OPINION: Quartz is not a Four-Lettered Word…It’s Actually Six

Generally speaking, quartz watches cost much less than mechanical or automatic movements. They generally have fewer moving parts to be assembled, and human hands may never even touch them. Circuit boards take the place of complex gears that have to be assembled by skilled labor. Quartz watches are mass-produced in the millions and practically every person on earth should be able to find one in their price range.

Here is the really annoying thing for mechanical watch collectors… the cheapest quartz watch is likely more accurate than their most expensive mechanical watch. It’s a known fact and it’s indisputable, even if mechanical watches are getting more accurate. The truth is, that mechanical watch lovers do not buy mechanical watches necessarily for accuracy. That claim went out the window when quartz appeared on the scene. Instead, they are driven by the romance of mechanical things, historical intrigue, prestige, and style.

A quartz movement will likely make sure that you get to where you are going on time… but arguably, we all have our cell phones that are atomic clock accurate for that so even quartz watches have been superseded as the more accurate clock.

Quartz movements have fewer moving parts and might be considered solid state… or at least parts of them. This makes them more durable to bumps, shakes. There is not a hairspring so quartz watches are impervious to magnetic fields that can wreak havoc on mechanical watches if they become magnetized by thing like your laptop.

Quartz watches can do amazing things that mechanical watches cannot do, or cannot do without costing a fortune. Quartz watches can have special complications such as calendar, calculators, address books, chronograph, alarms, countdown timers, multiple time zones, depth gauges, altimeters, GPS tracking, radio signaling for emergency situations and the list goes on. Most mechanical watches have no more than a few complications at a time such as day/date and a GMT hand. The more complications a mechanical watch has, the more complex it is to use and to maintain. The price penalty is extremely high too.

Whether we like it or not, quartz watches are here to stay. They are indeed responsible for almost decimating the Swiss mechanical watch industry, but time has shown that different consumers want different types of watches. Quartz watches fill a niche and supply cheap timekeeping to many people worldwide. With anything that is mass produced, there are some quartz watches that are little more than cheap garbage. There is no denying that. However, there are also examples of high horology throughout the history of the quartz movement. The quartz watch has earned its place at the horological table and proved that it collectively almost toppled hundreds of years of watchmaking tradition. It is up to us as watch collectors to decide what is worthy of collecting and what is not in this realm.

Quartz watches are masters of energy conservation and can work up to 5 years on a single battery. This reminds me of legends of Zen monks who can lower their heartbeats to a few beats a minute to conserve air. Quartz watches perform this amazing feat of perseverance by moving the second’s hand only once a second. It is conceivable that they could have had the seconds hand move much more, but that would mean that the battery would run out faster. One tick per second is all that is needed to accurately tell the time down to the second.

One of the biggest advantages of quartz movements is that they can be incredibly, almost impossibly thin. While many mechanical watches have vertically stacked of gears and plates, quartz watches have fewer parts. Many watches are judged by how high they sit on the wrist. A tall watch over 15 mm can be considered chunky. Quartz watches can be in the sub-10 mm range. These thin watches are some of the most comfortable watches to wear on the wrist. To achieve this level of thinness, a mechanical watch would cost thousands of dollars.

Let’s be honest. Many of us baby our watches and would never dream of mowing the yard in a Patek Phillipe, though I can guarantee someone does. This is likely because we made a serious investment in the watch and want it to remain as nice as possible for as long as possible. Quartz watches can be the beater watch stunt doubles during rough and tumble situations that could possibly damage mechanical watches. If a cheap quart watch gets lost, damaged, bashed or water-logged on a white water rafting trip, then oh well… not a huge loss.

Quartz watches also have a place in certain social situations where it might not be safe to wear an expensive mechanical watch. This could include areas of the world that target tourists. Quartz watches are ubiquitous and do not attract the wrong kind of attention.

Quartz watches are often the earliest experience that many of us have with wearing an analog watch. Many collectors remember their first watch fondly, who gave it to them and what it meant to them. In some cases, it was just a watch to make sure they got to class on time. In other cases, quartz watches were the gateway to a larger world of watch collecting. They started the fascination that often leads people to discover other watch brands, mechanical movements, historical people and events centered around watches.

Quartz watches are the cheapest and lowest effort way to get into the hobby. They are appropriate for even children because there is little to lose if they flush them or trade them for a pack of gum at school.

Many people consider quartz watches to be beater watches. Those are watches that are meant to be used in many situations without fear of damaging or losing them. I wrote a whole article on the Joy of Wearing Beater Watches, so jump over to that if you want to go deep.

Quartz watches are arguably lower maintenance than mechanical watches. They only need a battery change every few years, sometimes up to five years. At this time, the gaskets should be inspected and maybe the watch cleaned up. Mechanical watches could have a similar service interval and it will cost hundreds of dollars to service the movements. This is because a watchmaker has to break down the watch to its component parts, clean everything, replace the worn parts, reassemble and oil it. It’s a laborious process that makes getting a battery change look like child’s play.

Cheap quartz watches probably put more watches on the hands of more people than mechanical watches ever did. It’s just a matter of cost and mass production, that put quartz watches in every dime store, department store and even grocery store. That is about as democratic as you can get because almost everyone can afford to own a quartz watch.

Some people sure can hold a grudge. There are watch collectors who sneer at anything quartz as if these watches kidnapped their grandma. I can understand rooting for your own team and debating personal preferences, but quartz watches were a natural evolution of technology and research in the watchmaking world. Few probably had any idea what kind of impact it would have on the mechanical watches that so many of us revere. The quartz crisis happened, and it forever changed the face of Swiss watchmaking, but watch collecting mechanical watches might be in a boom because of it. The watches that survived are more coveted and admired. Quartz movements were perhaps one of the biggest disruptive technologies to come out the 1960s and 1970s, and that deserves some recognition.

Here’s a fun fact. Quartz watches literally use a quartz crystal that oscillates while under electrical current at a predictable frequency to help regulate the watch movement. Another fun science fiction fact is that a lightsaber used by the likes of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker uses a Kyber Crystal to power their lightsabers. Coincidence? I think not. haha