zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

offered by a watchmaker on some other site. His explanation: high price quartz watches use metal gears instead of plastic ones. The metal gears have to have a little "slop" in them, or else friction (even with oil) will wear them down. This means that the second hand on a metal geared quartz watch does not move in exactly 1-sec increments everywhere, but in approximately 1-sec steps. He claimed he had never seen a high-grade quartz with metal gears that had the second hand fall on every single the 1-sec mark.

His explanation for why cheaper movements can do this is because they use plastic gears. They don't care about grinding down the gears, and so can make them more exact.

I don't know if this is true or not, but it makes as much sense as any other explanation I've heard. The gravity explanation doesn't make sense, because that would affect both high-end and cheap watches. Gravity doesn't care if you are wearing an Omega or a Timex... trust me, they both fall pretty hard. You'll just care more if it is your Omega. :)