What is better to choose — quartz or mechanical watches

There are two types of wrist chronome­ters — quartz and mechan­i­cal. And they dif­fer not only in price. They are sim­i­lar only in the scope of use and, per­haps, the pres­ence of arrows.

Quartz and mechan­i­cal watch­es dif­fer in the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion, the need for main­te­nance and accu­ra­cy.

How mechanical watches work

Mechan­i­cal watch­es are the most clas­sic ver­sion of chronome­ters. The sys­tem of levers, springs, gears and arrows used in them is a real work of engi­neer­ing art. Such devices are com­plete­ly mechan­i­cal, they do not have a sin­gle elec­tron­ic com­po­nent, which means that with prop­er care and suf­fi­cient­ly high-qual­i­ty mate­ri­als, they will work for eter­ni­ty.

The source of ener­gy in the “mechan­ics” is a spe­cial spring. At the insti­tu­tion, it stretch­es, and then dur­ing the day it tends to straight­en. As soon as it is unclenched, the ener­gy from the clock mech­a­nism dis­ap­pears, and the hands stop. As a con­se­quence, mechan­i­cal watch­es must be wound every day (although some chronome­ters can last longer from one wind­ing).

The pres­ence of the inter­nal ener­gy of the spring leads to the fact that a very high volt­age is applied to the parts of the clock­work. Most like­ly, in child­hood, when dis­as­sem­bling the alarm clock, you your­self saw how its parts scat­ter when the mount is removed. In wrist­watch­es, every­thing is the same, so the mech­a­nism is made of mate­ri­als that can with­stand long-term stress — steel, brass, ruby.

That is why often “mechan­ics” are equipped with stone ele­ments. Ruby or dia­mond (in top mod­els) parts have greater com­pres­sive strength and do not break when try­ing to bend. The more stones in the mech­a­nism, the longer the chronome­ter will last. But the price also increas­es, of course.

In gen­er­al, the main advan­tage of the “mechan­ics” is their high reli­a­bil­i­ty. In the­o­ry, they are able to work through eter­ni­ty. But this also leads to high cost, as well as the need to start them dai­ly. In addi­tion, it is desir­able that the gears and levers are made of reli­able mate­ri­als and have at least a few stone ele­ments in their struc­ture.

But they also have a seri­ous draw­back. We’ll talk about it lat­er.

How quartz watches work

The clock mech­a­nism of quartz chronome­ters is sim­i­lar to that of mechan­i­cal ones, except that a bat­tery acts as an ener­gy source. It is com­ple­ment­ed by an elec­tron­ic con­trol mod­ule and a quartz crys­tal.

When elec­tric­i­ty is applied to a quartz crys­tal, it begins to vibrate at a tremen­dous rate, due to its piezo­elec­tric prop­er­ties. The oscil­la­tion fre­quen­cy is always the same, regard­less of the cur­rent strength. Then a spe­cial con­trol ele­ment accu­rate­ly counts the num­ber of vibra­tions made by the quartz crys­tal, and upon reach­ing a cer­tain num­ber sends a com­mand to turn the mech­a­nism to the step­per motor. It turns — and the hand moves one sec­ond.

Quartz is so accu­rate that it is used not only in electro­mechan­i­cal chronome­ters, but also in elec­tron­ic ones, as well as in many oth­er devices where it is required to mea­sure time in sec­onds.

It is clear that the mech­a­nism is at rest most of the time, turn­ing only on com­mand from the con­trol unit. There­fore, it is not nec­es­sary to make it from high-strength mate­ri­als. The gears of quartz devices can even be made of plas­tic, as is often the case with Chi­nese alarm clocks — and noth­ing, they will work for them­selves.

The use of quartz and an elec­tron­ic move­ment made it pos­si­ble to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the cost of watch­es. Quartz electro­mechan­i­cal time­pieces can be extreme­ly inex­pen­sive. Of course, the price also includes the case mate­r­i­al, design and much more, but the fact remains that in mass pro­duc­tion such watch­es can cost tens of rubles.

How­ev­er, the quartz and con­trol elec­tron­ics require elec­tric­i­ty to oper­ate. Bat­ter­ies in chronome­ters should be changed reg­u­lar­ly. More­over, the peri­od depends on many fac­tors. So, for some mod­els, the bat­tery needs to be changed every few months, while oth­ers are able to work from one “tablet” for a cou­ple of years.

The aver­age oper­at­ing time of a quartz watch is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to pre­dict. With mechan­i­cal ones, it is eas­i­er — ful­ly func­tion­al devices pre­served in muse­ums show that with prop­er care, a chronome­ter can last for cen­turies. But quartz appeared on the mar­ket only three decades ago, so it is not clear whether it is worth bequeath­ing them to grand­chil­dren or not yet.

How­ev­er, quartz watch­es have one very impor­tant advan­tage — and this is not the price. About him — below.

Which is more accurate — quartz or mechanical watches?

And now we get to the main aspect of the com­par­i­son — accu­ra­cy. And mechan­i­cal chronome­ters lose to quartz ones.

Due to the fact that the strength of the wind­ing is dif­fer­ent each time, as well as the unsta­ble trans­fer of kinet­ic ener­gy from the tense spi­ral, the “mechan­ics” shows an extreme­ly aver­age accu­ra­cy. A good result for such chronome­ters is a devi­a­tion of ±20 sec­onds per day, an excel­lent result is ±5 sec­onds. Cheap mod­els may well lag behind or rush, even for a minute per day! This is a lot, and mechan­i­cal chronome­ters need reg­u­lar rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

Quartz ones can also start to lag or rush — but due to defects or ener­gy loss in the mech­a­nism itself. A good result for such chronome­ters is ±20 sec­onds per month, excel­lent — ±5 sec­onds per year. Qual­i­ta­tive quartz watch­es do not need reg­u­lar rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, since they only show the time with the nec­es­sary and suf­fi­cient accu­ra­cy.

Which is better — quartz or mechanical watches?

So, we final­ly got to the com­par­a­tive table, where we oppose these two types of chronome­ters to each oth­er.

In addi­tion, there is anoth­er fac­tor to con­sid­er. A mechan­i­cal watch is often a sta­tus device rather than an exclu­sive­ly func­tion­al one. Chronome­ters from com­pa­nies such as Mont­blanc, Tis­sot, Corum or TAG Heuer cost hun­dreds of thou­sands and mil­lions of rubles — and look like a work of art. They can also be used as an invest­ment, although not very reli­able, or be inher­it­ed by grand­chil­dren. This is not the case with quartz.

In gen­er­al, when choos­ing a watch, you should pro­ceed from your own pref­er­ences. Both quartz and mechan­i­cal chronome­ters are equal­ly good. Of course, the lat­ter have a draw­back in the form of a time dis­crep­an­cy with the ref­er­ence one, how­ev­er, in the mod­ern world, a cou­ple of min­utes of dif­fer­ence does not always play an impor­tant role. And if you have a styl­ish, expen­sive chronome­ter on your wrist, it is you who con­trols the time, and not time con­trols you.