing to worry about with a quality automatic watch.

Watchmakers have been honing their craft with automatic watches for hundreds of years, and they were making them with incredible precision and accuracy before quartz watches were even invented.

There are some cheap automatic watches that can’t keep up with quartz, but if they are of equal quality, they will both keep time perfectly fine. In fact, the best Swiss automatic watch movements that we see in Swiss army watches are sometimes better than quartz. And, not to mention, there’s just something special about a second hand that glides so smoothly around the face.