zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: to argue that mechanicals are
: more acurate than a top quality quartz.

A lot depends on the definition of accuracy you are using--which is a comon point of confusion in discussion such as these.

The commonly cited measure for watches when compared to a definitively accurate time source is seconds of variation per day. But the more real world measure is total seconds error over a longer period of time, such as a week, month or year.

For a quartz watch, these two measures will be identical. Quartz watches perform with virtually 100% consistency. (Exceptions are only under significant extremes of temperature or when the battery is severely weakened.)

But a mechanical watch does NOT perform at a 100% consistent level. As we all know, temperature, position, state of wind and othe factors cause subtle differences in the performance of a mechanical watch movement. So the per-day rate of variation is not consistent over time.

These small variations will somewhat cancel each other out over longer periods of time, making a mechanical watch more accurate relative to a quartz watch than a simple comparison of daily error rates might lead you to believe.

A mechanical watch measured at +3 seconds per day at one point is NOT certain to be 3*30 or 90 second off true time after a month. So it is quite possible for a mechanical watch to "beat the odds" of accuracy in ways that a quartz cannot.